Today we did the “Key to Your Purpose” telecall (if you’d like to download the recording, you can get it from the “Free Teleclass: The Key to Knowing Your Purpose” post).
On the call, we talked about the importance of context, love, and connection, amongst other things. We also took some time to do a brief intuitive exercise, to start the introspective process that I’ve found to be absolutely essential to discovering and evolving your own sense of Purpose.
One of the great distinctions that has come out of examining our Purpose, for me, has been the awareness that I have some definite core qualities that emanate into whatever I do. What I do may change, where I go always changes, but who I am on a fundamental level doesn’t change; it only ripens.
So at my core, there is what I’m passionate about, which is love. And into all the contexts of my life I carry that love. It may manifest itself through a client conversation one moment, writing an article the next, and creating a workshop the next — but it’s still love that’s being carried through it all, along with my other “secondary” passions, such as transformation and wisdom.
Imagine my delight, then, when I come across David Armano‘s article, “T-Shaped + Sun-Shaped People,” where he talks about having core passions that form the basis of who we are and what we do. He says:
If you were to ask me what my “passion is”—I would probably say that at the core, it’s creative problem solving. This is pretty broad and incorporates a lot of disciplines that can relate to it. But that’s the point. What if we start with our passions regardless of discipline, and look at the skills which radiate out from it the same way we think about how rays from the sun radiate warmth?
Does this make us “Sun-shaped people”?
It just makes perfect sense, that we are changeable and flexible, depending on our circumstances, but we each have certain core strengths that are just naturally a part of our ways of being.
The clearer you can be about your core passions and essential qualities, the clearer you can be about everything that follows — which is everything! Marketing, sales, strategy, customer service, you name it; the clarity and certainty you have as you go about your work is a direct by-product of your “Sun-shaped” clarity.
So the question is, what is your Purpose/Passion? What’s at the center of your sun? Do you know what your dominant “rays” are?
Hi Adam
Just love the quote you put in: “look at the skills which radiate out from it the same way we think about how rays from the sun radiate warmth”
And it works two ways too IMHO: receiving rays of warmth from people who are so skilled and passionate about what they do, they just radiate their (freely) giving onto you.
Your post fits in with what I ‘took away’ from Good to Great: be passionate about and focussed on your hedge-hog concept. Then you (your company, organisation or as person) radiate.
Exactly, Karin — that’s one of the things I love about working in this way. Every brings their best forward, and everyone benefits from the magnitude of the collective contribution.
It’s an ecstatically fulfilling way to work, isn’t it?
Ecstatically, exhilarating, and so simple, not?
Anyway, your post ‘urged’ me to describe the way I’m warmth by the ‘radiation’ of my mentor, allow me to post the link to my Stop/Start blog
hi..just got onto your site via Mark Silver. I feel like I’ve finally tapped into the motherlode..the kind of information I’ve been thirsty for in the last 2 years of personal and business soul-searching and studying marketing.
The idea of really going within to find the ground–the truth of who I am and what I’m about–instead of marketing from the outside in–how refreshing. I’ve been trying to do it the other way and it hasn’t worked at all..therefore leading to increasing frustration as to ‘why can’t I just get it?’ Time to drop inside and hear what’s already there.
Then, just to get ahead of myself (for a change),
once you have that, how does that translate into a business?
Hi Ellen, I’m glad you found us!
I, too, tried to define myself (as strange as that sounds) from the outside-in, and it never really got me anywhere.
And your question, “once you have that, how does that translate into a business?” is actually something we get into a lot of detail in Inspired Productivity, but essentially, it’s a product of that ground-level clarity, choice, love and passion, and knowing one’s strengths.
I’m actually just about to launch a brand-new group that’s designed to help people create an amazing business around all of this… it should be ready by tomorrow, actually. (talk about suspense!
)
Thanks again for coming by — I hope to see more of you around.