Why Your Purpose Is One Of The Most Important Things You Can Cultivate

November 30, 2010 in leadership with 0 Comments

Here’s the central question you need to ask yourself in any area of your life: why?

Why am I blogging?

Why I am working in a particular field?

Why did I start this particular organization?

If you can answer that question, you’re going to have a lot of clarity and momentum to carry you through tough times. The lack of clarity regarding your purpose will send you in the opposite direction. Let me give you a personal example.

I blog because it’s primarily a learning tool for me. It’s really simple. I also enjoy resourcing other people. I don’t do it to make money. I don’t do it to make a name for myself. I don’t do it to be trendy. If those were my purposes, this whole thing would be considered a big failure! But as a result of my clarity in this area, I don’t get discouraged if I don’t get comments on a blog post. In the beginning of my blogging journey I would rarely get any comments at all! Ever.

But slowly I’ve started to get more comments here and there. Do I get comments on every post? Not at all. But that doesn’t matter to me because my primary purpose is to help me learn and process my thoughts, and secondarily to create a learning environment to resource others. Does it help if there are comments? Of course. If people respond the learning can go to the next level, but it’s not necessary.

I recently found out that a post, that didn’t even have any comments on it, was recently shared with a group of pastors. So even though there was no outside indication that people were interested or responding to it, people were being helped by it.

Here’s another one: why am I pastoring?

I never wanted to be a pastor, believe me. My father is an ordained minister, and I never wanted to get close to this stuff. I wanted to be a physician. But God had other plans. He called me to preach that God has sent a Savior through Jesus Christ.

So irrespective of the size of the church or how well it’s doing, I know what my primary purpose is. Does that mean that results don’t matter? No, but the results have to be examined from the perspective of the purpose.

So what about you?

Are you working where you work because you’re just looking for the highest salary? Or are you willing to work somewhere that pays less, but will offer you greater fulfillment?

Did you start something for the purpose of making money? That’s fine, but be clear about your purpose. If it’s not making any money, you can move on. It becomes a simple decision.

So if you can answer that one question in different areas of your life, I believe it’s going to make many decisions much easier for you. Because it’s the purpose that’s going to give you the needed perspective when times are difficult or confusing.

What about you? Where do you need to ask yourself this question?

[image by annna]