Tag: knowledge

Exploring Your Personal Vision

I previously discussed the need for a personal vision as a leader in an organisational context.  But what if you do not have an organisational leadership role? The benefits of a personal set of values and a clear personal vision apply to you as well.

The power of vision is that it attracts support and resources, helps you to integrate the diverse aspects of your life and enables you to notice things that would otherwise pass you by.  Lou Tice, author of Smart Talk for Achieving Your Potential, spoke eloquently about the power of vision and argued in Smart Talk that:

You will never accomplish all that you dream, but you will seldom accomplish anything that you don’t envision first.

Vision is like a magnet pulling ideas, people and energy towards you – enabling you to achieve a unique contribution to your community and the world at large.

A personal vision helps you to ride the waves of life, with its ups and downs, highs and lows.  It provides some form of protection against the temptation to be your lesser self when pressured to give into the expediency of the moment and say or do something that is hurtful or harmful to yourself and/or others.

Discovering your vision and values through meditation

The Mindful Movement provides one of the many meditations that help you clarify what it is you value and how best to formulate a personal vision that can evolve over time as circumstances change and you become better equipped to pursue what flows from your uniqueness and life experiences.  Their guided meditation helps you to Discover your Values and your Vision of your Ideal Self.

This meditation provides an ideal way to become grounded first through a process of progressive body scanning and muscle relaxation.  This frees your mind to be open to the potentiality of your uniqueness.  It helps still the negative thoughts that can act as a barrier to developing and pursuing a vision.

In establishing a personal vision, you are sowing the seeds for happiness in your life because it opens up the possibility of doing something meaningful beyond yourself through using your unique set of knowledge, skills and life experiences.

As you grow in mindfulness, you will be able to gain a clearer view of your personal vision, realise your potentiality and experience a deeper happiness in contributing something worthwhile to your community and the world at large.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source:  Photo taken on Murano Island, Venice

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

What Is Your Unique Purpose in Life?

In the previous post on Finding Your True Purpose, I drew on the interview podcast by Stephen Cope.  In that post, I explored what Stephen refers to as the “four-stage path of action”.  The first stage, however, discerning your true purpose, is where people often become stuck and unable to move forward, for multiple reasons (including doubts).

Stephen suggests several ways to help you progress in deciding what is your unique purpose in life – what best utilises your knowledge, skills and personality for the greater good.  This can be a challenging task and may take some time to discern – it could involve immersing yourself in an area of interest to establish the needs that are present in that arena.  Research may precede action.

What is your unique purpose in life?

Some of Stephen’s suggestions may help with gaining clarity about your unique purpose.   He suggests that you can focus on three areas to gain further insight into any “unconscious obstacles”.

  1. What lights you up? – what in your life generates positive energy, captures your commitment or engages you over lengthy periods?  The way to access this is to write a list of things that light you up, without censoring the list.  Look for themes or connections amongst items on your list, and you may find a pointer to your unique purpose.
  2. What is your deepest duty right now? – you will have duties as an employee, friend, colleague, parent, citizen, partner.  What duty flowing from any of these roles is felt so deeply that if you do not fulfil it, “you will feel a profound sense of self-betrayal”?
  3. What personal challenges do you face? – do you have a health issue, relationship challenge, a problem involving your child or children or a workplace issue?  What do these challenges inspire you to do? It may mean helping others to show self-care or establishing a support group for parents who have lost a child or for people experiencing work stress.  Some people have established a foundation or committee to enable them to engage others in supporting them in their endeavours to do something for the common good.

Famous people such as Gandhi and Robert Frost found their unique purpose and proceeded  to develop what Stephen calls “unified action” – where you increase your focus on the area of interest and peel away anything that is not contributing to your unique  purpose.     Extraordinary people have achieved extraordinary outcomes but there are many more “ordinary people” who have excelled at what they do because they have realised a singular focus and a commitment to act in accord with that focus.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection (particularly on our interests, our duties and our challenges), we can gain clarity about our unique purpose, find creative ways to fine tune our actions and increase the integration of that purpose into our daily lives.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of cocoparisienne on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.