Living the Significant Life (6 page)

Authors: Peter L. Hirsch,Robert Shemin

BOOK: Living the Significant Life

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Your life purpose could be further described as the following:

The cornerstone of your motivation
The keystone of your work ethic
Whatever calls forth your passion
The standard by which you judge your progress and whether or not you’re on or off track
The big dream in which all your other goals and aspirations play supporting parts
The reason for your success
Whatever gets you out of bed in the morning

Like a book, a life purpose may not accurately be judged by its “cover.” A person’s life purpose may be disarmingly simple. In fact, the most powerful ones usually are.

Peter once had the good fortune to speak with a man who had spent his life working closely with Mother Teresa in her clinic in Calcutta. He was curious about what life purpose lay behind this amazing woman, whose life and work had inspired so many people around the world. So he asked his new friend, and here’s what he said: “Mother’s purpose is to have people die with smiles on their faces.”

“That’s it?” Peter thought. Here was one of the most awe-inspiring people in the world, a woman devoted to serving humanity, who gave up everything to work with the lowest outcasts and rejected poor of India, and all her purpose amounted to was having people
die smiling
? It didn’t seem right.

So Peter pressed for more details, and the man elaborated. He said that in the poverty-stricken streets where Mother Teresa worked her mission, most people died suffering, in agony, abandoned, and alone. That they should die with smiles on their faces, he said, was the fulfillment of Mother Teresa’s work. That’s how she knew that through faith and love, she had eased their pain and comforted their lives. Such a simple expression for such a powerful and meaningful purpose.

Service to others is the key to a powerful life purpose. Remember that service brings out the best in all of us. When we are serving others, we really shine.

Think about what your heart is telling you and take a crack at expanding the list you made before. Now write a rough draft of your life purpose on a separate sheet of paper.

Once you’ve established your purpose, all the other success and happiness principles we’re going to explore in this book become easy.

Brad Nelson knew from an early age that he wanted to be a doctor. He grew up watching medical dramas on television, treating his younger brother’s cuts and scrapes, and dreaming of the day he’d put on his white lab coat for the first time.

By the time he reached college, Brad’s thoughts had taken a different direction. Too often, he skipped his chemistry study group to play touch football with his buddies, and Saturday night keggers were more tempting than studying biology. His medical school applications were rejected with stunning swiftness.

Although becoming a doctor was no longer on the agenda, Brad was still interested in the medical field. After graduation, he took an entry-level job with Middle West Health Partners, a large nonprofit organization that owned several hospitals, urgent-care centers, physician practices, and other health care facilities. It seemed like a good use of his education, and since the company had so many branches, he thought there would be plenty of room for advancement.

He did advance, to some extent, but as the years passed, Brad became increasingly disenchanted with his life at Middle West. As in most organizations of its size, there was a complicated bureaucracy that he found frustrating. It seemed to take forever to get the simplest things approved, and many projects were inexplicably canceled after months of work had already been completed. From time to time, Brad thought about looking for another job, but he made a good salary and the benefits were fine, and now he had a wife and kids to think about. He settled into a middle management position in which five people reported to him and he reported to a whole lot more. It wasn’t great, but whose job was, really?

Returning to his college for his twenty-fifth class reunion, Brad caught up with a fraternity brother he’d lost touch with about ten years earlier and was surprised to learn that he’d made a career change. At age forty, Bill had left his job on Wall Street and started a very successful financial planning firm. “It’s something I always wanted to do, and I finally decided to take the plunge,” Bill said. “It was a little daunting at first, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never been happier.”

Driving home from the reunion, Brad thought about how energized Bill had become when he talked about his work. Clearly he had found what he was meant to do, and Brad felt a bit envious.

In the weeks after his conversation with Bill, Brad’s complacency about his job turned into an unsettling restlessness. For the first time, he allowed himself to really think about what he did all day, and it depressed him. Since he had joined Middle West, the company had grown considerably, but somehow his opportunities for advancement and real job satisfaction seemed to have decreased. Brad realized that he spent more time justifying his department’s expenditures than doing long-range planning, and he spent entirely too many hours sitting through meetings that neither involved nor interested him. Even though he had a job in health care, it was far from the career he’d envisioned. It had become little more than a paycheck.

But that paycheck was necessary to support his family of five, so Brad continued plodding through his workdays until a weeklong mission to Haiti brought a welcome relief from his routine. Members of his church had been traveling to the same village for several years, but this was the first time Brad had been able to join them. The experience was eye-opening, to say the least. The poverty was overwhelming, and the people in the village tugged at his heart. Their lives were simple and difficult, but they didn’t seem all that unhappy. He guessed it was because this was the only life they’d ever known. Brad eagerly threw himself into helping to add a room onto the tiny medical clinic his fellow parishioners had built on a previous trip. He felt truly useful for the first time in years.

