May you make one hell of a profit and still get to heaven!

YOU DO KnOW YOUR PURPOSE
I work almost every day with people who say they don’t know what they’d love to do,
but I’ve found this not to be true. I say to them, “In your heart you know exactly what
you’d love to do,but the fears and guilt in your head stop you from acknowledging
it.” I then break it down so they can approach what they’d love without the fears
paralyzing their vision. I start with the most obvious questions: “Would you love to
eat quality food?”
“Of course.”
“Great, write that down. What else is ridiculously easy to say you’d love to do?”
“Well, I’d love to travel.” I build on what they know they’d love and let it unfold:
“Would you love to be wealthy? How wealthy? Where and when would you love to
travel? Would you love to make a difference in the world? Okay, in what way? Would
you love to write, paint, speak, build, or teach? What inspires you most? Would you
love to work with people? When we put all those criteria together, what are the
possibilities?” You may not know the details consciously, but inside your soul, it’s all
perfectly clear and just waiting for you to call on it. So start with what you do know
and build. I worked with a gentleman in France who stated categorically, “I have
absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life.”
I told him, “Well, I have absolute certainty that you do, and if you don’t determine
the direction of your life, someone else will, so I’m going to decide for you right now.
You’ll be a chimney sweep.”
“No, that’s certainly not it.”
“Great, we’ve ruled out one of 42,000 possibilities. Let’s keep going. I want you to
work as a prostitute in the poorest quarter of Paris.”
“Of course not!” “Then you’ll sell packets of chewing gum in Mexico.”
“No.”
“Hairstylist and toupee salesman to bald men?”
“No, no, no!”
“All right, if you know what it isn’t, then you obviously know something about what
it is. What is it? If you knew you could fulfill it, what would it be?” I took him from the
ridiculous to the sublime, and out it came. He had a great dream in his heart, but he
was afraid it was too big for him. The only thing stopping him from expressing it was
his fear . . . and you may be the same. If you knew you could fulfill it, if your fairy
godmother could wave her wand and guarantee its fulfillment, what would you most
love to do with your life?
The truth is that you know what you’d love to do, but you may not know how to do
it. You might be banging your head against the wall trying to do it, or avoiding it until
you eventually say, “I really wouldn’t love to do it.” When people say that they
wouldn’t love to do what really inspires them, it just means they haven’t figured out a
THE POWER
OF PURPOSE