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What Makes Purpose So Powerful?
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” (John F. Kennedy)
If growth and development take place from the bottom up — from physical to emotional to mental to spiritual — change is powered from the top down. The most compelling source of purpose is spiritual, the energy derived from connecting to deeply held values and a purpose beyond one’s self interest. Purpose creates a destination. It drives full engagement by prompting our desire to invest focused energy in a particular activity or goal. We become fully engaged only one we care deeply, when we feel that what we are doing really matters. Purpose is what lights us up, floats our boats, feeds our souls.
Search for meaning and purpose is among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history. It shows up in stories as early as Homer’s The Odyssey and it has animated seekers as varied as Jesus and the Buddha, Moses and Mohammed. The power of purpose is woven just as deeply through modern popular culture, in movies ranging from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which retells the story of Percival‘s search for the Holy Grail through the swashbuckling character of Indiana Jones; to the Star Wars trilogy, in which Luke Skywalker faces down his own deepest fears by overcoming Darth Vader and the evil Empire ans rescuing princess Leia. It is no…
