I

have to say this: Purpose is a spiritual thing. Think about that. It turns out that one of the most heightened spiritual experiences we have come during moments that we are grappling with change. In my own personal life, the moment I wrote these words, “My purpose is to speak a word in season to those who are weary”, it was hot on the heals of a personal change that I was going through. This change had been forced on me. In order to get back my life on track, I decided to take serious time and thoroughly reflect on the reason for my existence, and that’s when the clarity came.

Coziness Seldom Brings Clarity

Every time I go through change, or change is forced on me, recently I have learnt to silently rejoice. For I know that the change will either force me to clarify my purpose further or will introduce me to a spiritual aspect of my existence that was not heightened before. On the contrary, if you always enjoyed coziness, comfort and ease, the environment through which you can clarify your purpose has already been dulled. That is why we have already discussed that it is important at times to force change on yourself, and that is during the moments of coziness.

Ways of Forcing Change On Yourself

How exactly can you force change on yourself. First, let’s understand that the more you change, the more you are getting closer to what matters to you, to what your purpose is. Now, I am not necessarily talking about lack of focus here. I am not talking about jumping from one thing to another ever so often, even though that too has the capacity to keep directing you to your purpose. I am talking about forcing change on yourself so that you are not comfortable and lose the heightened aspect of your calling, resorting to just enjoying life and coasting through it. That being said, the following are ways you can forces yourself to change:

1. Numbers

Numbers do not lie, we all know that. Performance at times is gauged by raw facts of numbers. That is why tracking your performance is one of the most enlightened things you could ever do. Say, do you know your numbers this week? Have you looked at them? Numbers tell you where you are at. To effect change in your life, one could seek to improve your “numbers” directly. You could come up with different strategies that you can sustain over a period of time in order to improve them. That is change in itself. The beauty about this is that you will be strengthening what already exists. How many talks this week? How many articles written? How many guest posts done? How many interviews? How many books read? How many new people met? Those are just a few pointers. The more you exert yourself to improve your numbers the more you get closer to your purpose.

2. New Frontiers Within the Niche

My personal example will suffice here. Over seven years now, I have been writing on the subjects of purpose, productivity and resilience. Writing is one form of generating content. There are other forms too: Infographics, video and audio. I have always felt strongly that I should put my voice, my audio voice to work. The new frontier that I forced myself to change was starting a podcast channel. Just about a month down the line, there have been more than 350 downloads. I know that’s not a number that I like, but it is something that I can improve with consistency and with point number one above. A new frontier most certainly helps you to dig deeper into your potential thereby giving you the opportunity to get closer to your purpose. Your purpose is connected to your potential.

3. Injection of Excellence

Injection of excellence is one of the most potent ways to force yourself to change. I have already said elsewhere that excellence will cost you everything. Believe me, there is so much to do to inject excellence on my blog. There is the introduction of courses, there is the redoing and re-purposing my content, there is the positioning it to be world class. This change alone will cost me much. The interesting thing is that you cannot do a change through excellence if you are not passionate about what you want to make excellent. If I cared little about it, i wouldn’t spend on it. The hint therefore is that where you are spending your time and your resources and your blood, sweat and tears, that probably is where your purpose is.

Look At Change Differently

It is therefore critically important for you and I to start looking at change in a totally different light. For the most part, when change is happening, all we are doing is looking for a way to resort back to the original “normal”. There is no guarantee that that will happen. [ictt-tweet-inline]When change is happening to us, let’s not just seek to master it, but let’s look at it in the light of getting clarity from it about our purpose.[/ictt-tweet-inline] People seldom do this. People miss that opportunity to leverage on their heightened spiritual status, and that is where I believe great hints about our purpose happens.

That is how change has the capacity to lead us into our purpose. The key is in being alert in the moment to tap into your spiritual real and download it. We shall continue with these thoughts in the next post.