Align Your Life Purpose with Your Business for Greater Impact, Profits and Fulfillment.
I believe in the power of branding on both a personal and professional level. When your life purpose and business focus are aligned, you can create an incredibly high-impact brand that changes the lives of others while bringing you unbelievable levels of fulfillment and happiness.
Sure, you can do good work in a business that isn’t perfectly aligned… but you’re always going to feel like something is missing. You’ll feel drained at the end of the day and you’ll find yourself on a roller coaster of ups and downs, with the downs becoming more prominent. You won’t feel motivated and you won’t feel fulfilled.
When you’re in alignment, not only will you begin to produce GREAT work, but you will find yourself buzzing with raw inspiration and energy around the clock! You will LOVE your clients, marketing your business, creating content and you’ll LOVE diving into each and EVERY work day. Monday will lose all meaning and you’ll find it hard to shut down and not work all day and all night.
How to determine your purpose in life.
1) Get Clear on Your Personal Values
Our personal values clearly define what we consider to be important, meaningful and essential in our lives. If you value integrity, then you don’t believe in telling a lie of any size, you never disregard the law and you believe in being a fair, honorable person. If you value innovation, then you believe in thinking outside of the box, constantly pushing limits and high-level, creative thinking.
You need to be 100% clear on your personal values if you’re going to discover your purpose and successfully align it with your business.
Action Step ›› List out all of the words you feel best represent your personal values. Narrow down this list to 3 – 5 values that are absolutely indisputable and are, in your eyes, essential to the way you live your daily life. Some example words include integrity, timeliness, compassion, creativity, innovation, community, respect, honor, service, etc.
2) Listen to Your Inner Voice
While it does take practice, learning to listen to your inner voice and truth is not impossible. In my experience, your inner voice will speak to you about your purpose or passions in what I like to call simple truths. Simple truths are simple statements that pop into your head over and over, to which you don’t respond with rejection, disbelief or even acknowledgment.
Simple truths will start out as passing thoughts that will make you pause. The longer you ignore these truths, the more frequent they will become! They will begin to tug at your heart and cause you a great deal of distraction as they turn from small to LOUD and nagging.
If you want to find your true purpose in life, you have to learn to listen to those simple truths.
Action Step ›› Make note of the simple truths that have been popping into your head for some time. Remember that these will be things you don’t necessarily argue against or believe at the time they occur. The ones that pull at your heart are usually the most telling.
3) Get REAL and be HONEST!
For just a moment, stop worrying about what everyone else expects of you, what you think you should be doing or what makes the most sense. What do you really, REALLY want to do with your life? What do you feel CALLED to create in the world? When you envision your ideal life, what are you doing? Where are you and who are you with?
This isn’t as easy as it sounds… You may find that your answer continues to change the more you think about it. And that’s AWESOME because the more times you attempt to truthfully answer this question, the closer you’re getting to discovering your true purpose in life.
If the answer to this question doesn’t make every single cell in your body burst with excitement, emotion or intense flutters of fear and KNOWING, then you’re not there yet. And if you don’t REALLY know what it means to feel those things in every single cell of your body, then you most definitely aren’t there yet. Because when you know, YOU KNOW.
Action Step ›› Answer the question, “What do you really, REALLY want to do with your life?” until every cell in your body screams in excitement or you burst into tears of joy and relief (or fear :D). Go. And don’t wimp out on this one, it’s the most important part.
Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on this post!
How to Turn Your Greatest Passion or Biggest Idea into a Profitable, High-Impact Business
When you’re passionate about a cause or making the world a better place, it can be hard to envision how you’ll create a profitable business around that. Sure, you’re enthusiastic about it, but just because you love to talk endlessly about the topic, devour every book on the subject and drive your family and friends insane, doesn’t mean it’s a viable business… right? WRONG.
I don’t care if you’re passionate about health, animals, the environment or educating underprivileged kids, you can absolutely build a business around it. By themselves, your passion and ideas are enough qualification to build a profitable, high-impact and fulfilling business.
Where you’re passionate you flow. Where you flow you sell.
You can make decent money doing a lot of different things in this world, as I’m sure you’re well aware. However, if you want to make massive quantities of money while doing what you love then you need to get honest with yourself about what really lights you up inside.
From my own personal experience, I know this is not always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes it’s hard to admit to yourself or anyone else what you really, REALLY want to do. It’s time to shed your fears and discard all internal and external expectations because you’ve got lives to change!
If you didn’t have to worry about what your partner thought, what bills you need to pay and what people would think of you if you quit your cushy job or went in the complete opposite direction of your hard-earned and expensive degree… what would you LOVE to do all day, every day WHILE making an unbelievable income?
Here’s a huge hint: The one area where you find yourself with fire in the belly, emotional and with endless things to say is usually where you’re true passion lies. When you’re on this topic you’re in the flow. Where you flow, you have to power to change lives, sell solutions and make an enormous impact in the world. Where do you flow?
Look for inspiration in someone else’s business model.
Once you’re clear on where your passion lies, you may not be clear on how to build a successful business around it. Because you’re so knowledgeable on the subject, you sometimes have a hard time stepping back and seeing all the amazing gifts YOU have to give to others who are less educated and in desperate need of your wisdom and guidance.
Maybe you love talking about animal rights or health and fitness. Maybe you want to help underprivileged kids learn about science and the environment. Whatever your passion is, there’s a profitable business model to support it, along with endless ways to pair it with your skills and interests.
When it comes to other companies and entrepreneur’s businesses, you can find inspiration by looking “under the hood” of their model. Are they giving talks and lectures? Holding workshops? Creating programs that go into local schools or community centers? Are they developing information products or holding webinars? Did they write a book? Whatever they’re doing, make note of the parts and pieces that get you excited and fit well with what you’re most passionate about communicating to the world.
Write… and then write a whole lot more.
One of my favorite business tools is my journal. When I’m looking to tease out a new idea, I like to write first thing in the morning, every single day, and aim for three written pages. By writing longhand, you slow down and move yourself into a space that allows for inspiration, ideas and brillance to flow.
If you’re not sure how to build a business model around your passion, grab yourself a notebook and get to work. You can start by asking yourself, the question from above, “What would I love to do all day, every day?” With journaling, the key is to let your answers flow out unedited. Write exactly what comes to mind no matter how petty, incomplete or random it feels. When you let the clutter spill out onto the page, you’re making room for clarity to come.
As you write, you’ll start to feel lighter and excited. Little idea buds will pop up and you’ll start to see a clearer picture of the many exciting ways you can make money talking about the things that bring you joy and fulfillment.
Take small steps forward. RIGHT NOW.
Every successful business started with the first step. While your grand vision may be overwhelming, seem out of reach or appear to be incomplete and slightly blurred… the first step is anything but. It’s simple and it’s the needed action that will move you closer to bringing your vision to life.
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
What is one small step you will commit to taking RIGHT NOW that will help move you forward?
Let’s connect! :)
