your relationship with a higher power, with yourself and others, and
with the difference you make in the world? Achievement without
purpose is compulsion and thus less than satisfying.
In a few pages we will present a method for designing your con-
sciously chosen purpose in life. This method has been used by thou-
sands of people in Training and in individual consultations. In
some cases, people resist and procrastinate defining their purpose.
The joke about the process of uncovering your true purpose is that
it takes 3 weeks and 45 minutes: 3 weeks to procrastinate and 45
minutes to do it.
Money and Your Purpose in Life
Some of you may be wondering what purpose in life has to do with
money. Because purpose is a strategy that we use to express our im-
portant values, it follows that our use of money is one of the impor-
tant ways to express these values. Money is very, very flexible, with
an infinite variety of ways to earn it and spend it. Your wealth at any
point is the end result of millions of earning and spending deci-
sions. If you live in the developed West, you probably will earn more
than $1 million in your lifetime. The decisions about how you earn
this fortune, and spend it, are determined by your purpose in life.
Taking this one step further, consider your purpose for money.
In our consulting work, people’s life’s purpose and purpose for
money are very useful starting points for discussion because of the
pervasive effect of purpose on thought and action. Most often, peo-
ple who are living paycheck to paycheck have an unconsciously cho-
sen purpose for money that is something like “Money is to live on”
or “Money is to buy the things I need.” Because money responds to
the commands of the human mind, the external financial experi-
ence of these people conforms to their internal thinking about it.
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, then the decisions about
how to use your money are made by the bills you pay each month.
This situation makes it impossible to take charge of your money.
You have unintentionally turned over your prerogatives as your own
financial manager to your creditors and to your letter carrier who
delivers the bad news each month. Additionally, when bills exhaust
all of your income, you are protected from making a mistake, per-
haps unconsciously, thinking something like—“I used all my money
to pay my bills. That’s the best thing to do with it.”
Money and Your Purpose in Life 93