Saturday, July 25, 2009

Purpose

While struggling with some feelings of loneliness I decided to utilize my spare time productively by listening to the next tape in Bob Proctor's Freedom Series - which is part of the free bonus material you receive when you sign up for the Six Minutes to Success program.

The message was very profound for me today. Very profound. In a nutshell, one of the core distinctions between successful people and everyone else, is that people who have achieved outstanding results have all habituated the act of doing those things which they don't want to do but moves them towards their goals.

Most people are not so much driven by their goals as they are by the ease and comfort of their methods used. People tend to accept the easiest path that leads to sufficient results. They would rather accept a lower standard of living than consistently do those things with which they are uncomfortable.

So how do successful people become comfortable with doing those same things? They don't. But they are driven more by end results because they have associated a powerful driving purpose with those results. So they do those things they don't like anyway and they do it as part of their regular routine.

Now, I'm not speaking of anything illegal or unethical here just simple daily things like trying to convince people, who do not want to be convinced, that they would be better off with what you're offering. Or obligating yourself to produce results that you haven't previously achieved.

Now the driving purpose needs to be practical and not visionary.

And that is the statement that gave me great pause. It seemed to run contrary to everything else I had learned as far as creating a compelling future goes. However, it immediate sense.

I had always defined my purpose as:

To be a world famous author who's work touch the lives of millions of people from all over the world, spreading the seeds of profound truth and hope while entertaining people through a variety of mediums including books, movies, tvs, video games, plays, cartoons, MMORPGs, etc. Some of my works will be past down generations, touching billions of people and being immortalized like the works of Shakespeare, Shaw, Dickens and Twain.

Which is all well and good but hasn't been driving me still and that's probably because it's too visionary and not practical enough. Not immediate or real enough.

While practical, purpose doesn't need to be logical. It should be based on wants and desires that have emotional pull for you. If based solely on need that will drive you for a while, but only until your needs are met. Whereas a purpose based on wants and desires will keep on pulling you along even if there's no logical reason for wanting that as long as there's emotional desire for it.

So my new purpose looks more like this:

I want to easily earn enough that my wife never needs to work and can merrily spend on whatever suits her without ever considering costs. I want to be able to put my children through university and help set them up in life. I want to earn all that money by writing inspirational stories for children that meets them where they are at, provides a great distraction from the real world while providing profound knowledge to help them improve their lives and using stories with compelling, morally upstanding characters.