professional mastery

Born to Be

I am sure each one of us has heard, pondered and spoken about these 2 words, Purpose and Goal, several times. We may have used them separately at times and often interchangeably.

I decided to reflect on both of them and understand what it meant to me.

I have as an individual set many goals, daily goals formed part of my to-do list and lofty goals – like losing weight currently has been part of my aspiration list. Have I achieved these goals? Often yes and often not, when I did I felt good and when I did not, I simply got more determined and reset the goal. When I reset the goal, I put a timeline and key action steps and yet I found the cycle repeat itself. I achieved some, I failed on some, and that’s how my life continued for close to 35 years. Till I was faced with a question,

I faced this question several times, sometimes in a conference or while reading a book or listening to a talk online. I recall when I was faced with this question on the purpose of my life, I decided to entertain it consciously, instead of letting it be the background score to my life.

As I reflected, here is what I discovered. Given that my goal was still at that time to lose weight, I asked myself,

My key insight along the journey of answering this question has been this, 

As a child, I was always asked, “What is your ambition?” When you grow up, who would you like to Be?”

So I grew up, and I had no real clue of what I wanted to do in life. I just drifted through life’ s many transitions, some were a struggle, some were a breeze. I was forced to think about, ‘Where I will be 3 years and 5 years from now, What is your passion? And I would cook up some nice sounding story. I released, this was not my struggle alone and found 95% of my peers in a similar boat. Misery loves company and we drifted together. Hanging out with friends and partying soon paved the way with finding the soul mate and candlelight memories. Time moved on and marriage and babies gave life new meaning, As I grew older and saw near ones die, I wondered again what makes life worthwhile? I buried the question and continued with life. The thing about death is that it is finality and my fear of death is truly what made me question the purpose of life.

I found that I was drifting through life because I was distracted and had no clarity on the direction I wanted life to take. So I began with first eliminating the distractions. As I began eliminating the distractions, I found what it was in life that I truly valued and started living life on the basis of my own values. Up until then I was taking on other people’s values and living other peoples priorities, instead of my own.

As I began to take notice of what was important to me, I began discovering the things that I was good at and the things I enjoyed. Nurturing myself renewed my life. As I discovered myself, my life became worthwhile. My purpose of life is bigger than me, My purpose of life will leave a legacy, My purpose of life, paradoxically, lives and is beyond me. My purpose in life allows me to be the best version of myself. Finding your purpose is definitely that AAHA moment, but let me not fool you into believing that life becomes a bed of roses, once you find your purpose, in fact very often it’s exactly the opposite.

Having a purpose in life has given me the fortitude to deal with whatever life has to offer. Having a purpose in life has given me the clarity to make the right choices, any activity that takes me towards my purpose I engage in, anything that takes me away I dismiss (most of the time) Having a purpose in my life has given me the burst of energy to accomplish my goals, even in times of adversity. When I align my goals to my purpose, life is no longer a struggle, life is truly a blessing.

The purpose of my life is to simplify my own life, by embarking on an inward journey of purification. My life is my message to the world and my profession facilitates guiding people to discover their inner magnificence. This alignment has been both enlightening and exciting.

Have you discovered what you were born to be?