Purpose, Values, Vision, Outcomes/Actions
By Bob Bostrom
“What is the point of it all?” “Why am I here?” “What am I doing in this college program?” “Who am I really and where do I fit into all of this?” Inner voices that asked these questions grow louder and more compelling. Events occur in the world that raise these questions. Sooner or later we must embark on an inner and outer journey to answer them and find or refind our direction and focus. This exercise is designed to help you on this journey by getting you to explore your purpose and core values.
Purpose is what compels us to take a stand, to act with such conviction that we may surprise ourselves, and ultimately, it is what fulfills us. We live from purpose at times without even knowing it. Without being aware of your purpose, life is at best incomplete, at worst futile. Our sense of purpose is what connects us to ourselves and to all of life. Purpose is at the root or center of everything we do.
As Figure 1 (see next page) indicates, both our purpose and our values live deep inside us and each provides a kind of root or anchor for our life journey. Values or highly valued criteria live in the heart and reflect what matters most to us, what is most important in our lives. Uncovering the themes and patterns that run through our lives, while vision is a projection of these themes and patterns into the future can unearth purpose and values. Your purpose and values can be expressed in many forms. This is where vision comes into the picture. Vision allows you to build a bridge between your sense of purpose or mission and the world you live in (the day to day outcomes and actions you achieve). Your vision describes what it is you want to create, what you want, your desired realities. The daily actions you take, the outcomes you set and achieve help you achieve the higher level outcomes reflected in your vision, values, and purpose. If vision is the “what ”, purpose and values are the “why”, the motivations behind visions and actions
In a sense, purpose and values provide a road map for your entire life. Vision(s) provide a more detailed roadmap for different phases or contexts in your life. Large visions (like those of Martin Luther King and Gandhi) might take a lifetime or more to realized. Many of us might complete one vision and move on to another. Others might have different visions for different parts of our lives (professional, family, etc.). Although you might switch jobs and the work you are doing (your actions) is very different, you can usually see how it relates to your purpose and values, which endure over time. Purpose and values are the common thread running through all you create and achieve over the course of your life.
The image of the tree helps illustrate these relationships. Vision is like the branches of the tree, reaching into the sky, the unknown. Values are the roots of the tree, reaching down deep into the Earth, our source, connecting who we are now with who we have been. Roots provide the tree with nourishment as it grows and keep its footing in the face of winds, rain or other turmoil in the environment. In this sense, values provide a solid foundation for living with vision. The trunk of the tree can represent purpose, which is at your very center. To be balanced, you need to be connected to your purpose, your center, letting your values provide a foundation and your vision provides a direction for your actions.
What Is Personal Purpose?
A running joke these days has become, “How much does it cost to buy a purpose?" Where can I get one?” We tend to treat purpose as a thing or object -- something you are lacking and get rather than something you already have and rediscover. You may have been more aware of a sense of purpose as a child, keenly aware of what you loved, what mattered, and what moved you to act. As you grew older you might have been taught that the things that mattered to you didn’t really matter. Money, career, looking good and doing it right became more important than enjoying the feeling of sunshine on your face as you sat in a field or wondering about the future of the Earth as a real estate developers took over the field.
Somehow purpose changed from a sense of passion, attraction and aliveness to an intellectual construct quite confusing to the mind. I hope to demystify personal purpose and, through words and exercises, to create a mirror in which you can rediscover what you already know.
Purpose gives you an anchor and a focus for your life (a sense of direction).
Purpose provides a context out of which we make choices, take action, invest time, money, and personal energy. As the world changes around you, purpose provides a sense of constancy and continuity. It is something to hold on to and direct you at those times when there’s nothing to grasp, when daily life, job, relationships, home or sense of self are in transition.
Purpose enables you to create ways of living and working that are fulfilling and sustainable.
Purpose becomes a screen through which to filter your activities and choices and a foundation on which to build your future.
Purpose reminds you that life is a journey, a process.
Your understanding of who you are and what you will become is constantly unfolding.
