Opinion: Potentiality Digest: Sharpening Your Sense of Purpose

By Sodeeq Abdulakeem Sulyman

It is now apparent than ever that the generational shifts we are going through is virtually transforming all aspects of our life, most especially how the perceptions and meanings attached to important things related to us are being redefined for the utmost intention of making them suitable to flame our inspiration, polish our mindset and reinvent our motivation towards what we do in life.

Because there is no one who has never experienced the vicissitudes – trials, frustrations, etc – of life in one way or the other, it is no gainsaying that every time the storm of life strikes, we always feel refreshed or renewed by forming a new purpose or purposes we will like to fulfill after the dust of the storm has been settled. Do you know that whether we face challenges or not, we all have a purpose; but not all of us have identified our purpose and not everyone who has identified his/her purpose will fulfill it?

Yes, that is why the topic of our write-up today centers on sense of purpose. You have known that you have come to this world to do something, but how are you tasking yourself to get it done, how are you demanding yourself to uncover what was not ordinarily known to you? This makes Les Brown to be right when he asserted that “Life is all about fighting for your territory. When you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will take over.”

It is frustrating to know that most people deviated from fulfilling their purpose when they were nearly close to it and when it requires little efforts to earn reckoning in their callings. In your sojourn in life, you must always understand that either you choose a call, or you were chosen to answer a call, there is always a higher calling beyond you which you must answer.

T. D. Jakes says, “Don’t go where the path may lead, go where you will leave a trail.” From the words of this ace preacher, one can easily draw the conclusion that your life tends to become a product of evolutionary processes when you refuse to be dragged off course, just because you carved a mental picture of where you head and you prioritise reaching the place.

When you are working with your sense of purpose, you will always be telling yourself that the lasting rewards you want to earn is more compensating than the temporal gratifications that may distract you from reaching the coast of your destiny. During the time you win or lose, you will always surge forward to the victories that abound. The essence of your life is not about what you have gone through, but what you can do with what you have gone through!

The people with a sound sense of purpose don’t rush themselves in their dealings and dispositions. This is because taking things step-by-step has become an integral part of their evolutionary process, and in their quest of reaching the height of their marks, they ponder on gradual success to attract lasting fulfillment.

It is a lack of sense of purpose in some people’s lives that makes them fall for trivial things which in the end will cause problems for their future. Bill Gates aptly submitted that “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Is it not true that a life that fails to invest in assets will end up swimming in poverty? Sense of purpose has no regards for excuses or age, it only focuses on living a life that knows no limits.

It was sense of purpose that charged Donzella Washington to graduate with Magna Cum Laude, despite the fact that she was above seventy years. It was sense of purpose that prompted Nelson Mandela to make the sacrifice of been jailed for twenty-seven year, in his quest for ending Apartheid in South Africa. It was the dream for the higher callings that made Abraham Lincoln not to be dissuaded by rejections and failures and in the end, he lived his purpose.

The true measure of your life won’t materialize and you won’t live to reach the deepest point of your happiness if you don’t focus on the realms that suit your personality and bring the ideas that befit your gifts into reality, without having a sense of purpose. David Schwartz noted by saying “Study the lives of successful people and you’ll discover this: all the excuses made by the mediocre fellow could be but aren’t made by the successful persons.”