As he put up walls and nailed down floorboards, Brad watched four of his friends go about their work in the next room. A doctor, two nurses, and a dentist, all veterans of these trips, spent long hours tending to patients of all ages, many of whom were brought from neighboring villages by other missionaries. Conditions were diagnosed and treated, children were vaccinated, and mothers were taught how to better meet their families’ nutritional needs with what little they had. Lying on his cot each night, Brad marveled at the difference those medical professionals were making in the villagers’ health and quality of life. He was glad he could make a small contribution by helping to enlarge the clinic, but it didn’t seem like much compared to what the others were doing.

Back at home, Brad couldn’t get the trip out of his mind. He talked about it for hours to his wife, Kathy, his children, his parents, his co-workers, and anyone else who would listen. He wanted to go back. He wanted to quit his soul-crushing job, pack up his family, and move to Haiti. He knew it wasn’t a practical idea, given the age of his younger children, but he thought about it anyway. At the very least, he wished that he’d studied harder and gone to medical school. He could certainly do more to help people if he were a doctor.

Late one night, after he had spent nearly an hour lamenting aloud, Kathy said, “You know, Brad, you don’t have to go all the way to Haiti to find people who need help. You don’t even have to leave town, and you certainly don’t have to be a doctor. There are plenty of people right here who aren’t getting adequate medical care, and sometimes it’s just because they fall through the cracks. They’re not part of the system, so they become invisible, and they don’t know how to change that. If you start looking, I’m sure you could find something satisfying to do a little closer to home.”

During the next few days, Brad continued to replay Kathy’s comments in his mind, and slowly he began to feel a shift in his thought patterns. Maybe she was right. Why had he wanted to become a doctor in the first place? Thinking back, he realized it hadn’t been about the money or the prestige. He’d genuinely wanted to help people who were sick. He’d wanted to relieve suffering, and—who knows?—maybe even save a few lives. Now, even though he technically worked in the health care industry, he wasn’t really helping anyone.

He knew that his company’s hospitals provided a certain amount of charity care, but it would never be enough, and the people in charge didn’t seem anxious to increase their efforts in that area. Their priorities leaned more toward buying a multimillion-dollar robotics system for the surgeons and other expensive, high-tech equipment. Brad knew those kinds of investments were important, but he also knew they formed the basis of enticing marketing campaigns designed to attract more patients—patients whose care was covered by insurance. What about the increasing number of people without insurance? What about the ones who didn’t realize charity care was available, or those who were too embarrassed to ask for it, or those who simply gave up after sitting for three hours in an emergency waiting room?

There really were people in his own community who needed help. As he thought about them—who they were, where they lived, what their lives must be like—Brad began to feel something he’d never fully experienced before—a sense of purpose. Perhaps he’d had it back in high school, but it had slipped away in college, allowing him to choose fun over work until all those medical schools had told him he’d thrown away his chances of becoming a doctor. Even on his best days at Middle West, he had never felt a sense of purpose—not like the one that was taking root inside him now.

Maybe his mind-numbing job wasn’t a waste after all. It had taught him about the structure of health care in his community. He knew about the services that were available and those that were lacking. He’d learned how the business side of health care worked. And he’d gotten to know people who knew the things he didn’t.

Brad didn’t know exactly what his future held, but he was beginning to sense that his life was finally taking direction. For now, that was enough. With a little time, he’d figure out the rest.

For more than twenty years, Brad hadn’t given much thought to his life’s purpose. If someone had asked, he probably would have mentioned being a good husband and father, living his Christian values, maybe something about contributing to the success of the company that issued his paycheck. It wasn’t until he began to dig deeper—to peel away the layers of the onion—that he began to get a handle on the real purpose that would drive the rest of his life. When he is finally able to get more specific and start living his purpose, it won’t detract from being a good family man, a good Christian, and a good employee. It will enhance those aspects of his life and help him become better at all of them.

We’ll catch up with Brad a little later, but first let’s talk about a key ingredient he’ll need (and so will you) to build a life of significance: imagination.

PRINCIPLE #3

Fire Up Your Imagination

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

—Albert Einstein

If one of the foremost thinkers in history was a proponent of using your imagination, who are we to argue?

We’ll even take Einstein’s statement a step further. Without imagination, it’s hard to get anywhere. Imagination is one of the key ingredients for figuring out where you want to go
and
how to get there.

You might not readily associate the word
imagination
with Einstein, but it’s surely hard not to associate it with Walt Disney, who had one of the greatest imaginations of our time. As early as the 1940s, as he watched his daughters play on the local merry-go-round, Disney began to dream about a spotlessly clean, well-designed amusement park where both children and their parents could enjoy themselves at the same time. After letting the idea percolate for a few years, he got to work, and by July 1955, Disney had turned 160 acres of Southern California orange groves into Disneyland.

