Purposeful

Why You Should Read This Book There are plenty of books out there about how you can achieve great wealth, build a multi-million dollar business, or live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. This isn’t one of them. If becoming rich and famous is what you want, that's great. I think ambition and dreaming big are a good thing. So if you want to conquer the world, good for you and this book will help you. But many people don’t want that much. More money might be part of it – constant financial worries are no fun - but often it's more that people want to feel there's a point to it all apart from the daily grind of working to put food on the table and to have a table to put food on. What drives us as human beings above all else, is that we want to feel good about ourselves. We want to feel wanted and needed and important to someone else. We want to feel respected. We want to feel that our lives are worth something, that we're making a contribution of some sort. There has to be some meaning, a purpose to our existence. As Michael Steger Ph. D. wrote in Psychology Today (31 March 2009), research has taught us that: "If your life feels meaningful, you're much more likely to feel pleasing emotions like love, joy, and vitality. On top of that, you're more likely to be satisfied with your life, and more accepting and satisfied with yourself. In addition, you're more likely to feel like you have an active hand in shaping your own life, and are likely looking forward to a bright future." Bear in mind, this wanting to feel good about ourselves doesn't necessarily mean everyone wants to be a good person. For some that sense of respect and purpose comes from the opposite, to feel important because people fear them; they like to feel a sense of power over others. But I hope that's not the case for you. I think having a purpose for good rather than bad leads to a far more fulfilling life. And I believe in karma. I believe you reap what you sow. If you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword. So what is it for you? I assume you're reading this book for a reason. What are you looking for? Perhaps you're just setting out in life and you're not sure what direction you should be going in. Perhaps the kids have left home and you're not sure what's next. Maybe you want to re-start a career, or try a completely new path in life, or just do something for yourself rather than doing everything for the family. But what to do and how? Or perhaps you're one of those people who seem to have it all – no real financial problems, a loving family, a great lifestyle. And yet it feels like something's missing. Perhaps it's just that you want to feel more in control of your life – in today's world it can often seem that life's circumstances, or other people, control us completely. But that only happens if we let it. There's no magic cure-all. If there was, no-one would have any problems and life would be very boring. But I promise you this book will help you make real changes in your life if you follow the process it outlines and actually implement what is suggested. The doing is crucial. Just thinking and planning won’t change anything. And the point is, as I'm sure you've heard before, if you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got. So if you want to change things for yourself, don’t just sit there - do something! Reading this book is a good start. Take a Little Time to Think We live in a 1,000 kilometre per hour world. Our lives pass us by at a frantic pace and for many of us it's all so busy and full on we don’t even see it happening. It's hard to find time to stop and think. Then, very often, life gives us a little nudge to say: "Whoa! Stop and think, buddy." Sometimes life gets so frustrated with us that it gives us a hefty smack, as if to say: "You don't want to listen? Okay, I'll make you listen!" Maybe we get sick, or someone in the family does and we have to re-think things. That's what happened to me. Or maybe we're made redundant from the job we've been in for 10 years. Or maybe we wake up one day, find the kids have left home and we realise we're not needed quite as much we used to be. Where's it all going? What's the point now? Don't ignore the little nudges. Don’t leave it so long that life whacks you so hard it really hurts. Do something about it. What harm can it do just to take a little time to think about it all and make a few changes? In fact, it won’t really take up very much of your time at all to work it out and do something. After all, the majority of us devote the greater part of our own lives to working on our employer's life. So why not take a little time to think about your own life for a change? I have nothing against employers and nothing against being an employee. I've been both for significant periods of my working life. But being an employee doesn’t mean you relinquish your ability or right to find meaning in what you spend most of your time doing. You may find this hard to accept, but it's an inescapable truth: if you feel stuck in your current circumstances, or unfulfilled in some way, the reason is that you simply haven’t given it enough thought or done enough to make things different. In our time-poor world it often seems difficult to find time to sit and reflect. But consider this: we spend hours, even days, planning our next holiday, but most of us spend very little, if any, time thinking about what sort of person we are, or want to be, and what sort of life we want to live. And even if we make time to think about our own lives, we seldom get round to actually doing anything about it. Maybe that's because it’s too confronting. Change sounds scary and perhaps hard work, so it's something many of us avoid. But the rest of your life could be a hugely satisfying journey if you just took the plunge. So dive in. The water's not cold. I think you'll find it's not that scary or hard. Once you get into the swing of it, you'll find it's actually fun, exciting and incredibly rewarding. This book will make your thinking and doing much easier. It's designed to be a personal manual for you. It'll help you get to know yourself better, work out what will give you a sense of purpose, direction and fulfilment every day, change the way you think about yourself (in a positive way) and, in the end, it'll help you be the sort of person you want and need to be. Then it will show you how, by spending just a small amount of time on this, you can stay on track to live life on your own terms, a life of purpose, direction and fulfilment. And no, you won’t necessarily have to leave the safety of your current job to do it, unless you want to.