Purpose encourages you to acknowledge that there is something greater than yourself.
In our hearts most of us want to make a difference, to contribute in some way to the greater good. Acknowledge that you are part of something larger than yourself, that all is interconnected.
I feel strongly that the call for purpose is part of our evolution to adulthood as a species. In our adolescence we focused our attention on ourselves and didn’t give a lot of thought to the world around us. As conscious/compassionate adults, we are being forced to extend our vision beyond our personal lives and to take responsibility for our relationship with other living creatures and the world around us.
Purpose is at the root of being conscious/compassionate people. While we have always known that our minds, our ability to think, differentiated us from other living beings, we also have the power to create and destroy life like no other species can. At this phase in our evolution, with the future of life on Earth at stake, I feel we are being asked to cooperate with the evolutionary direction -- call it life, God or nature. Purpose helps us define what we can do individually and collectively in order to collaborate, to work in partnership with the larger creative impulse that is life.
Personal Purpose and Meaningful Work
Without work, all life goes rotten -
but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
- Albert Camus
What is work? In our society work is often defined as a job or an occupation -- something you do, a role you play. We often think of it as a burden, a necessary evil, something separate from real life. We usually don’t bring our whole selves to work but instead put on a professional identity mask. This experience often stifles the human spirit and limits our ability to live true to ourselves. Work becomes empty and purposeless.
In living with purpose the experience of work is not separate from life but is central to it. Work is one of the ways you express your personal purpose and values in the world. In this sense, work is both purposeful and meaningful. Work is what you do because you want to do it, because you love it, and because you feel compelled to. The work setting is one place in which you create and express your purpose and values-- where you can make a difference.
At the heart of meaningful work is the contribution one makes to the greater good. While self-expression and personal gratification are part of meaningful work, both are limited when done in isolation. We are part of society/world and affected by it no matter how hard we try to ignore this or build a nest of security to protect us from our surroundings. Each of us can be agents to create a better world.
Many of us shirk at the thought of being a change agent. Perhaps the task seems too big. “What can I do?” you may ask. Perhaps the thought is too scary. Ironically, making a difference, being an agent of change, is a simple and natural process. You make the biggest difference by being the person you truly are as you go through your daily routine. As I stated in the syllabus for this course:
Many people would argue that we are in need of a global mind change, especially regarding the role of business and management. But how do we create a global mind change? We do that right here, starting with ourselves. The best we can possibly do is change ourselves and when we have started that process of reflection and change within ourselves the rest of the world will start to follow. The responsibility lies within. If we change our minds about whom we are then we start to see and create this world that we live in quite differently. I challenge you to make a commitment and to use this course (this exercise) to discover more about who you are and how you will enact the role of a leader, manager, and team member in a way that helps create a world people really want to live in.
Finding Your Personal Purpose
We live our lives out of certain truths. If you look at who you have been and what you have done you will discover threads running through your life representing consistent and essential patterns or themes. We each have a song that we sing throughout our lives everywhere we go, in all we do. We sing the song in different ways at different times; yet, in essence, the song is the same. Just because you don’t always remember the tune doesn’t meant it isn’t there or that you can’t sing it. The search for personal purpose is to become familiar with your own voice, and what you express when you sing. The search begins inside of you.
Preparation
Get into a comfortable position. Close your eyes and take a deep breath and relax. Take a few moments can just pay attention to your breath, the air coming in your nostrils as you inhale; the air going out of your nostrils as you exhale. And whenever you feel ready, take a moment to listen to your heart. See if you can feel it beating in your chest. Take a moment to become familiar with your heart, feel your pulse beating in your heart, in your arms, in your hands. Take a moment to find your pulse, your own natural rhythm.
Exercise
Allow yourself to locate the child who still lives inside of you. Ask the child within to join with the adult you are today and answer the following questions:
What have you always loved?
What have you always known, even before you knew anything?
What has always felt true?
What has always come naturally to you?
What have you always cared about?
What parts of yourself do you keep coming back to again and again over the years?
