When purpose exceeds desire, your life is never the same.
Looking back, fervently do I wish I had known and understood so simple a concept as this. Until very recently, I had always operated from the emotion of desire. I believed that if I wanted something badly enough, that in itself, was enough for me to get it and that I would be happy getting it.
The problem with that approach is that it made me very worldly. If I did not get what I was after, I found myself on the verge of being overturned in a ditch mired in disappointment and disgust at my results. Dare I say primal, and base, was I, in my troubled approach to life, and what it means to live.
I did not have a stomach well suited for anything else other than material gain. Rarely were my mental capacities stimulated outside the pursuit of gaining more and more material things. Little did I know that I would go on to spend years running up a stairway to perceived happiness, that in reality, led me nowhere.
For a long time, I predicated my self-worth in direct proportion to the number and degree of things I could buy. This was the main way whereby I measured my place in the world. We all seek approval from the outside world. So it follows that one of the fastest and easiest ways to earn it is by looking the part. I was a big believer in that expression: “Sometimes, it’s better to look good than to feel good.”
I maxed out that maxim and all it did for me was stress me out.
Aren’t you tired of running?
Like a pet hamster running inside his wheel, I was on a moving platform that never let up in intensity. The worst part of all this is I was the one doing it to myself! For example, at one time only a $50 shirt was good enough. Then $50 turned to $80. $80 became $100. $100 transformed into $150. And on and on. Over time, this same mentality carried over into everything from watches to cars until I was overrun with the emotional roller-coaster of tumult associated with excess stress.
This is what results when desire exceeds purpose.
The sure sign that I was out of order was I really struggled getting up out of bed in the morning. When you are physically healthy with all your strength intact, yet you struggle to find a reason to get up from bed in the morning, you have a problem inside your mind that must be surmounted. I would spend hours querying myself as to what was wrong with me. I had not yet made it to the depths of depression, but I was headed there. Apathetic is a great word to describe how I generally felt about life and my prospects.
I found that I had a lot of nice things but I still lacked spring in my step and confidence in my stride. I was not leading by any stretch. I was following. I was still content to consume the products, ideas, and designs of others. I had not yet discovered the importance of creating.
I needed to show myself what I could do.
If someone asks you why you get up in the morning, and your only response is “because I have to work,” you are being underutilized. You are most assuredly leaving your best life on the proverbial table. You are fulfilling some of your desires, but fulfillment of your purpose is languishing, because you are spending your valuable working hours satisfying the desires of your employer.
So what happens with this approach? The vast majority of us spend our lives leaving ourselves behind. By following the crowd, we turn complacent and blend in as opposed to standing out. In short, by doing what everyone else is doing, we become ordinary, so our lives follow that template.
I do not want you to be like everyone else because everyone else is taken.
What you have is special, because whatever it is, you are the first to see it. And until you bring it out into focus, you are the only one who sees it. This is why your purpose matters because unlike your desires, you have to seek this. Rarely does something this important “fall from the sky.” Most people go their entire lives never fully realizing the breadth of their God given purpose, and those of us that do still do not push out beyond our comfort zone enough to see what we can really do.
You need to put more cheese on your pizza. To really break through the ceiling you have to break through yourself. I need you to go beyond. Be EXTRA! Buy into yourself that you can and will breakthrough yourself so that your unique purpose will be discovered and brought forth for the betterment of the world.
What if I told you, that if you put the same energy and focus into your purpose as you do your desires, you would come closer to having it all than you ever could doing things the way you have heretofore? What if the answer to unlocking all your desires centered upon you unlocking the biggest mystery of them all–YOU!
Your purpose is the product of your most infinitely mysterious and powerful resource that you have direct access to–your MIND.
I want you to find out something about yourself far and above more desirable to you than anything you can buy or access that is outside of yourself. This is your purpose. In other words, I am asking you to be self-centered to an extent in that this exercise is meant for you to dig beneath your surface and see what you come up with.
For the majority of my life, I could tell you exactly what wanted. But if you asked me who I was, I could not string together any more than a few rambling words as fragmented as broken pavement in a poorer part of town. I had to learn to ask myself what I needed to do, so that I could be the captain of my own ship because this is what we are. This is our life!
Our souls are akin to ships in a harbor. What are you going to do? What will you decide? Are you going to stay anchored in the harbor going nowhere or are you going to travel and explore and expand? “Put more air in your bubble!” as the great Steve Harvey has said. As I say, put more air under the wings of your soul, so that you are able to soar under the power of your God given gifts. You must prioritize taking lead of yourself in your journey instead of looking to others, because if you give up control of yourself, you cease being able to live your best life on your terms.
You have to lead yourself before you can lead others.
I have found, that until you do this, you will cease to live your best life.
Who can you serve? How many needs can you meet? What, and how many, problems can you solve for people? What is something that you enjoy doing so much, that you would be willing to do it for free?
Questions such as those above were, and still are, in constant circulation inside the vessel of my thoughts. I knew that the moment I could answer these questions, my life would change in an instant, because my purpose would be found in the answers.
What works for me is always writing down my problems and then thinking of a solution. Now here’s the important part: When I come up with a solution that I agree with, I write it down. Your answer–you want it to become flesh. You give life to it when you write it down. That is why it is so important and I will continue to elaborate on this unique power in future posts.
Something that has worked for me in my journey to become a leader is serving others. Not much digging is required before realizing why.
You see, when you serve people, you are serving something larger than yourself. Back in my old days of being caught up with pursuing my own desires, I was further than I had ever been from living my best life, because my purpose was nowhere to be seen.
So what do we have here? If being a leader is key to living your best life, one of the foundational keys to leading yourself before you can lead others, is to find a way whereby you can serve others. I look at it as carrying the crown of the people. You must first carry the crown of the people before you can wear your own.
There is no greater service you can render than to help someone in need. I can also tell you that the Universe, in all its mysterious dealings works at a frequency higher than we will ever fully understand. What I am getting at here is the answer to this riddle. You want to know your purpose in life? You want to know what it is you are meant to do so that you can live your best life? I dare you to…
Start Helping Others!
When helping others infuses you with more excitement than the fulfillment of your desires, I assure you, you are on your way to finding your purpose. Your treasure hunt in that regard is almost through, but that’s not the best part. The best part is you will be prepared by whatever you find in your chest and ready to place yourself in a position where you can affect all the meaningful changes you see fit.
There is a set of laws that stretch out and surround our presence like an aura. Think of them as you would the warm embrace of your favorite fragrance. These laws–they are always there, and unlike a fragrance they do not fade away. They linger. Before I get too ahead of myself I will sum up this brief lesson by saying that one of the most significant of all the laws is the importance of the service you render for others in your lifetime.
There may not be a single course of action you can take that will calibrate you and prepare you for your purpose better than that.
–Daniel Cousin
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