Establishing your purpose

Everybody has a purpose – another word for this would be mission – but not everyone knows what it is. Some people seem to instinctively grasp their purpose early on, and others find that it is slowly revealed to them. There is a third category of course: those who resist their purpose and die unfulfilled, or as we sometimes say – they die with their music still inside them.

There are various ways to help people find their purpose and I'd like to share one small one with you now. Sentences contain – in English – eight kinds of words, and the most important type of word of all is the verb – the doing word. This expresses the very essence of activity, of mood, tense, person and much else besides. Other words are simply static in comparison. Nouns, for example, just point to things and abstractions: the table is just a table, static, until a verb tells us the table crashes into the fridge!

Discovering your purpose is helped by considering what is the verb that is you? Bear in mind, having said that verbs are the 'doing' verbs, which they are, plenty of them 'do' things other than 'doing' – to dream, to think, to be – along with more active ‘doings’ like to paint, to administer, to organise, to nurse, to build, to .. You get my drift?

I ask people I mentor to go back to their teenage years. Think of what they were good at doing, found effortless relative to other people's experience of the same activity, and realise that therein lies the clue, possibly, to what their mission is really about.

Most people come up with about three verbs, often synonyms, and it then takes some careful selection to decide which verb is the ONE. Sometimes this can take a couple of weeks, even longer. Eventually, however, it becomes clear what verb really feels right – expresses what they have always been about, although had never considered it in this way before. BUT, having worked out your verb – voila – all activities in your life, more or less, need to be aligned with it. This is, incidentally, a relief – it represents a form of simplification and focus.

I run two companies, Motivational Maps Ltd, and Motivational Mentoring Ltd. Guess what my verb might be? Yep, to motivate. But it's not just about my work – I need to motivate my friends, my family, and even my enemies. To the degree to which I don't do it is the degree to which I have fallen short. And this applies to any verb we accept as being what we should be about.

There is a wonderful simplicity about finding your verb and so finding your purpose – once you do, the world never looks the same again. Happy hunting – find that verb!