Discovering Your Life's Purpose

Discovering your genius has many benefits: It gives you a stronger sense of identity, grants you a clearer sense of direction, increases your self confidence and provides you with the language to communicate your contributions to the world and the way you benefit others.

After doing the two activities and several months of contemplation and refinements, the purpose of my life became crystal clear: To fully apply myself and work my genius to help people, and organizations, grow, achieve, and add value to life.

One of the best examples of the power of discovering and following your life's calling or your purpose can be found in the way Steve Jobs, the famed founder of Apple, convinced then Pepsi's President Scully to leave his job at one of the best international companies in the world and come work for him at the relatively small and unknown company Apple. Jobs asked Scully: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life manufacturing colored water or do you want to change the world?" Scully said that he could not sleep that night after hearing that question that compelled him to confront the purpose of his life squarely in the face. He ended up accepting Jobs' challenge and left Pepsi to join Jobs' mission of changing the world.

Note: You can discover your life's purpose and learn how to coach others to discover theirs as part of learning "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" at HumaNext Annual Event - See below.

© 2009- 2011 Francois Basili, President of HumaNext.

http://www.humanext.com/eq-certification.html  

• Self awareness is the first dimension of emotional intelligence.
• Want to discover who you are and what you are about? Need to find your calling and do great work?
• Read how I discovered the purpose of my life and put it to work, and learn how you can do the same.
  

By Francois Basili, President, HumaNext LLC

We usually smile in a mix of recognition and dismissiveness when we hear the famous question: What is the meaning of life? It's a question many philosophers have struggled with for centuries. Most religions and spiritual movements have attempted to provide answers. Yet few people have settled for a definite, totally satisfying answer to that question.

But the reason for not finding a satisfying answer is that we might have been asking the wrong question. The question of "what is the meaning of life?€" is too abstract. The more relevant question I should be asking is "What is the meaning of my life?" and because the word "meaning" is also a bit abstract and too philosophical, the more practical question to ask is "What is the purpose of my life?"

My further readings and research in this area, together with more work on personal profiling, assessment, and understanding have lead me closer and closer to the answer. Finally, my work in the area of emotional intelligence while developing our training program, "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" has provided me with the opportunity of looking deeper into "Self Awareness" as one of the key dimensions of emotional intelligence.

In the "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" training workshop, I offer two practical activities or processes for self awareness and discovery. The first is an activity called "The Life Picture Exercise" where you draw a panoramic picture of your life, with all of its milestone events, influential persons, and major accomplishments. Then you do some analysis and understanding of your life picture and discuss them with others.

Looking at my life's picture helped me discover that I am interested in all learning. I want to understand everything as a way of understanding how life works. And once I understood something, I wanted to explain it to others by writing about it, or training people in the topic, or starting a training business that offers a large number of training programs and learning tools, as well as workshops I personally develop and deliver.

You can discover and follow your life's purpose and learn how to coach others to discover theirs as part of learning "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" at HumaNext Annual Event: http://www.humanext.com/HumaNext-Events.html