Since my inventure in Tanzania in 2009, which was a walking safari adventure across the Serengeti combined with an inner journey of discovery, I have paid increasing attention to living purposefully. You may have read the story of my purpose discovery process in our book, Midlife New Life: Living Consciously in Midlife and Beyond or in my first book, The Inner Journey to Conscious Leadership. Emerging from my experiences as a hot-air balloon pilot, I described my purpose as “taking people higher in spirit, in business, and in life.” This higher purpose has served me well and I have helped many people discover their own higher purpose as part of my leadership and life transitions coaching practice.
Consciously living life on purpose requires clarity around our purpose or calling, and what brings meaning to our lives. Exploring purposefully is the first chapter in our book, Midlife New Life: Living Consciously in Midlife and Beyond. In this chapter we offer distinctions between the words meaning, purpose, and calling and an exploration of our identity shifts in the second half of life.
Although having one overarching statement may provide greater clarity of purpose, our Big P purpose as Richard Leider describes it, we can have a number of purpose statements, each focusing on a specific aspect of our lives, which can each be our little p purpose. Developing a purpose portfolio can be a valuable discovery exercise to support the process of exploring purposefully, helping us to find meaning and purpose in our lives, and adopting valuable practices for living life more consciously.
As we wrote in the book, “Simply putting our perceived purpose into words is not enough; we also need to align our actions to our purpose. By following our true purpose, we can turn our work life into our life’s work, our vocation into our avocation, what we are paid to do into what we love to do. This can be more fulfilling than simply working for personal recognition or financial gain because it is done to make a difference in the world and for the people we serve. The power of purpose cannot be overstated. Purpose can drive everything we do, if we let it. Purpose can inspire us to leap out of bed every morning to take purpose-driven action.” What will you be exploring purposefully today?
Join coauthors Eileen Caroscio, Sandy Demarest, and Paul Ward in celebrating this first year since publication of Midlife New Life: Living Consciously in Midlife and Beyond.