Tina Turner asked "What's love got to do with it?" Let's take that theme to your business: you keep hearing about life purpose, maybe you even know yours...but what does it really have to do with your business? In this article, we will discuss the top 5 reasons your life purpose MUST be at the center of your business...or you risk going OUT of business as the new economy emerges!
1. It leads to your life's work. Whether you realize it consciously or not, your life purpose is the central message and issue you are here on the planet to express and grow through. I like the way Sanaya Roman describes the relationship between this and your "life's work" in her book Spiritual Growth: "We will call the process of evolving yourself your 'life purpose,' and the service you came to offer humanity your 'life's work.' They are intertwined, because as you serve others you will naturally evolve yourself...everything you do to evolve yourself and carry out your life's work is an act of aligning with...your Higher Self." So without knowing your life purpose, you are unlikely to discover the work you are truly meant to do - including the business through which you are designed to offer it.
2. It aligns your energy with that of your ideal customers. Everything is energy at its essence - including your attitude toward your work, every interaction, every product and program. When your business is on purpose, everything you do emanates from it - and the people you attract have complementary life purposes and life's work to do also. So you get to play the game of life - and business - together! A purposeful business becomes magnetic to the perfect people that it is meant to serve...and leads to wonderfully rewarding, fulfilling interactions with customers and clients as a result.
3. It is essential for maximum fulfillment at work. Whether you work as an employee or as an entrepreneur, work without purpose is literally like a day without sunshine. This is one of the primary reasons for the TGIF syndrome - "just get me through till Friday and I can do what I want to," people exclaim. Work without purpose is empty, just a long series of same-old, same-old, endless to-do lists, and no end in sight. By contrast, work which is an expression of your life purpose becomes a series of conversations, interactions, opportunities to serve, and events that carry forward what you most want your life to be about: purpose-based work. The sense of fulfillment seems unbelievable at first...but it is in fact the way we were designed to express through our work.
4. Your products and services - as well as business decisions - naturally flow from it. Unless the hub of your business is your purpose, you will struggle and strain about what products and services to offer next...and if you are like most business owners from the former era of entrepreneurship, your decisions will be based solely on which sell the best, which will generate the most reven_ue, or what is easiest to create. Again, there is an emptiness in this approach! Instead, if you use your life purpose statement as the filter to determine which projects or clients to accept, which product or other program to create next, and the like, it becomes effortless. And as stated in principle 2 above, your customers will also love them and your bottom line benefits without your having to unduly focus on it.
5. It provides a "greater good" and a "larger meaning" to the business' everyday activities. When all is said and done, what does your business really contribute to the world? When you die, will the planet be better in some way because of the work you did through your business? If your business is an outgrowth of your life purpose, the answers to these questions will reflect it.
