Supercharge your change-making

Purpose | Part 1 | Why you'd want to discover your purpose ASAP

My 20+ years in research and practice of transformation across 6 continents suggest that an idea is much more likely to transform the world if it springs from your internal sense of mandate.

On many levels, Thomas Edison, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Malala Yousafzai, Rigoberta Menchu, Margaret Atwood, and Kamala Harris are very different changemakers.  Not only do their circumstances span the range of geographies and human experience, but they have leveraged instruments as divergent as humble acts of grace, civil disobedience, geopolitics, technological invention, literature, and public service to fulfill their mandate.  However, it can be argued that when it comes to, say, the least fortunate, each of them has had a profound impact.  Trying to determine who has done more is as futile as it is unnecessary. 

We know of and hold these individuals in such high regard because their impact was compounded over time around a central focus.  It is as if their legacy was the product of a lifetime of chipping away at a singular question.  I do not pretend to know the exact questions that led these extraordinary individuals to their lives of impact.  I can only imagine questions powerful enough to fuel a lifetime of dedicated discovery, such as, What does a society that has reconciled its racial trauma look like?  What does the world lose if it fails to educate girls – and what does it gain if it succeeds? What is our role in the ecosystem?  How do we avoid devastating climate change?  What reforms would allow the marginalized to thrive? If God is in all of us, how should we treat each other?

It goes by many names: purpose, mission, mandate, calling, contract with the universe

When I first heard my wife talk about her contract with the universe, her words described how I had felt my whole life.  Others refer to their sense of responsibility to make the world a better place as their mandate, calling, or purpose.  Such an internalized sense of mission characterizes, in my experience, not only the most effective change-makers but also the most content.  Some changemakers appear to float, like eagles or sting rays, over daily havoc, seemingly wasting not a breath, immune to confusion, delivering one output after another, always current but never distracted.  Do you know what I mean?  Have you been watching some of them? Share some of my (hopefully, the good kind of) envy?  Perhaps even an awe-fueled crush? 

The opposite also holds true:  a changemaker without a mandate can be restless and even destructive.  I have seen them run themselves ragged chasing after one cause or the other, burning through time, money, and social capital only to arrive back at the start, depleted and despairing. 

Why does this happen?