STEP 15: DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE. To know your purpose is to live a life of direction, and in that direction is found peace and tranquillity.

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1 STEP 15: DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE To know your purpose is to live a life of direction, and in that direction is found peace and tranquillity. Byron Pulsifer Alison Pothier: So I was at a place where I thought, well, I need to know whether or not things are as they seem, in black and white, or whether things have meaning and purpose and significance and if you paid attention to them they could help you out, guide you, and actually create a more magical existence in life. Harry Massey: Once you start going down this level of enquiry and you start asking yourself questions like: What on earth interests me? What does this mean? Where are my passions? Where are my skills in life? Once you start asking those that guides you to what you then need to research and understand much more thoroughly about your world, and from

2 there you will start to identify both where yourself is going but also where the patterns of the world are going. And when you align the two, that s when you have found your purpose. Barbara Marx Hubbard: My most significant choicepoint was when I was a mother with five children, trying to make everyone happy and doing a really good job as a full time mum, but there was this yearning in me for something more, which I call life purpose, or vocation. I am going to find out what my life purpose is, and I m going to do it. And very gradually through a set of wonderful experiences I realised my life purpose is to communicate humanity s potential to evolve, is to communicate our potential to connect. Brett Moran: I started to find something in myself, and when I looked at them, they was just the same as me, they weren t homeless, they weren t drug addicts, they were just human beings, that beauty was inside them and when I saw that in them I felt like it was my purpose to be able for them to see that inside themselves, let them find that light in them, and then whatever they do with that, who knows, hopefully become happy and embrace life and enjoy life. From that I became a volunteer for a homeless football team, I was a youth worker, I was just doing lots of voluntary work, it was good for the soul it was making me feel great, felt I had found something inside me, that was my gift, my gift was to connect with others to help them find their gift. And it just felt so normal to connect with people. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition, it asks too little of yourself and will leave you unfulfilled. Barak Obama

3 James Caan: Who am I? What am I really doing? Where am I going and what is the purpose of all this? I think a lot of people go through life without a purpose, I think people wake up many many times and say where am I really going? And its having that ability not to drift, not to have a sense of purpose and to have a sense of direction and to kind of almost challenge yourself and say where is this really going to get me, what am I really going to achieve from this. Harry Massey: As we experience a crisis it can be a wonderful opportunity to be able to look and identify what our true life purpose should be John Paul Dejoria: Several times when I was down and out I knew I was down and out but I also knew that I could get out of it. It was perhaps an instinct within that you do have choices. to sit there, succumb and look for handouts, to exist at that level of comfort. I didn t want to exist at that level of comfort, so I really went how to I get myself out of this and move up to the next level and the next level and the next level, and not just on how do I live off if I had welfare, how do I live off food stamps, how do I live off minimal income, I wanted more and I made sure that happened, I made that choice. And when it did happen and there was abundance I shared it. Alison Pothier: So I started to write every day down. On the one page of a journal I would write everything as it seemed, in black and white no colour, this is what it was and on the other page right across from it I would write the number sequence on the radio when I woke up, the words in somebody s sentences that stuck in the air at just a certain point, the signs on a billboard that I saw, relative to the ones I didn t see. So I wrote the whole day down as if it had a twist and it was speaking to me. And I started to do that every day. At first as a survival technique and a way of giving myself a reason

4 to keep going. And then because it was fun and it started to speak back. Everything that seemed like coincidence became significant; everything that seemed ironic made me laugh. Richard Branson: I think in every aspect of what you do you should enjoy what you are doing and I think a lot of businesses take themselves far too seriously and a lot of biz men and women take themselves far too seriously. Most of your time in life you spend at work and it should be fun. John Paul Dejoria: As I walk into businesses I have a lot of happy people who don t want to leave working there, as I walk into homeless shelters, as I walk into places where people need to eat, knowing that I am able to help out, that is my destiny to be able to have abundance and change the world with it. And if the abundance wasn t there to still try and do things to make the world a better place to live. That is my destiny, I m living it and I m having such a happy life doing it, but also I know surprises come along that even make your life happier and I m very much open to that. Brett Moran: Because I progressed in my job career and I actually got paid as a full time employer but it was just the same as working voluntary, I didn t do it for the money; I didn t do it for the career. I done it because I found the light, although that sounds abit OTT, but I felt like I had found something inside me which was my gift. My gift was to connect with others to help them find their gift. And it just felt so normal to be able to connect with people. Jodi Orton: We had amazing parenting skills that the two of us together were an awesome team. It was then that we decided to become foster parents and to make a difference in the lives of even more children. We had four in our home that were thriving even with their disabilities and with their challenges so we knew we could branch out; we could reach out and make a difference in the lives of other children. During our time in Iowa we did that more than 100 times.

