Living Your Life On Purpose

Find your internal purpose doesn’t just help you navigate life and your decisions, but also helps make you more productive and successful.

Today’s post is by David Nielson, author of The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success. This is an archived post, originally published in 2019. We’re bringing it back to spotlight a topic worth revisiting.

“Purpose at Work” is the title of a 2016 Global Report by LinkedIn Business* about the role of purpose in the workplace. It asks the question: “Are your employees and co-workers set up to achieve their highest potential? Are you?” The report further found that companies are seeing that purpose-oriented employees are more productive and successful.

Purpose is an internal foundational element to define your own success. It defines your reason for existence, why you are here, and how you can contribute to an outcome that will provide you with what you need, and want, from life.  It is the idea that you know your destination and how you will get there. To experience your definition of success, your purpose must align with the mission and values of the organization for which you are working. When you find an organizational culture and environment and people who align with your purpose, your relationships with yourself and others will thrive. You will be more motivated, productive, successful, and happier in life.

Just “doing” without any direction does not lead you to your purpose or successful outcomes. Think of Lewis Carrol’s story Alice in Wonderland and his famous quote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” It may be okay to ‘coddiwomple’ occasionally when exploring, experimenting, or on an adventure, but it is not a good long-term practice to accomplish a defined successful goal in a timely manner.

There are two ways people think about life and their place in it. Some feel that they are tossed about as victims of fate and they are not in control. They succumb to external forces and make little effort to change their situation. The second group believes in self-determination. They believe they can create and control their reality. Even if they don’t have actual control of everything in their lives, the perception that they have some control is what counts. This group has an internal locus of control, and they take actions to achieve higher accomplishments and job satisfaction.

An internal locus of control motivates you to overcome negative external forces by believing you have the ability to make behavioral and physical changes to achieve your defined outcome or purpose. Psychology Today defines it as “an individual’s belief system regarding the causes of his or her experiences and the factors to which that person attributes success or failure.”

Being clear on your purpose has huge benefits. Once you have a clear purpose you can:

Set annual and long-range goals to achieve your purpose.

Consider your ongoing development, training, and educational needs.

Make decisions, take actions, and practice behaviors that are consistent with your purpose.

In other words, you can take control of your experiences and not allow external forces to control how you are able to respond to situations. This will require an ongoing daily effort to be conscious, consistent, and responsive to what happens next.

You must remember that your purpose and success is for you, alone, to determine. Do not allow other people or social pressures to define this for you. Trying to please others or be who you are not will lead to a life of disingenuous relationships and unhappiness. You may find some success, but at a cost to your overall wellbeing.

So, if you are not satisfied with your current station in life or your career, create a Personal Purpose Statement and align yourself with the people, community, career, and organizations that will provide the resources you need to meet your success destination. Discover and use your internal locus of control to calculate and plan your reactions and responses to situations.

Having a Purpose Statement gives you better self-awareness, confidence, satisfaction, and determination to reach your destination in life with a sense of dignity and self-respect along the way. And if you find a need to coddiwomple, don’t let it detour you for too long.

David E. Nielson is founder and CEO of DNAWorldwide, LLC, and author of The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success: It’s All About YOU (CLICK HERE to get your copy)! He has over 30 years of experience consulting, training, and coaching C-suite executives in large corporations on the topic of change management and leadership.

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