I have been thinking a lot recently about purpose and why having a sense of purpose is so integral to understanding what motivates and helps us to achieve our goals in our personal and professional life. When I’m curious about something I start to do a little bit of research on it and my interest around defining a purpose was deepened after reading this quote:

“I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

In his early life Gandhi was a lawyer but we probably know him best as a political and spiritual leader, who was honoured in India as the father of the nation.

From this statement it’s clear that Gandhi’s sense of purpose was far bigger than him, he wanted to make things better for others and to do this his overriding sense of purpose was to resist tyranny through mass nonviolent civil disobedience (www.youthforhumanrights.org) even if he had to suffer pain to be heard.

When I read it I could clearly see what it was that got him out of bed in the morning, and it left me wondering - how do we define our own sense of purpose if it isn’t quite as humanitarian or political as Ghandis’?

Defining your purpose

Purpose can be defined as “the reason for which something is done or for which something exists”. Purpose can simply be things like, having a sense of family, giving back to the community, helping others or prioritising fitness over anything else you do.

I’ve come to recognise that in my earlier career, my sense of purpose was intrinsically linked to my vocation as a way of making my work more meaningful and satisfying. For example:

When I worked at:

• Sage Plc – I pioneered an entry level product, called Sage Instant, because I was passionate about giving small businesses a practical and simple way to help run their business more effectively and efficiently.

• Newcastle Building Society – I believed all savers and borrowers were entitled to plain English communication to help them understand how their money was being looked after.

• NewcastleGateshead Initiative - I truly believed, and still do today, that our city and the wider North East is a great place to live, work, study and visit.

• Entrepreneurs’ Forum – I wanted to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses by being part of a movement that would help to inspire, share knowledge and connect them to an ecosystem they could not get anywhere else.

That vocational sense of purpose helped get me out of bed in the morning and with that central motivating aim, I was able to influence behaviours, shape my goals, offer a sense of direction for my people and most of all, create meaning to what we were trying to achieve. With that focus came the goals and the outcomes as well as the success.

The role of purpose in businesses

Post pandemic, I am finding more and more people that I speak to are searching for their renewed purpose after a long period of reflection; and it isn’t just them as individuals, it’s also the businesses they work for. People are looking for more clarity as a way of them understanding how they add value as they want to find a purpose in their role, and they also want time to develop their personal purpose as part of their quest for a better work life balance.

We often look to great brands and wonder how they define their own purpose, and for those who are good at it you don’t have to dig too deep to see it. If we take Dove as an example of a purposeful brand, we can see it is doing something far more than selling soap for hygiene reasons. It is using its brand to help improve self-esteem of girls worldwide and through their communications and movement you can learn more about why this is an important issue to support.

On a more local level, this week I had the pleasure of listening to Lisa Eaton, founder and MD of Unwritten Group, who shared her renewed sense of purpose through her new adventure at Fabric Academy. At Fabric the team aim to help ambitious marketers to thrive, to share knowledge and receive fast track, upskilling tools to help accelerate their careers. But her purpose goes much wider than that. Lisa could see that marketing was changing at such a pace there was no training in the marketplace that could give a marketeer what they needed in the shortest time possible. Her personal sense of purpose to help her navigate her incredibly busy life managing work, kids and family is to simply only do the things that you want to do and start learning to say ‘no’. It took a pandemic for her to realise that and since practicing this she has never looked back.

A couple of weeks ago, I was also lucky to see Hilary Clinton live in conversation with David Miliband at Harton Academy, South Shields. I shed a tear in excitement and in awe; for me this was more than Hilary walking through the door, this was someone whose over riding sense of purpose is to protect ‘democracy’, and with every answer she gave this purpose was clearly at the heart.

I have recently revised my personal purpose to help bring focus to what I am trying to achieve in my current chapter.

I want to use my coaching skills to inspire the next generation of leaders, help them to understand how they can motivate and enable their own people to do well, whilst wrapped in an environment of care and trust.

My personal purpose is similar as it is anchored around always being available to helping family and friends and the many rogue connections I collect on a daily basis. Yet when I dug deeper, I found that a key personal purpose was to stay fit and have access to fitness and the outdoors each day. I realised this was critical for me as when I can’t get access, I am incredibly frustrated and not the best version of myself on that day.

My vocation and personal purpose help me to feel motivated each day and excited by every conversation I have.

I end this blog with another quote and wish you good luck in defining your own sense of purpose.

"S/he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

- Friedrich Nietzche 

If you are interested in finding out more about how coaching can help you to define your purpose, please drop me an email on  nicola@oncoaching.co.uk