On the 12th day of coaching my coach gave to me, twelve drummers drumming.
 
Just kidding! No drummers in this post but we are talking about purpose.
 
Do you know your life’s purpose?
 
If you don’t, that’s fine because it’s hard to come up with an all-encompassing purpose for your life that stands the test of time. I don’t think you wake up one morning and walk outside and get hit with the meteor of purpose.
 
Purpose is not a destination, it’s the journey.
 
It’s not something you’re necessarily born with, it’s something you get to choose.
 
You can have different purposes for different areas of your life. Your purpose in your significant relationship can be different from your purpose in your career.
 
The main thing about purpose is that it’s all about being in alignment with who you truly are. What are you passionate about? What are you good at? Are you living in alignment with who you know yourself to be?
 
Sometimes we are living out of alignment because we are living our lives to meet someone else’s expectations. Or we’re listening to some old negative stories that are running around in our heads.
 
Living in alignment with who you are is all about living in integrity. That means that your thoughts, speech, and actions are integrated or in alignment.
 
I think purpose is also about what type of contribution you want to leave in this world. It’s about waking up in the morning and going through the day living within the framework of the best of who you are.
 
Having a purpose statement for your life isn’t necessary but it can help you focus on what’s important to you.
 
A purpose statement should do three things:
1. Remind you who you want to Be.
2. Remind you what that causes you to Do.
3. Give the why or the “So That” behind who you want to be and what you want to do.
 
As we wrap this up, think about your purpose. What do you choose it to be?

Video Script

It is day 12 of the 12 days of coaching. And today, I want to talk about purpose.

Hi, I’m Phil Sherwood, your high performance coach, and I want to talk about purpose.

A lot of times people ask, How can I find my purpose? What is my purpose in life? And it’s kind of funny because I don’t think that you just walk outside one day in the meteor or purpose just lands on your head, I don’t think there’s one overarching purpose that you have, because life changes, we all change, right?

So your purpose can change and grow with you. And you can have different purposes, for different situations, in your life for different relationships, for different jobs. So your purpose is not necessarily this one overarching thing that never changes.

I think a lot of times people think that purpose is a destination. But it isn’t. Purpose is really a journey. It’s a journey through life. And what it really boils down to is living in alignment with who you really are.

A lot of people live their lives and all of a sudden, they wake up and they’re like, how did I get here, I’m not living my life, they may be living their life, in regard to others’ expectations of them. Or they may be living their life according to the negative stories running around in their head. Or maybe they’re codependent and they’re always trying to please somebody. And so they are living in reaction to everybody else around them, instead of living in alignment with who they really are. And I think what it really comes down to is, it comes down to living in integrity.

Now, integrity is an interesting word. And the way that I like to think of it is, it’s all about being integrated. It’s when your, your thoughts, your speech, and your actions are all in alignment. That to me is what integrity is. It’s the things you think, the things you say, and the things you do, are all the same. You’re not speaking out on one side of your mouth and doing something else.

You know, it’s like the typical, what you might see as a preacher, you know, somebody who gets up in the pulpit and speaks and, and has all these great lessons. But then he gets home and treats his family horribly. That is not integrity.

So it’s all about finding your own integrity and living in purpose with your own self and who you were meant to be.

And so if you want to find your purpose, that’s the first step, the next step is to figure out what am I really passionate about? What do I care about? And secondly, what am I good at, and bringing those things together, and living those out on a daily basis. And when I talk about living those out on a daily basis, and we talked about purpose, and living purposefully, when we talked about being intentional, and that’s another great thing is purpose is a choice.

Again, it’s not something you’re born with, I don’t believe, I think it’s a choice of who you want to be in this world. What type of contribution Do you want to make on a daily basis? So the great thing is you can wake up in the morning and say, Okay, what is my purpose today? How am I going to live my life today? And am I going to bring the joy? Am I going to live fully alive?

You know, I love that saying, I don’t know if it was William Wallace or who it who said, I don’t think it was William Wallace. It was somebody else that says, you know, all men live, yet few men are fully alive.

So life is all about, you know, our purpose is all about in life is living, fully living life to its fullest and living in full joy and bringing the joy wherever we go. So, you know, so finding your purpose is all a choice, you know, in alignment with your passions, what you’re good at, and the good that you want to bring into the world today.

As I said, coming up with an overarching purpose statement. isn’t really necessary. But it can be a great focus tool because you do know what you focus on, you get. So if you want something to help you distill your focus down so that each day, you wake up and you know how you want to show up and how you want to live, then coming up with a purpose statement can be a great exercise for you.

I’ve got a nice little framework to help you do that. If you’d like to do that, the first thing your statement can do is remind you to BE. It’s how you want to be, how you want to show up in the world.

A lot of times we think about everything we’re going to do, but we leave out how we want to be and how we want to show up. So the first thing, your purpose statement should remind you is who you want to be, you know, I want to be loving, I want to be fully alive. How are you going to show up?

What’s your purpose statement going to remind you to be?

The second thing your purpose statement can do is to remind you what you’re going to DO. First, it’s going to remind you who you’re going to BE and second, how that shows up in your life, what’s that going to cause you to do?

And the third thing is the SO THAT, or why this is important? What type of legacy do you want to leave? What kind of mark do you want to leave so that so for instance, my purpose statement right now could be my purpose is to live my life fully. And to love openly, live in the present, so that I can leave a legacy of faith and love for my family.

So that’s just an example of one of my purpose statements that I’ve been working on.

But you can come up with your own statement, just using that simple framework. Have it remind you what to be, who you’re going to be second, how to remind you what you’re going to do, how it’s going to show up in your life. And then the so that the why, why is this important to you?

So I hope that’s helpful to you.

Thank you for following along for the 12 days of coaching.

And I wish you a very Merry Christmas