Life Purpose and Goals

The secret to realizing your life's purpose is powerful goals. People who live meaningful lives know what their life's purpose is and they also know how to support that purpose with effective goals.

The two things work together. The clearer our life purpose, the more solid our goals. The better formulated our goals, the stronger our sense of life purpose.

As Jim Rohn says, "If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you."

The Challenge

Setting goals is not as simple as deciding what you want to do. Some goals work better than others and goal setting is a skill. The more we practice, the better we get at setting goals that really work.

No one would argue that goals aren't important. Yet, we do not always know how to make them work. The reasons we may feel unprepared to set goals are complex and depend on the person. We may never have learned how to set powerful goals, or we not have seen the benefits of clear goals modelled in others.

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Value Judgements and Self-Understanding

So often we look to others to help us understand ourselves. We wait for our manager to champion our ideas or our co-workers to notice our talents. Feedback from others is something we all need. But have you considered the feedback you give to yourself?

"No factor is more important in people's psychological development and motivation than the value judgments they make about themselves." - Nathaniel Branden (psychologist)

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Listen to Yourself

The first step in building self-esteem is to listen closely to the things you say to yourself. A powerful exercise is to spend 5 minutes each day for one week in quiet reflection, simply listening to the thoughts that come into your head. What do you think about yourself? Write it down. Then, at the end of week, you can take stock. We live inside our heads and yet we do not always pay attention to the thoughts we carry.

Even the most confident amongst us sometimes...

Do you know what it takes to reach your full potential?

Finding your potential involves a unique set of steps which require you to take action.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What is your underlying desire in life?
2. Do you yearn for self-fulfillment? Or is self-development more important to you?
3. Are your efforts designed to make you feel good? Or are they designed to help you become the best you can be?
4. Is your goal to be successful? Or is it to achieve significance?

The answers to these questions circle around personal growth. If you want to reach your full potential as a leader and help people grow, you must first take care of your own personal growth.

Personal growth.

John Maxwell talks about the Law of Contribution in The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. This law states that:

"Growing yourself enables you to grow others."

You may be asking why you need a personal growth plan, or how growth helps make a great leader.

Leadership is built on growth.

A growth plan has purpose; a...

We're all human

Every leader at some time has to deal with challenging people. It is the nature of being human to face difficulties in ourselves and others. The first step is to recognize the challenges and meet people where they are.

As John W. Gardner (educator and public official) said, "If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are."

Two Common Challenges

In "What Successful People Know about Leadership", John C. Maxwell devotes a chapter to resolving conflicts and leading challenging people. He offers helpful suggestions that are worth exploring.

In this blog, we’ll look at two common challenges leaders face when working with others:

• People who are coasting along and not reaching their fullest potential.
• People who start things but never finish.

Settling for Less

Often there are people on the team who are doing the basics required, but they are not going the extra mile. You might think that this...

Redefining Your Life Purpose

We all have moments when life throws us a curve ball. We make plans and then discover they have to be changed. Sometimes we have to pivot everything in a new direction right when we thought we were settled in for the long-term.

Throughout our lives we have to redefine our purpose. It's the starting point for everything meaningful and a skill we'd all do well to keep sharp.

What Does It Mean to Be You?

You are never too young or too old to seek your life's purpose. A few years ago, I visited Grade 4 students in Fort McMurray to lead a discussion about this very topic. I stood in front of a class of eager young people and asked a two simple questions: Who are you? What does it mean to be you?

Then, I asked the young students to think about their gifts as a person, how they currently share their gifts with others, and what else they might do to share their gifts in the future?

Look Within

To help the students understand, we found inspiration in a man named...

How to Increase Your Chances of Success

We get what we ask for. You've probably heard that before, but it is worth remembering. History is filled with people who increased their chances of success and happiness simply because they asked.

Most of us hold back on asking for everything that might help us. Whether what we need is information, support, money, or time, there is one reason we avoid asking. —We are afraid of being told no.

There's a story in the 20^th Anniversary Edition of "Chicken Soup for the Soul". It's about a girl who was not afraid to ask. Markita Andrews raised more than 80,000 dollars over the course of several years for the Girl Scouts. She did it by going door-to-door and knocking. When asked how she managed to raise so much money, the thirteen-year-old said, "It starts with desire. Burning, white-hot desire."

Leading the Life You Desire

As a Certified Canfield Trainer, Ask, Ask, Ask is a Principle in our Leading the Life You Desire course. Jack Canfield has...

Real Growth

Not that long ago, I worked with a client who was refreshingly honest. They had completed one of our personality assessments in the DISCover Your Positive Personality program and were contacting us to go over the results.

Rather than pretending an enthusiasm they did not feel, they told us they didn't like personality tests and only went through the process because they were asked to by their boss. Some may have taken this open reluctance as a sign they should give up. Instead, I chose to explore things further.

Change begins with openness about our thoughts and feelings. When we are real with one another, we can learn and grow. I've learned to remain curious about the story underneath our reactions.

The Purpose of Personality Assessments

As we went over the personality assessment, I stayed open to the client's thoughts and feelings. Soon I began to notice that they'd interpreted the results of their personality assessment as negative. They'd thought the purpose of the...

Take Control of Your Incompletes

"Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week." - Spanish proverb

Temporary Blindness

Do you have things on your action list that linger in a state of incompletion for weeks or even months? Sometimes if we look at the same thing enough times, we don't see it anymore. When it comes to managing our time, this is a blindness none of us can afford.

When is the last time you took a close look at your priorities? Most of us do things that we don't really need to, while leaving things that are important undone. We choose easier tasks or tasks that interest us. Sometimes the tasks that are difficult and outside of our comfort zone are absolutely essential to our ongoing success.

The Cure

What if you committed to taking care of the incompletes in your life? You'd have a clearer vision of your priorities and free yourself from the nagging feeling of loose ends. It sounds too simple to be true and yet it is.

Cleaning Up

One of the principles in a course that...

Why learning is so important for leaders

As John Maxwell explains in his book called "No Limits", in order to keep growing, true leaders focus on something unexpected. They focus on how far they can go, not where they currently are. He calls this "growth capacity".

We believe this capacity is what drives the thirst for learning. It's about putting yourself in situations where others are ahead of you and you are continually challenged. This kicks you out of your comfort zone and puts your focus on moving forward.

Leaders help others move forward by continuing to move forward themselves. If you want to know how to keep leading, keep learning.

5 Tips on How to Keep Learning

Only some of the learning that we do happens in a classroom. Every day of our lives we have an opportunity to discover something new and grow, which is what learning is all about.

Here are five ways you can help yourself continue to learn:

1. Nurture relationships with diverse people. If you only spent time with...

Are you searching for your purpose as a leader? Do you long to make an impact through positive influence? Maybe you feel stuck in your current role at work or you’re ready to take the proverbial bull by the horns, but you’re not sure where to begin. John Maxwell’s time-tested leadership helps guide leaders, like you, to become your better self so you can reach the next level in your career and unlock your full potential.

But who is John Maxwell and how did he become the renowned and respected leader and coach he is today? From his humble beginnings as a pastor in a small Ohio town to being named the "#1 Most Influential Business Leader" by the American Business Association, John has spent five decades mastering his craft as a coach, speaker, trainer, and leader. Keep reading to learn more about John, his personal experiences, and what he can do for you. You can also check out the annual Live2Lead event hosted by John Maxwell and UpCloseTeam.

Transformative...