It wasn’t easy. When he had trouble finding financing, Disney emptied his savings account, sold his vacation home, and borrowed against his life insurance to keep his dream alive. But his vision for his park was so strong and so powerful that he was willing to risk everything he’d built to turn it into a reality. Before any of the now familiar attractions—Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland—were constructed or even committed to an artist’s sketch pad, they existed in minute detail in Disney’s imagination. And when he launched Walt Disney, Inc., the firm that would eventually design and build Disneyland, he called his employees “imagineers,” because that was the quality he valued most: imagination.

Walt didn’t retire his imagination once Disneyland was completed. When he developed his first television series in 1954, at a time when that medium was still in its infancy, he shot the show in color even though all TV programs were broadcast in black-and-white. Disney had the imagination to envision that someday television would be in color just as films already were, and he’d be ready for it. A short time later, he aired an episode called “Man in Space,” using information supplied by a group of scientists, to provide his viewers with a glimpse into the possibilities of space flight. The program even included the concept of landing a man on the moon. That was in 1955. It would be another five years before the U.S. government even began a space program. That’s imagination.

By the mid-1960s, Disney was quietly buying up hundreds of acres of cypress-covered swampland in central Florida, because his imagination had conceived an even larger, grander theme park that would include hotels, golf courses, an elaborate transportation system, and much more. In the days before his death in 1966, he lay in his hospital bed, using the tiles on the ceiling as a grid to plan what would become the Epcot theme park at Disney World.

Five years later, at the grand opening of the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, a reporter was talking with Ron Miller, Disney’s son-in-law, and remarked that it was too bad Walt didn’t live to see this.

“He did,” Miller replied. “That’s why you’re looking at it now.”

Imagination is a critical faculty—one of the mental exercises that keeps the minds of truly successful, happy people young and fresh. Imagination is one of our greatest and, sad to say, least used resources. For some reason, people assume that imagination is the sole province of artists, children, and crazy people. In
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
William Shakespeare put these words into the mouth of the duke Theseus:

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

But the duke had it wrong. We all have the gift of the poet, rich in the possibilities of boundless imagination—the ability to give shapes and names to things unknown, to dream. We just forget.

Just as intuition is not only for women, imagination is not only for artists; it’s for all of us. For most people, though, imagination is a muscle that’s not used enough to be flexible and strong. So take it to the gym and give it a good workout a couple of times a week, and pretty soon your imagination will have biceps like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

You might think that you have little or no imagination, but that’s not the case. The truth is that you use your imagination all the time, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. When you decided to paint your living room hunter green rather than the beige color you’d had for a decade, your imagination enabled you to envision a different look for your home. When you threw some tarragon into your favorite chicken recipe, or mixed and matched a couple of chili recipes you found online to get the exact ingredients you wanted, your imagination told you what flavor combinations would appeal to you and your family. Each time you shop for Christmas or birthday gifts, you use your imagination to determine which items would make the recipient’s eyes light up.

How do you kick your imagination into high gear so it can begin to open doors for you? Here are a few tips:

Be curious.
When you hear or read a word that’s unfamiliar to you, look up the meaning. When a news broadcast features a story on a country you’re unfamiliar with, head to your computer to learn where it is and a little bit about it. When you’re talking with friends or family members, ask questions, especially “Why?” Curiosity is the first cousin of imagination.
Associate with creative people who stimulate your mind.
This doesn’t require living in SoHo and hobnobbing with sculptors. There are creative people in all walks of life. They’re simply people who are interested in the world, who are curious, and who enjoy talking about more than who won last night’s game.
Hang out with children.
They have the biggest, liveliest imaginations you’ll find anywhere. A young child will imagine that dolls can talk, that a lump of clay is really a dog, and that a backyard game of baseball is really the World Series. Ask children questions and let their imaginations fuel your own.
Look at everyday objects and think about how they could be improved.
Nothing is perfect; everything evolves. How would you build a better iPad, microwave oven, or belt buckle?
Try a creative pursuit like writing a short story, painting, or making pottery.
You don’t have to be great or even good. You don’t even have to show anyone your work. You’re just stretching the muscles of your imagination.
Play games like charades and Pictionary.
They stimulate your own imagination while exposing you to the creativity of others.

Should You Be a Daydream Believer?

One way in which you’re probably already using your imagination is by daydreaming. Don’t be embarrassed; we all do it. When we’re driving on a long stretch of highway, clocking off miles on the treadmill, or falling asleep at night, we all engage in a little daydreaming. Although too much daydreaming is clearly counterproductive, a moderate amount can foster creativity and help you focus in on the things that will enable you to build a significant life.

Start paying more attention to your daydreams by taking this short quiz.

In your most recent or most common daydream, what are you doing?