Last week a group of managers and I chartered the territory of Dan Pink’s TED talk on the surprising science of motivation. I’m always a little nervous about what their reaction is going to be (so far there hasn’t been a mutiny against me!).
In the discussion after the video we end up at the big bucket: purpose. While most concur that being part of something greater than yourself is inherently motivating, a niggling question takes hold. What is my purpose? What is my sentence? As good leaders we should spend some time figuring ourselves out.
It reminds me of this movie trailer for Lemonade. Take two minutes and watch it now.
It’s this sentence that has stayed with me – “I got laid off and started doing my life’s work.”
Doesn’t that just wake up your insides? One on hand, how sad that so many people are doing work that isn’t in their bucket of “something that matters”. Then the other hand, how many of us are waiting to do our life’s work? Waiting for what? As Joel Solomon told us, get serious about your purpose. We have future generations to answer to, whether we’re alive or dead.
Do you know your purpose, your sentence, your life’s work? Have you started doing it?
(I’m working on mine.)