One of my many shortcomings is that I hate exercise. I’ve never experienced that adrenalin rush thing that athlete’s talk about. For me, exercise is just sweat and muscle aches, and I don’t enjoy either of those things.
Now rationally, I know that exercise is good for my body and that is why I do it. But I am certainly not passionate about it. And if you invite me to breakfast any day next week, I’ll happily skip my exercise hour. In short, while I know its important, I am not deeply committed to taking action on a daily basis.
If you are working through this process of writing your personal purpose statement, this week I challenge you to examine your actual conviction and commitment to acting on your purpose. Writing it down is the easy part. Doing your purpose requires action.
“To believe in something, and not live it, is dishonest.”~ Mahatma Ghandi
Your purpose is like any other goal in your life. If you write it and put it in a drawer, it will never be accomplished. So if it really matters to you, if you believe it, you must live it. That means, put your purpose action plan on your daily calendar, or you won’t see any benefit of it. So today I ask you this: Have you decided on the 3-4 action items you want to implement to fully express your purpose? Are those action steps booked on your calendar?
Let me give you an example. If your purpose is to mentor future women leaders, you need to decide who you will mentor, confirm their interest in being mentored, and schedule the first meeting to understand their goals for the mentoring process. Until you take these action steps, your purpose is not being expressed.
Steven Covey used to do an amazing visual presentation in his Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People seminars.
He would show a large glass vase filled with small pebbles all the way to the top and he would explain that most of us fill up our days with lots of small pebbles the urgent, unimportant things of life.
He would then dump out all the pebbles and put 3-4 large rocks in the glass vase. He would explain, put your most import, non-urgent priorities in your calendar first, before all the urgent things use up all your time.
Then he proceeds to pour the small pebbles in the vase and they fall in around those big rocks. And somehow, they still fit in the vase. The point? Do the big rocks first.
“What is urgent is seldom important, what is important is seldom urgent.”~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Your purpose is the biggest rock you put in your glass vase; your most important priority. If you want to actually act on your purpose, it must go on your calendar first, before all other pebbles.
Try this for the next 30-days, on Sunday night, read your purpose statement, look at your purpose action plans, and make sure they are booked on your calendar.