Applying Purpose in Your Life

OK, you wrote a life purpose statement, now what? 

First, let me tell you a story.  Our story begins in Pisa, Italy in the year 1202. Leonardo Pisano Bigollo was a young man in his twenties, a member of an important trading family of Pisa. In his travels throughout the Middle East, he was captivated by the mathematical ideas that had come west from India through the Arabic countries. When he returned to Pisa he published these ideas in a book on mathematics called Liber Abaci, which became a landmark in Europe. Leonardo, who has since come to be known as Fibonacci, became the most celebrated mathematician of the Middle Ages. His book was a discourse on mathematical methods in commerce, but is now remembered mainly for two contributions, one obviously important at the time and one seemingly insignificant.

The important one: he brought to the attention of Europe the Hindu system for writing numbers. European tradesmen and scholars were still clinging to the use of the old Roman numerals; modern mathematics would have been impossible without this change to the Hindu system, which we call now Arabic notation, since it came west through Arabic lands.

The other: hidden away in a list of brain-teasers , Fibonacci posed the following question: If a pair of rabbits is placed in an enclosed area, how many rabbits will be born there if we assume that every month a pair of rabbits produces another pair, and that rabbits begin to bear young two months after their birth?

This apparently innocent little question has as an answer a certain sequence of numbers, known now as the Fibonacci sequence, which has turned out to be one of the most interesting ever written down. It has been rediscovered in an astonishing variety of forms, in branches of mathematics way beyond simple arithmetic. Its method of development has led to far-reaching applications in mathematics, economic modeling and computer science.

Here's a normal number sequence:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ...

A Fibonacci sequence runs like this:  1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 ...

Can you guess the next number?  That's right, 55.  Each number is derived by adding the two previous numbers.  This illustrates the load that additional things put on us.  As you take on more things for which you are responsible in your life, stress increases in a non-linear way.  As you add just one more thing, the load grows much heavier.  Let me illustrate this.  A few years ago I was asked to be on a school board.  Hey, just one more thing, right?  Not that big of a deal.  Well.  Have you ever been on a school board?  It WASN'T just one more thing.  In addition to board meetings, there were committee meetings and lots of school events in which I needed to be involved in order to be a good board member.  So, finally, I resigned to make sure that I could take care of my life's higher priorities.

Steven Covey has a great way to look at areas in our lives.  Draw a grid of four boxes.  Label the left column of two boxes "Urgent" and the right column "Not Urgent."  Label the left side of your grid "Important" for the first row of two boxes and "Not Important" for the second row.  Now fill in the boxes with the things you do in your life that are Urgent & Important, Not Urgent but Important, Urgent but Not Important, and Not Urgent and Not Important.  Don't go on until you do this!

Let's take a look at what you just did.  The upper left box (Urgent and Important) is the Crisis quadrant.  These are things that can't wait but must be done now!  People often put health crisis, important meeting, pay late bills, and things like that in this area.  The upper right box (Not Urgent but Important) is called the Quality quadrant of life.  These are the things that contribute to life's quality.  Things like spiritual reading, relationship development, good nutrition, exercise, and recreation.  The lower left quadrant (Not Important but Urgent) is the area of Deception.  Telemarketing calls, some doorbells and some meetings fall into this area.  The last area (lower right) which is Not Important and Not Urgent is called the area of Waste.  Many people put TV, web surfing, romance novels, etc into this area.

Now, here's the kicker.  Guess where Americans spend almost all of their time?  Hint:  in two different quadrants.  Which two would you guess?

Turns out that we spend almost all of our time alternating between Crisis and Waste.  We are so exhausted from working in crisis all day (go go go, got to get it all done!) that we flop down in the recliner and night and do intensive thumb exercises with the remote.  BUT!  If we invested more of our timetime in the area of Quality, we'd spend much less time in crisis.  For example, I think we'd all agree that divorce is a crisis.  However, if more time had been invested in the quality area of relationship development, you may not need to end up in the crisis of a divorce.  Here's another one:  health.  If you spent more time taking care of your health, you won't have to be in the area of crisis with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, etc.

So, how do we apply all of this to our purpose statement?  Well, I hope that I have made the case that you can't do it all.  You have to prioritize our life's activities.  Yes, we do this subconsciously all of the time.  But how much better to do this intentionally and aligned to our life purpose?

I'll cover that in the next blog.

By the way, if you have a written life purpose, I'd love to have you share it with your eChurch7 family.

Blessings

Pastor Sid
eChurch7 Health Pastor