Can you imagine stumbling across your own obituary in the newspaper? That’s exactly what happened to Alfred Nobel. There had recently been a death in his family and the newspaper accidentally ran his obituary instead. Aside from being shocked by seeing his own obituary, He was ‘profoundly disappointed by what he read. It proclaimed, “The […]
We’ve talked about the first two stages of leadership here and here. The third stage of leadership is about a shared vision. There is a lot information out there about how to get people to do what we want. Much of this information is about how to manipulate people. The best manipulation is to give […]
Last time we talked about the first stage of leadership, which is leading ourselves. We cast a vision for our own future and then proactively work toward that vision. The second stage of leadership puts an emphasis on others. I’ve been brought up to think that I’m good as long as I “uphold my end […]
The other day I was sharing with someone that we just released our first book. The response was, “It’s nice when that happens to you.” My internal thought was, “What? Releasing a book didn’t happen to us. We had to create it.” I think this type of thinking is common. We think that life happens to […]
We’ll need serious lifelong learning if we want to make a real difference in people’s lives. There’s always room for improvement if we want to be really good at something. I was at a rock concert the other night. The lead singer of Boston introduced a song. He said he was inspired to write it […]
Time is an essential component in living our calling. In fact, we made it the first of our seven steps to discover your purpose and live your calling. We encourage people to devote 10 hours each week to this journey. Many people are incredulous about being able to free up that much time. After all, […]
We all need support to live our calling. Admitting we need that help can be hard, though. On Friday I got good news from Guide Dogs of America. I’ve been approved to get a guide dog. When I got off the phone, I was overwhelmed with emotions. I felt excited, relieved, anxious, and sad all […]
If you’ve been around corporate America, my guess is that you’ve seen mission statements before. But have you considered that you personally have a purpose in life? Perhaps your experience with mission statements has left you cynical. Maybe, like me, you’ve seen statements like this one: My purpose is to be the leading expert in […]
In order to be able to devote some time to our calling, we first need to get control over our day’s activities. One of the most common, unproductive thought patterns we see is thinking that we’re not in control. We use language like, “I have to …” or “I can’t…” as if we don’t have […]
It wasn’t until we started pursuing our calling that we learned a very important lesson: deep satisfaction in life comes when we contribute to the world and build up other people in a meaningful way. The simple truth is that we don’t get true satisfaction by focusing on ourselves. Think of it this way: whom […]
