The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Living A Life Of Purpose
Aligning our strengths with our passions and taking 100% responsibility for our lives
(The two previous blogs on Recognizing and Developing our Strengths and Taking 100% Responsibility for our Own Lives must be read and understood before reading and or applying this blog).
Passion + Strengths + 100% Responsibility = Purpose
This is NOT another blog like you’ll find all over the Internet about dropping everything and chasing your passion blindly. Our intent is for you to take note of what your passions are today (We believe our passions are always changing and evolving), match those passions with your strengths and take 100% responsibility for your life (i.e. income must be a part of this equation). When you do this, you will find your purpose.
Absorb what we have said above and now let’s have some fun talking about our passions…
Passions
We have one life. Let’s repeat that, we have one life. We have one time on this planet to do and to experience what we want. There are no do-overs. Today we want to talk about finding your passions, matching them with your strengths, developing your skills and knowledge and living a life of purpose. In later blogs we’ll discuss things like goals, visualization, affirmations, taking action and asking for feedback, but for today it’s the most important blog we believe we can write… Helping you find your passion and converting that to your purpose for the one life you have.
Our Uniqueness
Every one of us is unique… truly an amazing thought when you think there are 7,683,811,131 people on earth (at time of writing). We all have different strengths (please refer to strength blog), and we all can contribute to the planet in our own individual way. Recognizing our strengths is a great place to start when trying to find our life purpose. If we can combine our strength with our passion, then we cannot only lead our life with purpose we can be incredibly successful doing so. Our passions and purposes are all different.
Example
An example of this is Laura’s career in Triathlon compared to all the girls she competed against. Laura didn’t race Triathlon because she loved swimming, cycling and running, nor did she do it for the attention or any fame that may have come with it, she didn’t do it for family or her community or even for country for that matter… Laura raced because she was a competitive kid and needed a healthy outlet to release that competitive nature that swelled inside of her. Laura’s strengths aligned with her competitive passion and she developed her skills and knowledge over many years to finally become one of the best in the world … it only took approximately 10,000 hours (The 10,000 hour rule is from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers – a must read). Laura retired from racing professionally after 18 years because her competitiveness was no longer a driving force and she was ready to pursue other passions… notably, starting a family.
This is not to say we both didn’t love the sport of Triathlon but it was the people, the travel, the pats on the back (for Greg not so much Laura) and the outlet for our competitive natures that made the sport special.
Passion – Purpose Homework
We want you to watch our friend Sebastian Terry’s 16min video on his home page at http://100things.com.au/ – this is a bit of fun and should stimulate you to consider your own passions.
Just for fun… We want you to write down 100 things you’d like to do or experience. Spend a week or so writing these down … they can be big, small, crazy, fun, serious, charitable, loving, kind, selfish… it doesn’t matter.
We want you to write down things in your life that make you feel complete that are either present today or that you’d like to work on. Please start each sentence, as “My life is ideal when I am…”. We want you to do this for all the areas of your life – Relationships, Career, Finances, Fun times, Health and fitness, Personal (can include possessions, educations, development) and finally contribution. We want you to write a minimum of 3 in each area.
Some Examples:
My life is ideal when I am sharing it with my husband/ wife (relationship)
My life is ideal when I am able to share my knowledge and help others to optimize their lives (career and contribution)
My life is ideal when I am looking at my bank account and see no debt (Finances)
My life is ideal when I am laughing each day (Fun Times)
My life is ideal when I am feeling strong, fit and healthy with great cognitive function (health and fitness)
“It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something” - Winston S. Churchill
Until next time – be your best you. The world needs you at your best!
Bennett Endurance is a high-performance consulting business for athletes of all age and abilities and non-athletes wanting to optimize their performances, health, wellbeing and longevity.
Consulting
With a combined 50 years of racing as professional athletes, 30 years as coaches and 30 years as athlete managers, Bennett Endurance have the knowledge, experience and professionalism for intimate one-to-one, small group consultations and mastermind groups. Helping you thrive and to live your high-performance life. Find out more >
Speaking
Passion and Purpose. Greg Bennett is driven and cares deeply about optimizing and living a high-performance life. His passion will cause others to be inspired to optimize their own lives. Greg visibly enjoys entertaining his audience with incredible stories of finding his passion, aligning that passion with his strengths and taking control of his own life. Be ready to be inspired and entertained. You will leave with the tools and tactics to go live your own high-performance life. Find out more >
Podcast
An interview podcast show hosted by Greg Bennett. Greg interviews the world’s greatest Athletes, Entrepreneur’s and Executives diving deep into each guest’s life. Probing questions into each guests’ passions, strengths, sleep patterns, their teams, nutrition and everything else in between. These interviews are entertaining, inspiring and educational. The lessons learnt will give you the tools and tactics to optimize your life so you can live your High-performance life. Find out more >
Brand Partnerships
Bennett Endurance collaborated with the best brands and products throughout their professional athletic careers. They continue to search for products that will help optimize their lives and recommend these products to their clients. Find out more >