| A month ago I shared a 4 question Wellbeing Test. This test can help you identify your sources of Sustenance, Success, Sacrifice and Strength. If you haven't tried this already, stop reading and click the linked text above. The first question of this test had to do with Sustenance in your life. I am going to help you answer that question by sharing with you a handful of ideas for really meeting basic human needs, and doing so with purpose. | |
All of this became clear, tangible and meaningful to me when I first watched the video above. This may be obvious, but if
you are subject to rape, abuse, slavery, or any other threat to your basic safety, then doing something about it is not only you nourishing yourself, but it's you sustaining with purpose.
If you lack the food you need or the necessary shelter, then doing something about it is you sustaining with purpose.
If you need medical attention, whether preventative or therapeutic, and you do something about it, then you are sustaining with purpose.
If you suffer in extreme poverty, and you do something about it, then you are sustaining with purpose.
These represent the first way to survive with purpose; you are a person, so make sure you have the basics.
I can think of one exception to this rule. When you sacrifice basic needs for something you believe to be greater than your own wellbeing. Consider Gandhi and his hunger strikes, the civil rights activists in the U.S. who knowingly and peacefully marched into beatings and torture, or even the Machine Gun Preacher.
Please forgive me (and correct me) if I am wrong, but if you are reading this I suspect that access to basic resources like adequate safety, shelter, food and healthcare are not your challenge. Even if you lacked these resources, the good news is that resources have nothing to do with whether or not you have a purpose, or even what that purpose is. In fact, it takes fewer resources than you may believe to both discover and start living your purpose everyday.
If you lack the food you need or the necessary shelter, then doing something about it is you sustaining with purpose.
If you need medical attention, whether preventative or therapeutic, and you do something about it, then you are sustaining with purpose.
If you suffer in extreme poverty, and you do something about it, then you are sustaining with purpose.
These represent the first way to survive with purpose; you are a person, so make sure you have the basics.
I can think of one exception to this rule. When you sacrifice basic needs for something you believe to be greater than your own wellbeing. Consider Gandhi and his hunger strikes, the civil rights activists in the U.S. who knowingly and peacefully marched into beatings and torture, or even the Machine Gun Preacher.
Please forgive me (and correct me) if I am wrong, but if you are reading this I suspect that access to basic resources like adequate safety, shelter, food and healthcare are not your challenge. Even if you lacked these resources, the good news is that resources have nothing to do with whether or not you have a purpose, or even what that purpose is. In fact, it takes fewer resources than you may believe to both discover and start living your purpose everyday.
Resources Don't Matter
This is an idea I found in How Will You Measure Your Life? (see the Motivate (Beta) Reading List). Clayton Christensen and his co-authors observed that you can describe any organization pretty well once you have identified the organization's resources, processes and priorities. Borrowing from a tradition as old as The Republic by Plato, Christensen points out that it is the same for you. You, and anyone else, can understand an individual once you understand the same three things about them.
It turns out that when it comes to living your purpose, resources are essentially eclipsed by your processes and priorities. Resources are basics needs (food, clothing, shelter, safety, etc.), money, time, relationships, knowledge and the like. You could have all of these in abundance, but that does not mean you are living purposefully.
Where your priorities (including motivators and values) and processes (your capabilities, experiences, etc.) meet is where you can find ways to live your purpose. Without the right priorities and processes, all of the money (or time, or friends, or learning, or whatever) in the world don't make a meaningful life. It's not a person's resources that decides what he or she achieves, but everything else.
This may seem a little counter-intuitive. I get it. Resources are much more important, right? No. And, I offer a personal example from my experience as part of the Urban League movement to make this point tangible.
A couple years back I had the honor of serving my local Urban League as its director of workforce programming, right at the height of the national economic turmoil, and unemployment levels in our community. Our job programs served economically disadvantaged individuals who also had significant barriers to securing and maintaining employment. These barriers included lack of employable skill-sets, bad work histories, felony convictions, lack of transportation, addiction, no food, no cloths, homelessness and more. These folks were almost the definition of under-resourced.
