If you experience life as a precious gift, then it follows that your
life deserves a noble purpose. Not a grandiose purpose stemming
from a big ego, but rather a lofty purpose that expresses your most
important values in ways to benefit yourself and others.
Purpose is an internal statement with external expression. For
this reason a person could follow his parents in the family business
and still live a life based on his true purpose; another person could
choose an occupation and lifestyle completely different from her
parents and still be stuck in inherited purpose.Better Decisions
Your life has been shaped by hundreds of decisions, some good and
some not. If you do not know your purpose in life, then decision
making can be a worry-filled nightmare because it’s difficult to
know if you have made the right decision before you see how it
turns out. A person choosing between moving to Miami or staying
in Minneapolis, for example, might make long lists of the good
things and bad things about each location and, even after much
soul searching, be no closer to the better choice. Without a frame-
work for evaluating the information, it’s impossible to see the bet-
ter choice. However, a clear purpose in life makes choices easier
and quicker because you have only to choose the option that most
supports your purpose—the option that most empowers you to ex-
press your purpose. Once you recognize your life’s purpose, you
have fewer nagging second thoughts.
Respond to what your purpose tells you instead of to the dis-
tracting noise in your mind or from others who advise you of their
expectations. Beyond that, clarity of purpose makes it easy to justify
decisions. You simply say, “I took the choice that supported my pur-
pose.” As consultants, we refrain from advising people what busi-
ness they should be in. You can make that decision far better than
we by choosing a business that expresses your purpose in life. Chap-
ter 8 explains how to free up your creativity to design a business
that suits you.Satisfying Life
The accumulation of physical goods provides only limited satisfac-
tion. Everyone is different, but at some point the acquisition of one
more physical possession becomes meaningless. Instead, satisfac-90 Your Recovery from a Good Upbringing