Think of three great people, maybe from history or maybe from your own life.
Maybe you picked Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, your uncle Frank, or the clerk at the convenience store down the street. Most likely, the people you picked lived on purpose, not by accident.
Living One’s Calling Makes a Person Great
In fact, they probably lived their calling. At Simply Great Lives, we define a calling as :
the unique way we combine our strengths and passions to impact other people’s lives in a way that’s positive, focused, recognizable, and long-lasting.
Greatness requires these different elements.
Strengths and Passions
Passion helps fuel the fire and strengths make for great results. Great people don’t waste their time and energy on trivial things. They are other-focused with a determination to make some real change happen.
Positive
The fact that great people produce positive change seems so obvious that it’s tempting to skip it, but it is an important piece. Hitler caused a lot of change and impacted people’s lives in a huge way. But causing a negative impact automatically disqualifies him and other tyrants like him from being “great.”
Recognizable
The change great people cause is apparent. It would be easily noticed by an on-looker or by the people whose lives were changed.
Focused
Great people have focus in their lives. They don’t divide up their efforts into a bunch of different causes. Because their efforts are focused, so are the results in the lives of other people.
Long-Lasting
I think it’s a genuine love for people that makes great people want to make change that lasts. After all, how can we say we love someone when we hook them up with a temporary solution that doesn’t change the real problem?
My Question to You
Here’s the real point of my post today: Do YOU want to have a great life?
If so, start looking at the necessary components of your calling.
- What are your strengths?
- What are you passionate about?
- How can you combine those two things to make a meaningful impact in the lives of other people
I just roughly outlined some of the exploration we describe in Step 5 of our 7 Steps to Live Your Calling. If you’d like some more information about these steps, you can download a free e-book by subscribing to this blog at www.SimplyGreatLives.com.
You’ve heard of Alexander the Great, right? Well, you can be great, too. Just try this on for size:
(Your Name Here) the Great.
OK, that’s a little silly (although I think Rena the Great has a nice ring to it). The question remains: What are you going to do to live a great life?
