I spend so much of my time doing things to try and get noticed. Promote, promote, promote. With my new book coming out soon, I feel the pressure to make myself seen and heard all the more intensely.
Yet, truth be told, most days I feel quite alone. I make the effort to reach out and to connect, but I don’t hear or feel the response.
And here’s the truth of the matter: If I were to just focus on the real purpose behind what I do, I wouldn’t have to try so hard at all.
A few weeks ago I interviewed Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents and author of The Flinch
That’s actually the truth. And if you are on purpose, if you are writing, working, speaking, networking, whatever, from your heart, doing what you are meant to do–and doing it well, your message will touch people in a way that makes them want to spread the word. You will get heard and noticed.
You won’t feel like you are working in a vacuum. You won’t feel like you aren’t really communicating.
So, the big question becomes: What’s the real purpose behind what you do? In other words, why do you do what you do? Do you feel a sense of mission? Do you want to help others? Would you like to provide a solution to a problem?
If all you want to do is earn money, accrue a huge amount of cash in the bank, no one will probably listen to you–or share anything that you have to say. You’ll still be all alone at the end of the day.
If you do it just to get more people to like you or to buy your product, you’ll still be alone at the end of the day.
But if you want to give to others, to share your knowledge, to help in some way…that’s different.
The Kabbalists tell us that’s the real purpose of being here–to give, to share. Everything we create should be shared in some way.
So, I’m rethinking what I’ve been doing lately. Getting quieter. Going back to the core purpose behind my actions…trying to fulfill my purpose. Doing what I was meant to do in the way I was meant to do it…and sharing as I go.
It’s easy to get off track in this harried world we live in where we are tethered to our phones and social media, never wanting anyone to forget where we are, what we are doing, where we are going, or what we might be thinking. They might forget us. We might end up alone. We might end up with less friends or followers than someone else. No one might see or hear us. That’s not a good enough reason to keep doing what we do.
What about you? What’s the real purpose behind what you do?
You wrote:
“Yet, truth be told, most days I feel quite alone. I make the effort to reach out and to connect, but I don’t hear or feel the response.”
OMG!!! That could have been written by me. Indeed, I have written (and said) something very similar to that for many years.
You concluded with:
“What about you? What’s the real purpose behind what you do?”
For most of my adult life, my answer had been that I do for others (in career life, personally, and in volunteerism activities) because I desired to have a positive and lasting effect upon those around me and upon the community in order to make it a better place for future generations. Nowadays, my answer is The purpose of what I do is to provide myself with self-satisfaction in and of itself. Self-actualization might be the appropriate term.
Ronald,
How honest…self-satisfaction and self-actualization. This takes me back a bit to my last post. We are pushed to grow and to move forward. We do what we do almost because we must, no? I write what I write because I feel a sense of purpose and a desire to help others–to inspire them to create and to fulfill their purpose and achieve results. Underneath it all, though, I write because I want to. I write because it fulfill me. I write because I know something and I have the need to say what I know. In doing so, I share it.
Maybe that is God or a higher Source pushing us to share…Pushing us to do for more than ourselves, to be less self-absorbed. But even when we share, give, in the end we feel better, we receive. It can become about us.
Nina