I heard a quote the other day that stuck with me more than most of the quotes that I have heard over the past year or two.
“If it doesn’t give you peace, purpose or profit, cut it out of your life.”
This is such a profound statement! If you are anything like me, you will typically find yourself focused on one of these three “P’s.” More than likely, you might find yourself with an intense focus on one of the three more than the others. I know this has been the case for me more often than not.
When I am focused on my business, I find that I have a peace because my finances are taken care of I know my needs are going to be met. However, when focused on profits, there is a lack of purpose because we all know that we were not put on this earth to just make a profit and die. On the other hand, when I place a focus on living with purpose, the profits end up suffering because many times our purpose doesn’t come with monetization.
We have all heard the saying before; “When you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life.” Even though I agree with this statement, I often wonder how many people try to force themselves to love what they do so it doesn’t feel like work. Hmmmm…..
I hear people say that they love what they do; but do they really love what they do? Maybe someone loves what they do because they are making a profit and they are able to see financial reward at the end of the day. Or maybe they love what they do because they feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. A successful businessman or a successful businesswoman may love their business because of the profit. An electrician or a teacher may love what they do because they are able to see the fruits of their labor through a project or even a student passing a test.
I want to pose a question that may help someone (I know it helped me).
Would you love what you do if you had to do it for free?
I know for a fact, that a majority of people would say a resounding “NO!”
Why is that? The answer is very simple. The reason most people would say that they would not do what they do for free is because they don’t really enjoy it.
The next question I would ask is, “then why do you keep doing it?”
Funny right? We continue to do things that we don’t enjoy doing because we are more focused on doing something that brings us profit than something that fulfills a purpose. It reminds me of when I was child and I got hurt. I would go to my dad and say “dad, it hurts when I do this.” As simple as it sounds, he would say, “then don’t do that.” I’m chuckling as I type this because I can still hear his voice saying those words and I would get so mad when he said that; But its the truth. If it hurts, don’t do it!
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that when you place a focus on profits instead of purpose, that you will have pain. What I am saying is that when you place profit over purpose you won’t have peace.
I have come to realize that there is an ultimate order to these three “P’s.” When you focus on profit, you may have peace but no purpose. When you focus on peace you may ultimately have a bigger problem on your hands and we will discuss that a little later. When you focus on purpose, you will ultimately find profits and peace will find you.
Purpose leads to profit and peace comes from the inside.
I have another question. What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
You may have heard this question before and may or may not have known how to answer. I want to ask the question in a different way. What is the thing that you have always wanted to do, but never thought it was possible? Maybe you have a business idea that gets you excited when thinking about it; or maybe the thought of traveling to a different country gets your wheels turning. Many times, that thing is the answer to the question that you can not seem to find the answer to.
I’ll ask you the question again that I asked earlier. Would you love doing the thing that is keeping you up at night if you did it for free? If the answer is yes, then that is the thing that you should focus on. That is where your purpose lies. That is where your direction should go.
I know what you are thinking. “But Michael, I have bills to pay, I have a family to support, I have this or that thing that I have to take care of.”
You’re right. You should not neglect those things. You should definitely take care of those things. The bible says that If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than in infidel (unbeliever). (1 Timothy 5:8).
I heard a quote from the founder of the company that I have been working with for the past 15 years. “Work the business you have and build the business that you want.” What does that mean? In context of the business, it means that if you don’t like where your business is at, you can change it. You may not have the right sales people but you don’t want to just get rid of them because you will go from little sales to none. Instead of firing your sales force, work with them to try and improve them, but at the same time, build a sales force independent of the current one. Maybe you are in online marketing and your current ads aren’t working as well as you would like them to. That doesn’t mean stop all ads. It may mean you need to keep the current ads so you don’t lose all ad revenue, and begin to test some new ads.
In the space of living out your purpose, it means don’t stop the profit (if that is what you have been focused on). It means continue your current method of profit and begin to pursue your purpose. Begin to pursue the thing that you cannot stop thinking about. Begin pursuing the thing that you can’t stop dreaming about. Even though you may not make any money doing it.
The Bible says this, “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon.” Matthew 6:24 (KJV)
So how do we take care of our obligations?
A simple mindset shift is all it takes. I’m not going to write it out because I want to encourage you to look it up for yourself; but if you keep reading in Matthew 6 after verse 24, Jesus explains that we don’t need to worry about all those things because he will take care of it. When we worry, it doesn’t help the situation.
It is important to ask ourselves, which master am I serving? God or Mammon? The answer to this question is really quite simple. Which one do you put the most thought into? Do you think more about profit or do you think more about purpose? Whichever one draws more attention is the one that you are serving. If an adjustment is needed to begin focusing on purpose, then start having internal conversations about what that purpose would look like if you were fulfilling it to its fullest extent. Then begin to pursue it. Start asking questions to people who are doing it. Look for people that you can get around who are already fulfilling what you want to go after. I know that when you begin to pursue the purpose, you will start to discover that what you have desired has always been right there. We just get distracted with the wrong pursuit.
Ultimately, when you start pursuing your purpose, God will start to bring the profit because he wants you to fulfill who you were put on this earth to be.
Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Who do you think put those desires in your heart?
That desire is usually where you will find your purpose.
I want to finish with this. Earlier I said that if you are pursuing peace, you may have a bigger problem. Many people would say that peace comes from within and to an extent, I agree with that; But true peace comes from knowing that you have a savior. Knowing that if you were to die today, you would know what comes next.
If you want to know more about that, send me an email and I we can discuss more about what that looks like.
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