Living the Significant Life (5 page)

A psychologist once did a research project that required him to fly from New York to Los Angeles. His task was to sit next to another passenger and engage that person in six hours of conversation, never once making a declarative statement about himself. He was only to ask the other person questions.

When the plane landed, the psychologist had a team of his people there in the airport, ready to interview his fellow passenger. What they found was that the man with whom the psychologist had just spent the entire coast-to-coast trip had only two things to say: (1) “That man? The one sitting next to me? Yes—he is the most interesting person I’ve ever met!” and (2) “His name? Gosh—now that you mention it, I didn’t get the fellow’s name!”

Ask and you shall receive—all you ever wanted and more. And one of the things you will receive is the key to success in working with other people. Ask them questions that reveal their values—then listen. People love to talk about interesting things, and for most of us, the most interesting thing in the world is
ourselves.

One more thing about values: they change. Just because you’ve written a list of your top five values today doesn’t mean that new ones won’t emerge or that the old ones won’t be replaced someday—any day.

If there is one law of life we’ve learned, it’s the fact that everything changes. Your beliefs, your values, and even your purpose, which we’ll talk about next, are ever-changing. That’s one way you can tell whether you are learning and growing. If you find yourself doing the same-old, same-old for a long time, look out! Change is the nature of things in our universe. Everything around us is changing—and you and I must change, too.

Now let’s talk about your life purpose.

Life Purpose

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who are purposeful and people who seem rather purposeless. The difference is that one is living his or her life purpose and the other is not. This is one of those pass-fail, black-and-white matters: either you have a purpose that gets you out of bed in the morning or you don’t.

“A man without a purpose,” wrote nineteenth-century Scottish writer and historian Thomas Carlyle, “is like a ship without a rudder.”

Purpose is not something to be completed or finished, like a goal. You achieve your life purpose by living your life in accordance with the values your purpose experiences and expresses. Purpose is your vision. Purpose calls forth your passion.

Look at people with purpose: Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Golda Meir, Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Edison, Michael Jordan, Henry Ford, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Mother Teresa, Babe Ruth—the list is endless. These heroes and heroines are from every possible walk of life. They are people with purpose.

We recognize public people of purpose easily, from the arts and sciences, sports, business, politics and government, entertainment, education, and more. But you don’t have to be a famous person to live your life in a heroic way. All that’s required is having a goal that’s bigger than you are. In fact, that’s the one key thing about purpose: it’s always about making a contribution to others.

Look at the list of people above. All of those men and women have inspired countless others. No matter how egocentric or self-absorbed they may have seemed at any given points in their lives—and it is true that a big sense of self seems to go hand in hand with a big dream—they’ve all made a difference to people, lots and lots of people. They’ve had a vision, a goal, and a purpose that was bigger than they were at the time—much bigger. That’s the key.

We’ve all heard stories of people whose vision and purpose drove them on to break through seemingly impossible limitations. Purpose is the driving force in all accomplishments of greatness. But such great achievements are not reserved for public figures who make it into history books or onto
Access Hollywood.
In fact, there are many more ordinary people living extraordinary lives than we will ever know about.

One thing all of these wonderful people have in common is a clear, powerful life purpose. All they have needed is a stage or a playing field to give them the opportunity to live their lives as the high achievers their purpose inspires them to be.

None of these people were born with this purpose already in their minds. You can certainly wait around, being open to the possibilities, and someday your life purpose will probably occur to you. However, if you’re excited and you know the awesome power of having a life purpose that brings forth your values and that enables you to experience the rich rewards life has to offer, you might want to take your imaginative birthright and develop a powerful, passionate purpose right now.

How do you do that? You do it the same way you develop beliefs that support you.
You make it up.

Write down your list of values again, followed by a sentence or two that includes a life purpose that would allow you to experience and express each value to the fullest. Remember that the key is to contribute to others. Be very clear: if your purpose does not include making a big difference in other people’s lives, it’s off the mark. Remember, too, that the purpose you’re going to write down isn’t cast in anything unchangeable. In fact, do it in pencil so you can make all the changes you want, whenever you want.