I fell off a glacier, asking for ‘direction’. Yes, it was a dumb prayer – but it was answered!
My prayer for you is that you’ll need far less of a ‘nudge’ to recognize your clues and direction. Some people ‘KNOW’ what their mission is at a very young age. However, most of us ‘explore’ our options for decades – and never ‘really’ know for certain.
Hitting a ‘home-run’ in business isn’t necessarily THE answer either. There are lots of examples of people with millions that are perfectly miserable. And then there are a few that really figured it out.
I was invited years ago to be a part of ‘Millionaires In Motion”, by the late John Kalench. John made huge money without loosing sight of his heart-felt passion – to make a million friends. He changed tens of thousands of lives – including mine.
John reminded me that:
“The shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line (of course)… but did I know where my point B was?”
“The journey is going to be 90% "Why" and 10% "How". Did I know what my "Why's" were?”
“I owned a hole in a marina that I threw our money into -
every month. We called it our sailboat!”
It taught me a bunch of priceless lessons as well. We would sail from Commencement Bay up the Puget Sound to Blake Island several times each summer. The trouble with a sailboat is that unless the wind is blowing, it has to be motored. The good news is that IF the wind was blowing, we could sail – BUT – we rarely sailed downwind, meaning that the straight line from A to B was filled with tacks – those turns that sailboats make to go up-wind.
The Enterprising Cycle is like this.
Finding our Purpose and Mission is a lot longer a trip than we are naturally prepared for. Fortunately we are not on our own! Other’s will help us – so long as we ask the right questions.
Greg Mortensen asked himself a powerful question after being rescued on a failed K2 expedition. The hospitality and care he received from incredibly poor Pakistani villagers led him to ask “what can I do about this?” He has gone on to ask a lot of other people “will you help?” – another powerful question.
His book ‘Three Cups of Tea’ was given to me by Dave & JoEllen Gano, whom I met while doing laundry on my second Trans-America Expedition. Their generosity connected me with Greg’s example which gave me hope. The book is an incredible true story of Greg’s sacrifice and mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time.
"I kind of had to give up everything, and sell all my possessions, until things started to change around," he says.
You see, ’changing the world’ has sacrifices and tacks in direction. Changes start ‘close to your heart and home’, and with enough practice and feedback from powerful questions, they can blossom.
A great question to begin with is: What are are powerful questions? My answer? Read Gregs book, visit Pennies for Peace, and learn from his example!