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Examining the role of life purpose in personal development March 18, 2012

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Purpose.
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As each of us works on our personal growth or personal development efforts and programs, we will frequently come across the concept of life purpose in our search for information. This is a subject which on examination can raise more questions answers.

The following is an introductory article exploring some of the questions and issues involved in the concept of life purpose with additional posts planned for the future to review specific ideas and strategies in more detail.

Authorities in the field of self-development will often urge us to discover our life purpose or emphasize the need for creating a statement or guideline concerning our life purpose as a logical and necessary part of our personal development efforts.

But what is “life purpose”? Is it something we construct and design, or is it something we are destined to fulfill in some predetermined scenario? Following are a couple of definitions* of “purpose”:

(1) The reasons for which something exists, or is done, made, used

(2) An intended or desired result, end, aim, goal

Using the first definition we could say that the purpose of a pen is to write or draw; and using the second definition we could say that the purpose of writing an article on a particular subject is to convey information on the subject and help people understand it better. An example might be an article written by a psychologist or a famous philosopher providing guidance on how to find true meaning, a mission, or purpose in our life.

But the concept of life purpose and trying to define it is not so straightforward. Is life purpose  a mission that we formulate in our mind to accomplish specific objectives and to follow a certain code of conduct throughout our lives, or is life purpose something we look back on and determine in retrospect? Or is it something that we simply discover as we move through life?

If we look at the life of British politician Winston S. Churchill, for example, we will see that he was a writer of significant talent and substantial literary output during his life; and he was also Prime Minister of Great Britain during a critical time in the country’s history, the period of the Second World War. Which of these areas of endeavour was his life purpose, or was it both? Perhaps it was neither and the purpose of his life was to serve as an inspirational example. But here, we are, in our minds, imposing on Churchill’s life a purpose based on what he excelled at. Yet, what would Churchill have considered his life purpose if we had been able to ask him that question?

Towards the end of the Forrest Gump movie, Gump says, “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.”  And, to add to the dilemma of determining what we should focus on in our lives, Gump’s mother says, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.”

And, which component or components of our life as a whole could be considered our life purpose? Is it something which we decide on early in our lives, like a life mission, or is it the sum of our accomplishments in one or more areas as we near the end of our lives? Do we create our life purpose or do we discover it?

There are numerous methods within self-development literature in books and the Internet about discovering and/or creating our life purpose. Many of these focus on identifying concepts or activities that we feel very passionate about and cannot do without in our lives.

In addition to these considerations there are a number of ways we can look at our life purpose, such as from a spiritual perspective, from the standpoint of practical achievements, or, perhaps, how we conduct ourselves from an ethical code of personal conduct.

If we are not careful, however, we can get into deep philosophical waters on this topic and starting looking at the question “What is the purpose of life” instead of the question “What is (our) life purpose?” There is a big difference between these two questions.

This article, in raising a number of questions, is one of what I hope will be a series of posts, exploring various ideas in involved in the subject of “life purpose” and hopefully providing some answers from various resources.

How would you define life purpose?

*Definitions Source: Dictionary.com

Intention, Manifestation and The Law of Attraction January 7, 2007

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Intention and Manifestation.
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Modern concepts of personal development might have more followers benefitting from the ideas if some of the writers on the topic would present a number of their thoughts in a more practical manner. An example is one of the more popular aspects of personal growth these days — intention and manifestation, and the Law of Attraction, sometimes described with the older and lesser used phrase “cause and effect.”

Anyone following writings on this concept knows the basic principles. You focus on what you want, rather than on what you don’t want. The idea being that whatever you focus on is more likely to manifest itself in your life. In other words, with the Law of Attraction, or intention and manifestation, you become your thoughts, or you are your thoughts. Focus on what you have to be grateful for in the present and focus on success and abundance in your future, and these positives will appear in your life. Alternatively, focus on what’s presently wrong with your life and envisage the future in terms of scarcity or more problems and negativity and that’s likely what you’re going to get.

