Finding your purpose. There is a question in the world of NLP that we use, for what we call chunking up it’s where you go into a blue sky thinking mode – like a big project type idea. I want to explore that with you today I’m going to tell you how to do it. If you are at a point in your life where you are not entirely sure what your purpose is going forward then we will be exploring that today and to get the answer to the question.
As I was mentioning in the intro, there is a question that we ask when we are doing a process called chunking up. So in linguistics you have a couple of different options as to how you can maneuver a conversation or any idea concept or subject area you can get more specific on it,which means you get finer detail around what it is that you are talking about. The other option is that you find other similar subject areas where there’s a connection between them but it’s not the kind of conversation that you started out with initially. The remaining option is that you do something called chunking up, when you chunk up it makes your thinking become more broad,more big idea,more of global concept based.
The reason why I think it is useful for us to explore the question for what purpose is because there is lots of change going on for people and some of you are in a position where you’re working and daytoday life has changed quite considerably over the last few weeks and months. Or it is set to change quite considerably in the coming weeks and months, some of you are in positions where your working life for example is quite considerably different to what you had intended it to be or what it had been previous to the coronavirus kicking in. I can certainly echo the sentiments around that too when coronavirus happened in my working environment, the biggest change was that I was no longer working with staff. Everyone went on furlough and so for the last few months I had been taking what had originally been (their jobs) and turning those into more automated functions that our customer management system could take care of. Essentially I turned all of my staff into robots. That is probably a similar situation to a lot of organizations and there are good and bad aspects to this source of evolution that can sometimes happen.
On the upside for me it meant that I recognized how I would be able to save cost within the business, to eradicate a few challenges that there are around employing staff (not least the financial ones)but as some people know, managing staff is a whole job in itself. Suddenly I was freed up to do some of the business development things that I’ve been avoiding because I was usually quite tangled up in managing what the staff were doing on a day-to-day and all the relationship issues that would show up amongst them. I suddenly found myself in a situation where furlough was coming to an end and I was wondering what do I do with these people once they come back, now let me be very clear this was not a financial decision it was just about you have to do what makes sense. Those of you who are or have been business owners in the past will know that you take on a different sort of responsibility to anything else in life when you have a business, you have an obligation to make sure that it works in the most successful way possible and so sometimes you have to make decisions that do not align with what your heart might be telling you. You can really have this conflict between your heart and your head, you know on one hand you think when I like these people I want to do what’s right for them but on the other hand, it’s like the business brain is saying to you it doesn’t make sense. We’ve just turned these people into robots we’ve saved some money I think we’ve proved we don’t need them in the same way anymore. My message to you today is more so for those of you who are in the situation that my previous, now made redundant employees, may be in. In that you need to start thinking about the fact that the people you work for or the people that you work with might be going through these sorts of processes in their minds too and as such you need to start asking yourself what your purpose could be going forward.I don’t want to like really narrow this video into a one-size-fits-all this is only for people who are in this particular situation,this is going to apply some lots of people in lots of different areas of life because lots of us have been feeling a little bit lost or just a bit confused about what the future is going to look like because it seems like your purpose has changed and it probably has. The stuff that you used to just do maybe you don’t need to do that anymore or maybe you just don’t need to do it in the same way or maybe that role is now becoming obsolete in which case it’s really important that you find an alternative purpose for yourself.
We have to have a feeling like we are striving for something in our lives it’s really important that we continue to do some kind of growth and development. I do lots of growth and development because I work in that industry but even so I’ve taken the decision in the last few weeks to do some different sorts of growth and development to what I normally do, I have been undertaking a diploma in Photoshop and a diploma in graphic design simultaneously because if you’re gonna stretch yourself you may as well go for the big stretch. This is giving me something else to focus on and something else to think about and actually that’s quite nice our brains quite like to be busy and if we’re not busy giving them some kind of purpose, growth and development then that’s when we can really see that problems start to set in.
I’ve said this before I will say again problems are just growth and entertainment, you need to have goals if you do not have goals you will have problems because problems are like unhelpful goals. There are still goals but they’re just really unhelpful ones for you to have. What you want is to have the kind that actually gives something positive on the other side of it like a qualification, money or something that is rewarding to have. When you have a problem you know you’re still working towards resolving something but you don’t necessarily get anything good on the other side of it apart from getting rid of some pain, and perhaps now that is good in itself but wouldn’t it be nice to have something nice rather than just the absence of pain? I want you to start considering the question for what purpose?
