All the principles of being inspired every day are important, but only one is paramount . . . and it’s this one—purpose.
Last week, I introduced my new book: Inspired Every Day: Three Indispensable Ingredients to Connect With Your Passion and the three crucial elements necessary to genuine inspiration:
A purpose to live for,
A problem to tackle, and
A partnership with likeminded people.
Today, we’re talking about purpose and why it is the most important element of inspiration. All three are required for genuine inspiration, but
without purpose, we wouldn’t just feel uninspired—we’d feel aimless.
Let’s take a look at the other elements, so you’ll see what I mean.
If you have a problem to tackle but you don’t have a purpose for which you’re tackling it, you have a couple of bigger problems. The first is lack of motivation. If you don’t know why you’re doing something, why expend the effort and energy in the first place? The second is a lack of fulfillment. Say you do manage to solve the problem despite your lack of motivation. When you do, it’s likely you won’t feel satisfied, or at least not for long. When problem-solving is detached from a “why,” you’re like a hamster on a wheel—you’re putting one foot in front of the other, but you aren’t going anywhere!
The same is true for partnership. Imagine you work on the best team in the world. These individuals are driven, talented, and like minded in every way. However, you’re all struggling to make the kind of impact you desire. You’re solving problems, you’re getting projects done, you’re even significantly increasing profit, so what’s the issue? Your team doesn’t have a clear purpose. You’re working together to do what is asked of you, but you aren’t being told (or reminded) of your team’s greater purpose. You aren’t connecting what you are accomplishing day to day with something bigger than yourselves.
All the other elements of inspiration will feel random and disconnected if we don’t have a crystal clear purpose that inspires us to reach for that big goal, overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and find people who will join us in the adventure.
In order to be inspired, it’s paramount to know your individual purpose, and in order to inspire, it’s paramount to regularly remind the people you lead that what they do matters by connecting it to your organization’s purpose.
So I have two questions for you today:
1. Are you connecting your purpose to what you do each day?
2. Are you helping the people you lead connect what they are doing to their purpose?
Remember, purpose is paramount to inspiration.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to stay inspired and how to inspire others, click the link below and purchase a copy of my new book!
