Having regular video conversations with my friend David L. Smith we often touch on deep concepts that inform and enrich many of the ideas shared here in the DEEPER side of things, and recently we were having one of those conversations in which I felt compelled to capture some of his quotes to share with you on the understanding of purpose and mission.
Maria and I have been helping small business people develop vision and mission statements for some years now, taking a page from Simon Sinek’s book Start with WHY: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action in which he describes vision as an underlying belief that drives our passion for the work we do, while mission is the thing we uniquely do to achieve the ideal implicit in our vision. We call it finding our secret sauce — that way of doing things that only we can do the way we do.
I can read books, take courses, and learn skills to emulate how others do things, but if I’m striving to embody my authentic self I will employ my uniqueness such that my approach is well, mine, and will never truly be like how others do them. This uniqueness — our own approach — is our mission.
And with this understanding we’ve been helping clients find their secret sauce and articulate their vision and mission in compelling and inspiring ways.
Enter my recent conversation with David in which he said, “Purpose relates to a being state, where mission relates to doing. And our purpose is fulfilled by our mission.” The last part of his quote is perfectly in line with Simon Sinek’s approach, and ours, but the first part of this quote hit me as an important addition to the process of discovering our unique truth — that “purpose relates to a being state.”
It reminds me of the popularized chorus from numerous songs of the 1960s in which polka-dotted and bell-bottomed performers danced to the words, “Do, be, do, be, do…”
We do, and then we be, and then we do, and then we be.
Some have asked, are we human beings or human doings?
The truth is that we are both — we achieve, and then we be, and then we do again.
Maria and I recently watched the Star Wars Series the Book of Boba Fett in which a wonderful quote from The Armorer jumped off the screen and required that I pause and re-run it so I could capture it. The quote is, “Persistence without insight will lead to the same outcome.”
The implication is that if we only do, without time to pause (and be) so that we may gain insight, then we’ll continue to achieve the same result.
Another quote from Einstein echoes this notion when he said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
David, by the way, has written numerous books, produced many noted documentaries, and writes several blogs, including this one. He’s retired and spends much of his time in a state of being, which engenders a constant flow of insight. Thus our conversations are often rich and meaningful.
He went on to say, “We know our mission is true and we’re on course when what we do brings joy.” This echoes the notion that we have only to follow our passions and the money will come.
Easier said than done of course, because, as David also said, “Every one of us, no matter who we are, no matter what level of consciousness, we are here to be uniquely who we are. The problem is that most of us never attempt to understand who we truly are.”
Herein lies the challenge. The pursuit of authenticity is not baked into our culture. In fact, it’s the opposite. We measure ourselves by comparison to others and social media has reinforced it times 100.
Some people post selfies of their best look with lips puckered, and dozens, maybe hundreds, like, love, and comment how beautiful they are and suddenly everyone’s posting puckering selfies. There are classes offered on how you can grow your social media following, by (of course) following the trends and doing it like others.
Then along comes Brandon Stanton and his creation, Humans of New York to show us a completely different way of creating a following — with his own unique brand of uniqueness — celebrating humans for just being human. He stumbled upon his unique approach at a low time in his life after being laid off, living on a friend’s sofa, he just started photographing regular people of New York. Later he began capturing quotes from his subjects, and today he has a larger online following than the New York Times.
“Purpose relates to being, while mission relates to doing,” David said. It’s the doing where we can either emulate others or find our own secret sauce. And when we find joy in the doing we know we’re on the right track. David suggests that we seek to contact our being state through meditation by asking, “Divine intelligence to allow you to speak with the deepest part of you, the soul, the part that is still resonating with divine intelligence. And then be quiet, and just hold. Wait.”
This is the kind of meditation that may take a few years to reach, as most everyone (myself included) find ourselves observing an endless stream of random thoughts before they wind down like a giant flywheel that slowly loses momentum. And it’s in the quietude that results when the flywheel slows that we reach the deepest part of ourselves.
Reaching our deepest part we can then ask the question: What is my purpose? Why am I here? And see what emerges from the stillness.
We can repeat the process over a period of weeks, months, or even years until we feel like we’ve found it. David also suggests that when we find our purpose that we never share it with anyone as it’s too personal and can lose some of its energy if we share it.
I almost wonder if the problem with sharing our purpose lies (in part) with the fact that when we arrive at the true core of it, that it will be roughly similar to everyone else, as we are all connected and there is only one true purpose.
But I’ll leave that for another conversation.
Happy Sunday everyone and thank you for reading.
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I appreciate your conversation and the clarity around being and doing. I especially enjoyed the quote:
“Persistence without insight will lead to the same outcome.”