Tag: area of control

How to find your purpose

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“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why is purpose so important? Have you found yours?

Do you really have to have a purpose? What if you are “happy” without it? Or … are you happy without it?

Research have shown that believing you are making a difference and that your life has purpose is fundamental to your well-being. Purpose in life is important because it provides you with a strong base and a sense of direction which will ultimately help you reach the goals you set.

Best way to find your purpose in life is to fast forward to the end of it. Don’t freak out, it’s “safe to practice” and it only takes imagination and honesty while answering below questions:

  1. What do I want to be remembered for?
  2. Whom do I want to be remembered by?
  3. When I look back, am I satisfied with the life I lived?
  4. Am I living in a way now that will help me achieve my purpose?

If the answer to question 3 and 4 is “no”, start thinking of adjustments you can make in your daily life to move towards your desired self. What can you do? What is within your control? What can you start doing right away? I trust that you answer all the questions honestly.

Some of us may think that life purpose should suddenly become clear and that we’re doomed without one. But this is a rather slow process, it takes motivation and continuous effort.

For many people, thinking of life purpose can be uncomfortable or it may seem abstract, especially for those who are not spiritual and don’t believe in a higher order of things.

And for others it may mean following some odd (and old) traditions or superstitions linked to the life they lived to date. Traditions and superstitions should not affect your life purpose in any way.

Most us are working a daily job, thinking of building a career, and when asked about it, we’d often answer: it’s a job, it pays the bills so it’s ok… Think of an option that isn’t about you and the job you do, but more about the relationship you have with your job. That is job crafting.

To start crafting your job, rather than working a 9 to 5 schedule, read through the below changes you may want to apply:

  1. Change the number, scope or type of the tasks you do.
  2. Change the nature (or number) of the relationship you have: connect with (more) colleagues, reach out to stakeholders.
  3. Change the way you perceive your job by looking at how it contributes to wider organisational success and why not, to global success.

Re-crafting your job is a way of adding more meaning to your life. Even if you feel like the first 2 might be out of hand, the 3rd point is definitely something you can do. Meaning at workplace is given by two opposite stand points: intrinsic – the individual personality characteristics and extrinsic – job specific characteristics. It’s in your hands to determine which one wins. (why not both of them?)

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Not related to life purpose, just a glimpse of kindness

To go even deeper, answer the following questions for yourself:

  1. If you were given the opportunity to create your own job description within your organisation, what will it look like?
  2. How would this “ideal” job be different than the one you currently have?
  3. Why would you make this change?
  4. What stopped you from making this change earlier?
  5. What will enable you to make this change?

Purpose is personal and it’s different for each individual. Two people doing the same job may have completely different purpose in life and different meaning for what they are doing.

There are several pathways to discover your purpose and it certainly helps to be inquisitive about yourself and about others.

Psychology theories suggest that there are few pathways which lead to purpose in life:

  1. You can proactively think of your purpose, work on it, and gradually define it until it becomes crystal clear.

2. You may experience a life changing event: Giving birth to children – if you didn’t know, yes! having children is a life changing event; and so are serious illnesses and near-death experiences – or NDEs – which, I hope none of you will ever go through. These events change people and their purpose will shift, they’ll think of something new, that wasn’t even in the radar before.

3. You may find your life purpose by observing others, learning from them and by modelling them.

Being curious about things will always bring you closer to discovering your calling.

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” – Buddha

Control and influence or learn to let go


Puppeteer – Kamilla Zarbaliyeva

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude” – Maya Angelou

Human beings seek control and dislike uncertainty, ambiguity and the unknown. We have expectations and we put our hope in people, situations and organisations. We go to work and expect to get a promotion, we make a friend and we expect support, we plan a holiday and we expect it to meet our dreams. Yet , it doesn’t work this way, it doesn’t always happen to have your expectations met. And that’s when you get hurt, you suffer, you hate others for getting “what you deserved in the first place” , you quit, you have negative thoughts and there goes the long chain of bitterness.

Why do people get stuck in the chain of bitterness? Because they can’t seem to understand their area of control and influence and more importantly the area where they don’t have any of them.

Take a look at the sphere below:

At the core of it, it’s you and the wonderful area you can control.

Immediately outside it, is the area you can influence.

Once your influence area ends, there’s a massive area of concern and unknown that you can’t control or influence.

For example:

You can control the time you leave the house but you can’t control the traffic to the office.

You can influence your colleague to cover for you but you can’t control what she thinks of you.

The world is full of triggers that fill you with frustration, disappointment, jealousy and pain.

What can you do about it?  

Focus on the things you can control and influence.

Start by acknowledging what you actually control and influence everyday ( eg: what time you wake up, what you have for breakfast – whether you choose to have breakfast at all, what means of transport you use to go to work, how you respond to people, your attitude, how much effort you put into what you do) and less on what you can’t influence or control (what people think of you, how bad the traffic gets on your way to work, what others achieve, what the weather looks like)

A great way to get going would be to start using the sphere and write your own details in each part of it. If you’re still confused whether something is in your control or not, ask yourself : Can I change it? Can I do it differently? If the answer is yes, then you control or influence the task, hence the outcome depends on you.

If the answer is no, don’t beat yourself up, work on enlarging your sphere of influence/control by connecting with people and investing in yourself. Will share more tips and tricks about this in future articles.

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man