“I was sitting on a speaker and I said: ´This speaker will bear the weight of my body. It will make a chair in a pinch, it will get me out of a crisis, it will be a chair but it was not designed to be a chair. I am not using it for its highest and best use. Many times we are pushed into functioning in an area that is not our highest and best use because someone needed us to be something we were not created to be.´” – Bishop T.D Jakes on Oprah (Huffington post).

Do I do something because I have to or because I want to? A question anyone can ask themselves. The motivational trifecta consists of autonomy and mastery which I have already covered, the third is purpose. The purpose I’m referring to is doing what we do for something larger than just ourselves. It is being a part of a bigger aim, realizing that what you do is important. Some may think of it as the meaning of life… what is your bigger and higher, even cosmic role that you are supposed to fill. There was a study on purpose conducted by Adam Grant, which used people in a call centre at a university fundraising organization. The employees were divided into three groups, one being the control group. The first group read stories of other employees describing what they perceived were the personal benefits of the job (personal benefit condition) and the third one read about the impact their work (fundraising) had on other people’s lives. The second group (control group) was not influenced. It turned out that a month later the people in the personal benefit and the control group did not show any difference in money raised. The employees of the third group who had read about how their work affects the world and what it accomplished had earned more than twice the average weekly donation money. (Daniel Pink).

Many people do not know what their purpose is. What makes it so difficult is that the purpose is not always easy to find or recognize. “You may start out doing something that was not ‘the thing’ that you were created to do. It may only be the thing that leads to the thing you were created to do. So don’t stop at where you are as if it were the destination, when in fact in reality it may be the transportation that brings you into that thing you were created to do.” (Huffington post). People who find purpose in their work unlock the highest level of the motivation game. Purpose is what gets you out of bed in the morning and into work without groaning and grumbling — something that you just can’t fake. (Janet Choi).

So if someone does not know what their purpose is and it is said that it can not be faked then where does it leave that person? I recently saw a great TED talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy. The talk is called: Your body language shapes who you are. Her main idea is that one should fake it till one can make it. Maybe the same principle can be applied in finding the purpose?

By Joosep K. Kuljus

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/what-is-purpose-bishop-t-d-jakes_n_2372216.html

http://www.danpink.com/2010/03/is-purpose-really-an-effective-motivator/

http://deliveringhappiness.com/the-motivation-trifecta-autonomy-mastery-and-purpose/

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are