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Today's
Meditation:
How
often do you take the time to define the purposes for your
actions in your life? This isn't a skill or a habit
that most of us have been taught-- in fact, it's something
that most people never will do. Even though I've
studied and read about this concept pretty regularly, I
still do much of what I do without defining a purpose for
it beforehand. Often I can make the claim that the
purpose is implied in the action, and while that may be
true, it doesn't do anything to make the action more
effective or more helpful to anyone at all.
To
do something with purpose is to do it with something
particular in mind, some accomplishment that will come of
the action. Having this idea in mind will give
strength to the action by giving us stronger focus not
just on what we're doing, but on the desired
outcome. And while it's also important to stay
flexible and realize that the outcome may turn out to be
something different than we foresee, having our focus on a
purpose will make it more likely that what we do will turn
out as positive as it possibly can.
The
first thing to do, then, is to have a purpose behind what
we do. I tell this to students who are writing-- a
paper without a purpose is pointless. And we can
define the purpose beyond what our bosses or friends or
family members expect-- it's completely up to us. And
when we can imbue our projects with that purpose, then
we've gone a long way towards creating conditions for
success in anything that we propose to do.
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