Читать книгу Stop Playing Safe - Margie Warrell - Страница 10

If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.

RUDOLF STEINER

You've read the stories. Of the accidental hero diving into a frozen river or lifting a car many times their body weight to rescue a total stranger. Of the desperate mother walking hundreds of miles under the blistering sun to seek help for her child.

In the face of impossible odds, people have tapped into reserves of seeming superhuman power, unlocking strength, courage and steel-like determination that would otherwise have lain dormant. And often not just for their own sake, but for the sake of someone else. Sometimes even a complete stranger.

Perhaps you've experienced such a moment in your own life where you've tapped into a deeper source of power and courage within you; perhaps that almost surprised you. Maybe you found yourself in your own ‘impossible’ predicament, but resolved that nothing was going to stop you.

A personal crisis. A ‘must achieve’ goal. A ‘mission impossible’ you just had to pull off.

Your task was compelling. Your focus lasered. Your potential ignited.

Purpose does that. It's like the energy of light focused through a magnifying glass. While diffused, unfocused light has little use and less power, when its energy is concentrated — as through a magnifying glass — that same light can set fire to paper.

Focus its energy even more, as with a laser beam, and its power is magnified enough to cut through steel.

A clear and compelling sense of purpose enables you to harness the resources within you to cut through the barriers around you and accomplish the extraordinary. Purpose focuses your energy — physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual — towards an end goal that compels you out of your comfort zone and pushes you forward regardless of the obstacles.

Of course, few people feel that burning fire in their belly every day of their lives. But it is imperative to connect to what ignites that inner spark within us if we want to take our lives to the next level and forge a more rewarding future than what we might otherwise be on track to do.

Given we are wealthier today than at any point in human history, there is clearly a marked difference between ‘well off' and ‘wellbeing'. Unlike animals, which are driven simply to survive, we humans crave more from life than mere survival. Without an answer to the question ‘Survival for the sake of what?', we can quickly fall into disillusionment and distraction and spend our precious years living with a lingering sense of despair. Adam Grant described this state of languishing as ‘the neglected middle child of mental health’ — the void between depression and flourishing. The kind of living that isn’t fully living.

The alarming increase in rates of substance abuse, depression and suicide, along with the growing reliance on antidepressant medications, seems to indicate many are doing just that. Employee engagement statistics point to a crisis of purpose on an unprecedented scale.