What is your purpose? What are your values?
I took the VortexDNA survey very early on in my interaction with the company. Here is what it told me: my circumstances were not in alignment with who I am.
I’ve always felt quite strongly about values, but I had never articulated them for myself. “I don’t know what they are, but I’ll know if something goes against them,” was my thinking.
That’s true, of course: that I’ll know if something goes against them. It’s true for everyone. My friend Karen calls it a ‘values grate’, when your stomach sort of twists and your spidey-sense perks up and something just doesn’t feel right.
The problem is that, if you don’t articulate them and you only go by your spidey-sense, you have no advance filter. You can’t say, “Don’t bother to send me your resume if you’re a volleyball player because volleyball players go against my values.” (I’ll use a sports metaphor here because I’m not trying to suggest what is or isn’t a ‘right’ value to have. We can have that discussion another day 
) You have to investigate each and every option to know what is and isn’t okay for you.
Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you check into everything, you’re bound to have some pretty interesting experiences along the way. You can stumble across opportunities that you never would have considered otherwise.
The thing is, you can also have some interesting experiences if you have your purpose and values clarified. Some would suggest that the quality of the experiences you can have when you are staying true to your values exceeds anything you can imagine.
When you’re acting in line with your values, you increase your efficiency. Instead of spending days interviewing volleyball players, you advertise immediately for the bocce ball player, hire her, and get to work. Because you share your bocce values, you can get up to speed faster, make better team decisions, and create a mutual vision.
You can also feel when you’re really aligned, can’t you? You kind of accelerate and everything seems effortless. You don’t constantly wonder, “What the heck was I thinking?” or “How did my life end up like this?” Your actions make sense.
And this isn’t just airy-fairy stuff either. Living consistently with your values has proven to be the difference between an ordinary life and a legendary life, from obvious icons like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr to visionary organizations like GE and IBM.
Thanks to having this topic at the forefront of my consciousness since I became involved with VortexDNA, I’ve managed to articulate my own purpose in life. Here it is for all the world to see:
My purpose is to be an uplifting presence.
What does that mean? It means that when I talk to people, I want them to walk away smiling. When I work in a team, I want the team to feel more energized for my presence. When I am long gone, if anyone remembers me, I want them to feel they were better for knowing me.
I haven’t articulated a list of values yet, but I’ll get there. For now, I invite you to share your own purpose with me. If you already have your values defined, all the better.
Let’s help each other live legendary lives.
June 29th, 2007 at 3:45 am
I wrote a Life Mission Statement as part of a Stephen Covey self-development class, but it’s kind of personal to publish for the world to see. The jist of it is similar to your purpose in life. Mine is a little more generic. My goal is to make the world a better place for people as well as the planet and other living things, and to do so for today as well as for the future.
Atul
http://www.thingsivenoticed.com
June 29th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Atul,
Thanks so much for writing in.
It is so interesting that you say it’s personal to publish for all the world to see. I felt that way too about mine, and I wonder why that is? Here we are, expressing our highest vision for ourselves… why is it more embarrassing to share that than to share the mundane reality of what we do for a living or what movies we like to watch?
In my case, I suspect that I feel a little nervous about being exposed for a fraud. “What do you mean, your mission is to be an uplifting presence? You just rolled your eyes at that waiter!” …or whatever other non-enlightened behavior I may have engaged in, and believe me there’s plenty.
The thing is, as nervous as it makes me to put my mission out in public (and, to give you an idea, I told a grand total of two people before I threw caution to the winds and put it up on the vast Internet), there’s a huge part of me that recognizes how important it is to say it aloud—it causes you to commit to it, to feel it, to believe it.
It’s almost like not telling people about my personal mission in life gave me an out in case I didn’t live up to it. But saying it gives me permission to live up to it.
Are you glad you put yours up as a comment?
All the best,
Kaila
July 1st, 2007 at 5:06 am
I\’m not completely sure why I don\’t want to show my Life Mission Statement to the world. One theory is that it\’s somewhat corny/sappy. Another is that somebody might disagree with one of my missions and think less of me. The one you mention makes sense and I guess if I publicized it, I would have to live up to all the missions as opposed to just trying to live up to some of them. But then maybe publicly proclaiming them will make me more likely to completely commit to them. Isn\’t that what they are for anyway?
I\’m glad I put up what I did because it is general and non-controversial. Maybe I\’ll email my real mission statement by request to anybody that asks.
Do you have more specific missions within your broader mission?
Atul
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 am
Atul,
All of your reasons have merit. By nature, Life Mission Statements, particularly genuine ones, are bound to be a bit corny. I suppose some people have physically-oriented missions, like climbing the highest mountain on each continent or something, but for the most part when we talk about our deepest driving purpose for existence, it’s going to sound… like we’re trying to be the Dalai Lama or something. Most of us don’t really live up to Dalai Lama standards on a day-to-day basis, so we end up feeling pretentious about laying claim to such lofty ideals. All of this is true for me, I’d be happy to hear if you feel the same way or if you’ve got another experience.
Do I have more specific missions within my broader mission? Absolutely. I don’t have a fixed, finite list, but here’s one thing that I think will help me live up to that mission:
Listening more. Longfellow said, “If we knew the secret history of our enemies, we would find sorrow and suffering enough to dispel all hostility.” I have a tendency to get impatient with people, and yet I find Longfellow’s statement to be so true—if I take time to listen.
I was honored to have more than one person tell me I live up to my mission, but my reality is probably the same as most: sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I roll my eyes at my mother, I get snappy with my colleagues, and I snicker behind the backs of waitstaff that deliver poor customer service. I suppose articulating a core purpose help remind me of what my ideal behavior looks like so I can be more aware when I’m not living up to it.