What is your purpose in business and life?

2 replies
Five years ago, I started getting really interested in personal development. I knew I wanted to build businesses and I knew that I wanted to make money and be successful, but I didn't quite know why.

I think that on some level, my deepest desire was just to prove to the people in my life that I was capable of succeeding. My parents sent me to aptitude tests when I was a child which determined that I was intelligent, and I was always made to believe that this would make my life a huge success. They believed this too, so when I rebelled as a teenager, they stopped paying attention to me as much and figured I would sort it out on my own. My sister was struggling in school at the time, so the squeaky wheel got the grease and I felt very dejected by this.

This purpose has a lot of negativity surrounding it, which isn't really a good thing in my view. You can't go into everyday solely with the intention of proving others wrong, because every failure is going to cripple your ego. Every time you fail or something doesn't go well, you're going to question your own worth and value. Because you've created an adversarial relationship between yourself and the people who care about you (either they're right about you, or you are), you're alienating yourself and putting a divide between those folks and yourself.

I went looking for my purpose elsewhere and I found a great article about how to define your life goal. Some of you may have read it before but the main advice was "start writing down possible reasons for achieving what you want in life and don't stop until something makes you cry". I tried this for hours and nothing worked for me, I literally had no compelling reason to want the things I wanted other than to "stick it to the man" and show the people around me that my intelligence and shitty work ethic could still get me results in life.

I had this mentality for a long time, years even, but something strange happened to me in the last several months. I had quit my job and moved to a new city for a business opportunity with some new friends. We were excited and ambitious and I felt constantly engaged by the work I was doing. I still do feel that way. If you had asked me my purpose in my work at that time, it would have been "Be happy and don't suck". This mantra got me through a lot of days at my old job.

I found out recently that I had a great uncle in my family who died unexpectedly, and whose businesses were worth a small fortune. This story really affected me because he was the kind of patriarch that held a family together in a very positive way, supporting and helping those around him and using his success to facilitate his own generosity and kindness. I cried when I learned about him, and now I know that my purpose is to restore his legacy. Everyday when I wake up, I think about how proud my family will be, and I know that when I fail, the people who love me are actually supporting my success and we're all on the same team.

Try the same activity above or simply share, what is your purpose in life? What gets you out of bed in the morning?
#business #life #purpose
  • Profile picture of the author johnbase
    Thanks for sharing Will, we're in the same boat. Most people around me (family) don't share my mentality and sense of purpose. I often enjoy feelings strong emotions about how I want to share myself with the world. My purpose in business and in life is to get people deeply connected to their authentic identity and in doing so allow themselves to be guided by their wisdom.

    To answer your second question, what gets me out of bed in the morning is the opportunity I have with my skills to reach, connect with, inspire and incite others to transform their lives.

    I see it as my responsibility influencing this world for the better and as a result enjoying a fantastic lifestyle.

    That's me in a nutshell...

    What do you do online Will?

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author Will Iam
    Thanks for your thoughtful reply John, the answer is that I do a lot of things. I do Freelance writing, I've dabbled in SEO, marketing, website design. I do marketing for my offline businesses which are in the technology field (we market webapps) but kind of in the online niche as well.

    It's great to have a vision that isn't necessarily focused on what you want for yourself but also how you want your work and your actions to impact others, that's a really admirable thing. What do you do online?
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