It’s such a broad question, it’s so big it’s almost can send you into some spiritual Zen mode just to even consider what the answers to that might be and it might be that you think about yourself as a carer, it might be that you think of yourself as a lover,it might be that you think of yourself as an artist or creator in some way. All of those things can be true but you’ve got to start with a bigger picture in mind before so you’ll be in a position to drill down into the more specifics of what that actually needs to look like for you going forward. If you’re in a situation such as my former employees found themselves in where they were considering what is our purpose here in this organization. Now it’s probably something that you need to be collaborating with the decision makers around you. You need to help them to see that there is a place for you, you need to almost yourself even if this was not your role before and we’re all having to do roles that we did not have to do before. Some of you were not teachers before but now you are, you are homeschooling and teaching people who also you know do jobs and everything else that you have to do alongside that, run the house and everything else. We’re all in a situation where we’re having to do stuff that we didn’t have to do before.
On one of the things that you perhaps are going to have to do – is to become an innovator, you’re going to have to become someone who comes up with ideas that demonstrate , not just that you know you have a place and that you have a purpose, but that you can contribute beyond what might have previously been something that you just did quite automatically and easily without having to think about it too much. And because you’ve done it for years and years and years and it was super easy for you, but actually something that makes you feel as if you are like going beyond the realms of what you would have done previously that you’re actually generating ideas that might help – not just to grow and develop the system around you be that your job or something else but also that it gives you back a sense of control. It’s quite an empowering thing to do think about what your purpose is and then think about how do you redefine, grow and adapt to these new sets of circumstances that you find yourself in. You’ve always got the choice not to ,I mean there’s that and the good thing about choosing not to is you know you’ve got someone else to blame you can get made redundant you’ve got someone else to blame.
If you feel like life is spinning out of control you know there’s a disc you can just blame coronavirus it’s the faceless blame that you can prove it’s probably the biggest copout because you’re not even blaming an individual, you’re sort of blaming an organism,a faceless entity, is to blame for the circumstances that you know. I can see the appeal of that and I can see the appeal of putting the blame there, however there is definitely something to be said for considering what you can do to adapt to the change. What you can do to provide that innovation,that growth,that stretch,that redefining,that redevelopment to adapt to wherever it is that the systems that you are passive might be going to next and the good thing with that you know the good thing about making that decision to consider what your purpose could be going forward is that it might just lead to something better. You might just find that that stretch suits you and that’s something that you can enjoy and that you can not just enjoy the sense of control and empowerment that it gives you to go you know what, I’ve really done my best here to make sure that I’ve got a job that I can go back to, I have got a business that I can grow and develop from here and it’s really about taking the reins. You’ve always got the option to just sort of go ‘I don’t know what’s gonna happen and I just need to wait and see and kind of you know roll with the waves’ but the problem with that go with the flow attitude, is that dead fish go with the flow, you dont want to be a dead fish! You want to be someone who’s like surfing.
What we want to be able to do is to make sure that you at least have a sense of feeling like you are pulling the shots here that you are deciding what happens next in your life because we’ve all had a period of we don’t really know what’s happening and we don’t really know what’s going on. That sense of the not knowing is probably in some aspects of our lives going to continue for the foreseeable future. Everyone ,to some extent, is in a situation where they’re going we need to kind of just wait and see as we don’t really know what’s happening but that doesn’t apply to every single area of your life. So if there are areas of your life where you can consider what your purpose is and take action to start making things happen for you ,where you can take some decisions you can take some control back, you can start to navigate your way forward.
Then my recommendation is that you do do that because it’s going to make you feel so much more certain in yourself we always need a balance between uncertainty like well we don’t know what’s gonna happen can be quite exciting to some extent and knowing that actually I know where I stand with this . I’ve got a plan in place – is that plan gonna work out? who knows maybe, not where we get bit more uncertainty coming back but having it there at least gives you something to hold on to you know gives you an idea to work with and to move forward with, and that’s really good for helping to navigate away from and immunize yourself against things like anxiety, it isn’t gonna protect you from getting coronavirus, but it can protect you from having anxiety and panic in your life.
If you do things that give yourself a sense of greater levels of certainty so the question once again that I want you to be running through your mind and you might not get instant answers, this might be one way you just have to keep asking yourself the question and notice what comes up for what purpose. For what purpose are you here? Make sure you use the right intonation by the way there’s a big difference between ‘FOR WHAT PURPOSE AM I HERE!!!! ‘and ‘for what purpose am i here?’ That is the question.
