Focus your mind to filter your options
I’ve always found my penultimate year of each decade challenging especially as we come to the end of the year. This year probably more so than others. Being born in 1970 means the penultimate year of each decade is also my last year in a certain age bracket and unlike most people I always find that year rather than the year I move into the next one harder. Maybe it’s because it causes me to spend some time reflecting on what I have achieved in the past 9 years and if I’m happy and satisfied with those achievements.
The last 9 years have been really challenging, exciting and turbulent for me. I moved to Malaysia had a fantastic role as a regional director, achieving some amazing culture change projects which had direct positive effects on individuals and the business performance. Met lots of new people, discovered new places and cultures found life long friends.
I also experienced burnout, depression after my father died and isolation when I moved countries, it took me a long time to recover and in that time although I gained qualifications as an interior designer, started a business and built a property portfolio I realised that I wasn’t fulfilled and so closed my design business and decided to start up as a consultant to help individuals and companies to build better places to work.
That was harder than I thought, as unlike selling a product as I did in interior design I felt like I was selling me, something I’m not comfortable with. Also I wasn’t at all focused and struggled to explain what I could do, as I had always been a HR Leader and able to solve lots of problems through my creative thinking. But how do you package and sell that to a business who has limited budget and lots of choice? I realised I needed to find some focus and purpose to what I was doing so that each action I took built on the last and I could be motivated even through the rejections.
So I started where I often do and that is with reading books, articles and searching the internet with a particular focus on neuroscience, as you can imagine it didn’t take long before I happened upon Simon Sinek’s ‘Find your why’ on Ted Talks (https://www.ted.com/speakers/simon_sinek). I bought into his vision:
‘imagine a world in which the vast majority of us wake up inspired, feel safe at work and return home fulfilled at the end of the day’
I bought his book and with the help of a friend went through the exercise on how to find your Why which was incredibly emotional and difficult, it may have been good therapy to share a lot of the stuff that had happened to me it didn’t really give me that clarity of purpose I hoped for, maybe I did it wrong!
I wanted to have the clarity that other people had, I knew from my research that people who understand their impact work 57% harder and are 87% less likely to quit, I knew I needed this to keep going through the tough times. I also wanted optimism about the future success of my business and my ability to ‘stay ahead of industry disruption’ which 87% of people who felt the strongest sense of purpose in a recent Deloitte study reported. How do I get me some of that!
I continued to research and didn’t find one single solution however by combining a number of them I was able to find my purpose. To help people find their 3rd Wind so that, they too can thrive not just survive.
I found that we need to understand:
Our Impact - Why we do what we do and the impact that we want to have on people or our environment.
Our Values - How we go about achieving our impact so that we keep within our beliefs and moral code.
Our Drive - Where are we on our journey through life and what drives us as this moment in time.
The story of TOMS shoes shows that you can have clarity on your Impact and Values but as you progress through your journey you can start to lose your focus and this effects your sense of fulfilment. So the founder of TOMS Blake Mycoskie revisited his purpose and found the Why of TOMS (https://hbr.org/2016/01/the-founder-of-toms-on-reimagining-the-companys-mission)
“using business to improve lives”
It’s like an Eye Test for your purpose by focusing your mind to filter your intentions. This will enable you to have the sense of achievement and fulfilment through designed action.
If you’d like the free worksheet to do this exercise yourself and join me on my journey into 2020 that will give me focus for my mind so I can filter my intentions and when I reach my 50th Birthday I will look back on my 49th Year will a sense of achievement and fulfilment due to taking designed action, then join my Face Book Group.
