"Everyone has a story, and everybody wants to tell their story in order to connect. If no one listens, we tell it to ourselves and then we go mad. Listening moves us closer; it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation and fragmentation always causes more suffering." Margaret Wheatley
Most of us will spend an average of 117,000 hours of our life tolerating work with the perceived belief that we will have a steady wage or salary to take care of obligations. Our fear of losing a regular salary keeps us from developing our legacy or life signature. Our "life signature" is the tracing of the talents we have been given and how we express them in our life.
"I'll be happy when...." is the way many people think they are living their lives. Yet, happiness and living your life purpose is not something that happens to you. Happiness and purpose is inside you now. You are motivated from within. You only have to allow this passion to surface.
Happiness = K (knowing who you are) x D (discovering your life's work) x L (learning not to tolerate what's not important). That's the formula for happiness - know yourself, your true calling and that you get what you tolerate.
"No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him." James Russell Lowell
Does your current work allow you to redefine your goals to aspirations, balance to focus, results to commitments, achieving to becoming and outcomes to actions?
How we think of the hours we spend nurturing our work environment can give us the satisfaction that our life signature will make a difference for ourselves and others.
Here are Five Tough Questions that you may want to answer:
1. If you were on your deathbed and you wanted to tell your children - or the young people to whom you are close - the three most important things that you've learned in your life, what would they be?
2. What gives you the greatest joy, satisfaction and renewal in your life and how could you do more of it?
3. Who are you without your job or your business, your money? Describe in detail.
4. What activities could you add to your life that would be a source of richness and joy!
5. Think of someone you admire deeply - and explain why.
Leading with your life signature in mind requires work that you must be willing and able to control inside your heart and mind.
You must be willing to focus on things, without the noise that so easily disturbs our thinking.
If you approach your work experiences with the thought that you are being forced to work for eight hours a day for purposes that are not your own and in ways that do not support you, your energy will be drained and you will have very little time to think about your life signature. But if you allow yourself to become a personal best leader at work by taking charge of your career contributions, you will discover a rhythm in your work that will lead you to the realisation of greater levels of purpose and meaning. The only way for you to get there is by being disciplined enough to think and act now.
Two books, ‘Leading with Your Legacy in Mind’ and ‘Can't Get Enough Leadership’, can help bring to life the purpose that goes on inside of you that leads to your life signature or legacy. These self-coaching guides will help you in your personal efforts to build lasting value in your business and personal life.
The journey begins by practicing discipline, concentration and patience. The rewards are a life well spent, a meaningful career, a focus on making things better for others and a life signature that demonstrates the differences you have made.
Reference: Andrew Thorn: “Leading with Your Legacy in Mind: Building Lasting Value in Business and Life”, McGraw-Hill, 2014 and ‘Can't Get Enough Leadership’, by John G. Agno, 2012.
Business Tips
Boomer, what will your story be?
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- Category: Self-Motivation & Awareness
