RichThinking Way: Passion and Purpose exercise

Why are you doing your business?

It really helps to have a sense of what is important to you in your life, as it provides a much bigger container for you to live your life out of. How you operate your business then becomes part of this. Not only that, it enables you to understand where you are coming from, what fuels your passion and desire to achieve in your business, and helps to remind you why you are doing it at all when the going gets tough! And it is your passion and purpose that you will need to call on in those times.

Here’s an exercise that will help you define what your passion and purpose are:

1. List 2 or 3 personal qualities/values you have (eg Honesty, clarity, openness.)
2. List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others (eg Supporting, helping, caring, being insightful, inspiring.)
3. Imagine the world and your life is perfect right now. What does it look like? How are people relating to each other? What does it feel like? Write a statement in the present tense that describes this perfect world. (eg Everyone is loving themselves and everyone else. It’s very peaceful and harmonious, with a sense of joy everywhere. A very expansive, supportive place, where each person’s gifts are honoured and respected.)
4. Combine the 3 subdivisions of this paragraph into a single statement. (eg My passion in life is to use my honesty, openness and clarity to support, help and care for others, enabling them to express their natural gifts, in a joyful atmosphere where they feel honoured and respected.)
5. Now identify how your business currently enables this vision to be expressed.
   

If you don’t get very far with this, don’t worry — it may be that the process of doing the RichThinking Way will in itself help you to define who you are and what you want through your business. For instance, a recent participant said:

So while it’s not totally necessary to know your purpose in life to define what you want in your business, it gives you a place to come from and gives you confidence, helping inform you about where you are in relation to where you are wanting to go. For example, my passion and purpose is:

Although I didn’t identify it in these words until a few years ago, looking back I realise much of what I’ve done in my career falls under this heading. The way I’m currently expressing this is through RichThinkers, which allows me to bring together my fascination with how people think, feel and act with my interest in developing businesses.

If you come up with any statement, feel free to post it below and share it with others!