5 Peter Buffet: What I see as my purpose now is so different than what I saw 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago I mean it s just continually evolving so I think that in some ways it s not so much knowing what the purpose is but living out of a place that is constantly challenging and open and compassionate and trying to understand yourself and again your place in the world. I think someone s purpose is constantly evolving actually. No matter how you define purpose it is up to you to achieve it for it you don t the elusive peace of mind will always be undiscovered Jodi Orton: But I think that there comes a point where our purpose and our alignment with our purpose become vividly clear. And it s that point of taking that deep breath and saying this just feels absolutely right. And I think that then, only then, are you able to take your purpose and run with it, and you don t run blindly, you run like a needle, you run with this shiny purpose like that long sword you see the knight s joust with. You absolutely know where and who you are and where it is you are going. You don t even need the blinders on the side because none of it matters, and I think that when we align with our purpose we then become can teachers, we then become role models, we then become proud human beings, and not proud of who we are, but what we do. And that s when I think we have purpose.

6 Robert E Quinn: The notions of knowing what results you want to create, actually knowing that is very critical because it s a moment if commitment and someone said that at the moment of commitment the universe conspires to help you. What that means is that at that moment you open up to the flow of resources that you were not open to previously. John Paul Dejoria: it s more important for people to look at the world around them and to just be within their own teeny world here, open up and look at everything around you, it s so easy as sit on your porch or sit on a bus stop and just look at everything going around you. It s almost like you are in a movie and you are the star actor, and you actually see what is going on around you and how people s lives are. When you incorporate the planet as your life you realise that many things you do effect everybody else, what others do going down the street effects others too, you can make a change and others make a change on you, but if you have a positive attitude and you want to be giving and come from the position of love and others do the same thing the whole planet changes fast and everybody benefits. Alison Pothier: And then I realised that it was actually an act of courage, to turn around and to see that, hat actually to take a look at the same situation through another perspective, turn it inside out and upside down, look at it from all angles, and see it more magically, it actually become courageous, empowering and it became necessary.

7 Scilla Elworthy: It s like Joesph Campbell said follow your bliss and I think he was totally right there, if we can do what really gives us joy. Alison Pothier: Acknowledge first what is not and make room for what is. I use magic glasses as a way to do that. A mindset that says I accept this is what it looks like to me in black and white, no colour, it s very dark and it feels very bad. And then I started counting the blessings in my day, however small, I made everything have a meaning and a purpose, and I allowed things to speak to me, and I would say to those out there who are not certain there is anything speaking, have a closer look, follow the signs, see the magic and take one day at a time. Jack Canfield: I think my entire life I was unconsciously aligned with my purpose because I always followed my heart. Whatever my heart was leading me to do, wherever there was the greatest sense of joy, curiosity, aliveness, I would go there, and often at great expense, in terms of income or in terms of having to move to follow my next impulse to explore something, to give up a job, a community I was part of, whatever. But I was always moving toward my purpose. Which I later discovered was to inspire and empower people to live their highest vision in the context of love and joy. And I ve just added since the Wall Street meltdown a couple of years ago, 2008, in harmony with the highest good of all concerned. And so I ve always been someone who is inspiring people with storytelling, empowering them with tools that they learn and I teach in my seminars, to live their highest vision, not mine, not their parents, not the government, not someone else but doing that in the context of love and joy.

8 Scilla Elworthy: So the key is to do what comes naturally to us, to shape our live path around what comes easy and that will be also what makes us able to do it joyfully. Which sounds simple and you might say that s alright for you,, you can do what you like, you have had an easier time, but I think it really is important to search inside for what satisfies us at a very deep level and then there begins to become a kind of a glow, because we are working from an inner source of power, it s almost like a little power plant inside and it does make people glow when they are doing what they love to do. This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances. Complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. George Bernard Shaw