What things seem to always motivate you and give you meaning?
What would be really important to you, no matter how the world around you changed?
Describe something you have always really liked to do. Then ask, “What does that do for you?” repeatedly with previous answers, until you get to something core, building an upward outcome chain. Example: “Playing team sports, “what does playing team sports do for me?...”
Take as much time as you need to sit with these questions. When you are ready, create an image that symbolizes your sense of purpose, why you are here, the truest, most, most basic, essential part of you.
When finished, very slowly and gently, at your own pace, take a deep breath and bring your focus back into the room. When you open your eyes, draw a picture that represents your sense of purpose, title it, and make some notes about your answers to the questions you have just explored.
Some tips about this exercise:
If you didn’t come up with an image during the exercise don’t be discouraged. See if you can make one up as you start recording your thoughts. Draw a picture of the image in color if possible. This is a way to continue the process after you open your eyes. See if a picture emerges as you put pen to paper. Colors as well as words and symbols express your experience. Record your questions and frustrations as well as your insight. All are part of the process.
Your outcome is to take your insights (words and pictures) and draft an answer to the questions:
Why am I here?
What is my reason for being?
What is my mission and direction?
This answer will be your statement of purpose.
This exercise can be done periodically. I would suggest doing it at least twice before you write up your purpose. Reflecting on these questions over time invites new insights and memories to emerge.
Understanding Our Values:
Getting to the Root of the Matter
While the concept of values has been around for a long time, understanding what values are seems elusive. You can talk about them intellectually, engage in philosophical discussions, and yet struggle as you try to unearth them in your own life.
Methods for discovering and applying personal values often come up short because we look to the world around us rather than to our hearts for meaning. Most simply, values are what really matter to us, what is most important and essential. They help us understand our sense of purpose and enable us to feel connected to ourselves. Values clarify who you are and what you stand for. Your words and actions reflect your values.
It is clear from the leadership research that developing a community of shared values is critical to success. This means leaders need to be able to articulate their vision and values. The starting point is knowing your own values. The next exercise helps you discover and clarify your values.
Exercise
This exercise is designed to unearth what is at your core, to discover your values by probing what really matters. You can do it alone, but it is best done with a partner. Because the exercise examines what you loved and hated about the jobs you have had, it clarifies what you need for your work to be an expression of your purpose.
Step 1: Choose a work situation you would like to explore. You can include your current job as well as any past jobs. Both paid and unpaid work counts. Projects and programs count; so does being a parent. Write the name of the job, the time period you had it and the organization you are/were part of at the top of a piece of paper.
Step 2: Choose three things you love or really like about the job, and three things you don’t like about the job. Write each of these down on the piece of paper as indicated in Figure 2.
FIGURE 2
Name of Job: Clinical PsychologistTime Period I Had Job: 1978-1981
Organization: St. John’s Hospital
Three Things I Loved/Liked / Three Things I Didn’t Love/Disliked
1. Helping people / 1. The politics (people were dishonest, etc.)
2. Working with children / 2. I had to deal with too many clients
3. Great colleagues / 3. Low pay
Step 3: The basic procedure you’re now going to use is the same whether you are working alone or with a partner. Choose one of the items you love or one of the items you didn’t like that you want to probe. If you are working with a partner, give him your piece of paper so he can ask the questions and record your answers. If you are working alone, you will record your own answers.
The things you liked are usually outcome statements, and thus, you can use the “up” question (“ do for you?”) continually to discover values. It is like you are building a chain to the top of a personal outcome map. You will stop asking the question when it feels like there is really no more to say (no answer). This is the top of your map or the root of things. It will be one of your values or highly-valued criterion. Here is a sample dialogue using this approach:
1Q. What does helping people do for you?
1A. It allows me to build relationships with them and to make a difference for people.
2Q. What does making a difference for people do for you?
2A. By contributing to their growth, I am contributing to the whole. It makes me feel part of the whole.
3Q. What does being part of the whole do for you?
3A. Really nothing, it is just part of who I am to feel wholeness or unity.