“To provide a sense of belonging so that others can be empowered in their self-determined future.”
Boiling it down to its context; “Belonging empowers people.” Belonging empowers me. I find my strength in being part of something bigger than I could ever accomplish on my own. My fountain of energy flows from this.
A month or so ago, I posted about finding your purpose and mentioned the book Find Your Why by Simon Sinek. This morning I took time off work because I knew I was close to completing my goal and finding the answer to what my basic operating system was. I feel this is complete. This was part of a class assignment for my master’s degree journey in working towards a degree in Understanding the Built Environment, it was one of the hardest assignments I’ve ever faced.
I have been close for weeks but couldn’t get it quite right. No matter what I wrote it never felt like a YES! This is it. The assignment carried a lot of emotion in looking back to moments from childhood both good and bad that shaped how I view the world and make decisions. I had over twenty stories written out that I dug through themes and strings of ideas in. I talked to friends about leadership concepts to find out thoughts. Then, I asked my professor to help me talk through the final points. Her statement, it is the thing when you say it brings you energy, and sometimes it’s the thing that’s so painful that you never want to let others experience it when they are around you.
The statement is personal, it plays a role in how I conduct business and social interaction, but it’s not meant to be a statement that is necessarily shared. I am sharing because of how important I feel it is for people to reflect on the idea of what it is that internally drives you. The statement goes beyond religion, beyond family, friends, and career aspirations. That’s what made it so hard for me to get it really into focus.
The interesting part for me was it ended up in a different place from where I started on my first draft; “To inspire confidence in self so that people can succeed in their dreams and goals.” I liked it, and it has great meaning in how I operate, but it wasn’t the basic driver, I had to go much deeper in working through an audit of my life to get to the final draft at the top.
I am a firm believer in self-determined destiny as well the idea everything happens for a reason and is part of a larger universal plan. I don’t think of these ideas as a cognitive-dissonance, I believe doors are opened that we couldn’t see as we look for answers. My statement is something I will take out of the stay at home order as work begins again, and I believe I wouldn’t have gotten here had I been engaged in the daily grind of work while taking the course. I probably would have stopped 40 pages earlier of taking notes without the time to really focus. In the end, some may read it and dismiss it because it doesn’t speak to them. Others may say, It doesn’t sound like Brent at all. What matters is, for me the statement is true and brings me energy when I see it. It brings context to what I do in my personal view.
Even if you don’t take the mental journey I did to think about this concept, I urge you to take some time to reflect on the idea of what is your why? What is the primary motivator for you that drives your pursuit of happiness? That thing that may lay beyond what you can vocally describe about yourself at the moment because it is just an emotion. Finding a higher level of awareness for me was a tough but rewarding journey. For some, it may not have a level of benefit worth investing the time in. For me, as I continue to find tools for how to create the best places for people to live that help them have the experience they want in life, I know I moved one step closer this week.