However, some writers in this genre over-emphasize the idea that absolutely everything in your life has been manifested or made real through your thoughts or intentions. I am not saying that this is not true, I just think people like you and me would find it more productive, if the focus was instead on positive scenarios. One example I read, for example, proposes the idea that a person is in debt because essentially, they want to be a debtor. They have manifested the debt through their conscious or subconscious intentions. While this may be true in terms of the actions or lack of actions that the person took, it is difficult for many people to fathom the idea that they are the authors of all of their misfortunes, including illnesses and personal tragedies. I’m not saying that the concept of intention and manifestation or the law of attraction is wrong, but I am saying that some writers are driving people away from valid personal development processes by explaining the idea of intention and manifestation in a way that many people cannot relate to.

For example, you and I may be facing some financial difficulties and we know why we are in this position. If we were to take some writings on intention and manifestation literally, it would be hard for us to believe that we intentionally created this situation. We may indeed have created the circumstances, but some literature on intention and manifesting tends to give readers the idea that we deliberately or consciously chose financial difficulty as opposed to financial abundance, and that stretches credibility. What we may have done was to have made some key decisions that did not work out well from a financial perspective. We consider them a result, not an intention.

A better way to present the concept of intention and manifestation would be to concentrate more on the positive aspects of the technique. Instead of trying to explain the principles by emphasizing that the negatives in our lives have been essentially self-directed through intention resulting in bad outcomes. It would be more effective to show us how intention and manifestation can build a better present life as well as a favourable and dynamic future. In trying to build a better financial future for ourselves, for example, one technique I read about and have found useful is realizing that whereas we can visualize and write out positive intentions about a secure financial future, it is difficult to avoid thinking about the negative aspect of our current financial situation and thereby inadvertently intending and manifesting a continuing negative financial status. The answer is to always think of negative situations as being improvable in some way.

You can preface your thinking or written intentions about a negative situation you want to change to a positive scenario by reinforcing the idea in your mind that the situation is, in fact, improvable. You may not yet know “how” to improve the negatives, but the outlook of believing the situation is fixable will give you an overall more positive outlook and gradually build the confidence to take the appropriate actions to improve the situation.

There should also be a strong emphasis on the need for concrete actions towards the positive outcomes we want. Intending and manifesting and the Law of Attraction, are simply intellectual exercises in “wishful thinking” if they are not coupled with actions. Even though we may not know the necessary actions, we must have at least a recognition of the need for action and a commitment to develop a plan towards achieving the desired goals. Personal development presupposes activity and actions being taken towards either self-improvement or to the improvement of situations.

One of the techniques often used in intention, manifestation, and Law of Attraction effort is the concept of visualization – we couple our intentions with visualizing positive outcomes to achieve the manifestation of what we want. In fact, I used this technique in a primitive way to achieve many of the earlier desires in my life. In other words, until I became interested in the Law of Attraction as an intellectual concept I did it intuitively. My method was essentially daydreaming about things I wanted, particularly in the area of specific goals I was setting my sights on. One example is being successful in getting a particular job.

My career has been entirely in communications, particularly the written word and publishing. I am currently an independent communications consultant and have been so since the late 1980’s and tackle pretty well any communications project or contract that involves writing in any way.

One of my earliest ambitions was to be an editor of one of the specialty magazines in the publishing company I was working for at the time. So, not being familiar with formal visualization techniques, I simply daydreamed about being an editor and imagined what it would be like, while at the same time, through my work as an editorial assistant, I was developing the skill package I would need as an editor.

After a few years, I achieved my ambition, and then started daydreaming about being a publisher, which in turn happened a number of years later. I followed the same pattern for years. Wanting something, daydreaming about what it would be like having it, and then getting it. It was a somewhat primitive approach, but essentially without realizing it I was applying some of the basic principles of intention, manifestation, and visualization, each one of the concepts being key to success with the Law of Attraction. If I had concentrated and visualized on all of the negative reasons standing in the way of becoming an editor or publisher, I doubt that I would have made the progress that I did.

I’ll close this with a comment from Claude M. Bristol, author of The Magic of Believing: “Happiness is wholly independent of position, wealth, or materials possessions. It is a state of mind which we ourselves have the power to control – and that control lies with our thinking.”