During that period we got more men and women to work, and keeping that work, than any other time in our local Urban League's history. At a time when employers were being extra selective, more and more of the "unemployable" that engaged our program found work and stayed at work.
How did we do it? My staff and I scrapped most of what we had inherited, including the assumption that to fix the problem we were trying to fix we would need to connect these "unemployable" adults to more and better resources. Instead we focused our efforts on workplace values and professional goals (priorities) and problem solving, especially related to working around the poor resource levels (processes).
This points to the second way to survive with purpose; when it comes to resources, "good enough" is good enough. If you have adequate safety, food, shelter and health, then you have enough to live your purpose everyday. Yes, more resources could allow you to produce more meaningful results but often collecting those resources takes the most rare resource of all - time. You need time to live with purpose. What you should be paying attention to is not how much you create, but simply that you create the right stuff.
Risking for Your Purpose in the Real World
These next 4 ideas are the third way to survive with purpose. When you act in line with your purpose, you will likely be risking those "good enough" resources. I adapted these from Jim Collins' Great By Choice (Collins is most famous for his ground breaking book Good to Great). In this book, Collins and his co-author explore why certain companies not only survive in turbulent times, but also thrive. To discover and live your purpose daily is to always live in turbulent times.
1. It's Pace, Not Motivation. Everyone wants their stuff from you now, and there is always so much to get done. Also, when you are excited by a project, then you are willing to skip meals, fun, family and sleep. Try not to do that - the price is usually too high. Timothy Ferris suggest that you break down any important project (like one that will help you discover or your live your purpose) into small mini-tasks that you can get done in 15 minutes each, once a day. Even if 15 minutes doesn't work for a particular project of yours, embrace the principle; engage your project for a set amount of time each week/day/hour on a predictable schedule. Don't go too hard, but don't go too slow.
2. Know What Works For You, And Do That. What if you wrote down a list of specific and methodical practices that you have consistently engaged over years in every moment when you were at your best? Try it. I bet you'll find you've created a recipe for the way you succeed. Now use it everyday. For example, any list of mine would need to include the observation that I have never done anything worthy and worthwhile alone. Lesson for me is that I need to do cool stuff with other people, even when I prefer to be a lone wolf.
3. Try A Lot Of Simple, Inexpensive Stuff. Then Go Big. Tom Peters would tell you to fast prototype. Austin Kleon would tell you to first try something and if it worked/felt good, then to go deeper or further. If didn't work/feel good, then try something else. Jim Collins would tell you to fire bullets, and only after the bullets hit their mark, then fire cannon balls. You get the point. Test drive everything before you buy. Just because you think it looks like the Lamborghini of great ideas, doesn't mean it is one. Also, just because an idea looks like a rusted out Pinto, doesn't mean it is one. Your great (or latest) idea is full assumptions, test them before you bet the farm.
4. Be Ready For The Worst. OK, you prototyped your way to a big idea that is a true reflection of your purpose. You're excited and you believe. This is your crowning moment. Good. But, happens if it fails and fails badly? Are you at least emotionally ready for the consequences?
It may not work. Your idea may not be embraced, or your sacrifice may get you killed or be in vain. But, what's next if that happens? Assuming you're still bouncing around this moral coil, how will you pick yourself back up and move forward? Purpose often comes with a cost. Expect to pay that cost.
I have shared with you three ways to survive with purpose in this fevered and cold, dark and brilliant, beautiful and ugly world of ours. There may be more, and I will share them with you when I find them. I hope you will share yours with all of us.
Be well,
Sterling Lynk
P.S. - I've been working on this piece for a while now. I had a tough time getting a feeling for it, and at times I just would angst about it. I've had to grow a bit to get this done. That's a good thing and ultimately I decided to take my own advice and just get it out there to all of you. Let me know what you think even if you think its uninspired, unoriginal, useless or just plain bad. I want hear from you.
[Video: TED]