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KNOW YOUR WHY: Decide how you will measure success

If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.

RUDOLF STEINER

You've read the stories. Of the accidental hero diving into a frozen river or lifting a car many times their body weight to rescue a total stranger. Of the desperate mother walking hundreds of miles under the blistering sun to seek help for her child.

In the face of impossible odds, people have tapped into reserves of seeming superhuman power, unlocking strength, courage and steel-like determination that would otherwise have lain dormant. And often not just for their own sake, but for the sake of someone else. Sometimes even a complete stranger.

Perhaps you've experienced such a moment in your own life where you've tapped into a deeper source of power and courage within you; perhaps that almost surprised you. Maybe you found yourself in your own 'impossible' predicament, but resolved that nothing was going to stop you.

A personal crisis. A 'must achieve' goal. A 'mission impossible' you just had to pull off.

Your task was compelling. Your focus lasered. Your potential ignited.

Purpose does that. It's like the energy of light focused through a magnifying glass. While diffused, unfocused light has little use and less power, when its energy is concentrated - as through a magnifying glass - that same light can set fire to paper.

Focus its energy even more, as with a laser beam, and its power is magnified enough to cut through steel.

A clear and compelling sense of purpose enables you to harness the resources within you to cut through the barriers around you and accomplish the extraordinary. Purpose focuses your energy - physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual - towards an end goal that compels you out of your comfort zone and pushes you forward regardless of the obstacles.

Of course, few people feel that burning fire in their belly every day of their lives. But it is imperative to connect to what ignites that inner spark within us if we want to take our lives to the next level and forge a more rewarding future than what we might otherwise be on track to do.

Given we are wealthier today than at any point in human history, there is clearly a marked difference between 'well off' and 'wellbeing'. Unlike animals, which are driven simply to survive, we humans crave more from life than mere survival. Without an answer to the question 'Survival for the sake of what?', we can quickly fall into disillusionment and distraction and spend our precious years living with a lingering sense of despair. Adam Grant described this state of languishing as 'the neglected middle child of mental health' - the void between depression and flourishing. The kind of living that isn't fully living.

The alarming increase in rates of substance abuse, depression and suicide, along with the growing reliance on antidepressant medications, seems to indicate many are doing just that. Employee engagement statistics point to a crisis of purpose on an unprecedented scale.

FOR THE SAKE OF WHAT?

You are capable of achieving inspiring things and living a deeply rewarding life that lights you up and elevates all around you. Yet the instinctive desire for safety - wired into the back recesses of your brain from our hunter-gatherer days - will always pull hard against, well, your desire for pretty much anything else. Let's face it, it's far easier to stick on your current path than to put yourself 'out there' and risk making a royal fool of yourself - at least in the short term.

Our brains are hard-wired to avoid risk. We have an inbuilt antenna on constant alert for potential threats that might disrupt our status quo (even if it's a miserable status quo). It's why we're still here and many species that roamed the African plains 100 000 years ago are not. But we're not just talking physical safety. We're talking emotional safety too. Embedded into our psychological DNA is a deep, instinctive desire to avoid social rejection or humiliation and steer well clear of situations that might dint our pride or wound our ego. Our ego is as thirsty as it is fragile.

It's why so many people spend so much of their lives not taking the very actions that would change what they don't like about their lives. Why they stay in jobs they hate or in relationships that leave them lonely. It's also why people in leadership roles often make over-cautious decisions and instead act to shore up their power and protect their pride. I'm sure you've witnessed this as often as I have.

It's also why, before we move any further into this book, it's important for you to identify what you care about more than protecting your ego or your short-term comfort. If you can't do that, you'll never risk it.

For the sake of what will you be brave?

That is, why should you bother pursuing challenges that stretch you? Why stick your neck out, have that brave conversation or make that big ask? Why risk losing the comfortable familiarity of your life right now?

To answer this question, you need to reflect not just on what you want in your career-business-life, but who you want to become by what you do each day.

In today's superficial selfie culture, where so many get sucked into a daily wrestling match with their fear of being left out or left behind, connecting to a deeper purpose that transcends the trivial and temporary has become 'mission critical'. Only when we connect to a cause that transcends our ego's need for status can we evolve to something higher.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE - WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO STAND FOR?

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, the only member of his family to survive the Nazi concentration camps, devoted his life to understanding man's need for meaning and the power of purpose.

Frankl bore witness not only to the murder of his extended family, but to the death of thousands of men who were unable to survive the barbaric conditions in which they found themselves. However, he also saw men whose resolve to live enabled them to fight off despair, defy death and survive long enough to bear witness to the brutality and deprivation forced upon them.

His experiences in World War II and thereafter led him to believe that the power of the human spirit can only be fully unleashed when our purpose for living transcends merely surviving.

A clear sense of purpose enables you to focus your efforts away from distracted busyness and zero-calorie, self-absorbed activities that do not feed the soul, towards those activities that do. Nowhere is this more important than in how you employ your skills, talents and time throughout your work, and indeed your life.

THE SEARCH FOR MEANING LIES AT THE HEART OF A MEANINGFUL LIFE

You have everything - yes, everything - it takes to achieve whole new levels of fulfilment in your work and to positively impact the lives of everyone around you, directly and indirectly. But doing so will require you to make a deep commitment to refuse to give in to the myriad fear-laden forces that pull so many clever, creative and capable people into the crowded ranks of mediocrity.

It's conditional on you daring to take a risk - to lay your pride and vulnerability on the line for the sake of a nobler cause. To make your own personal pledge not to let fear hold the reins in your aspirations, in your conversations and in your daily actions.

What you don't have right now - position, power, status, skills - pales in comparison to all that you do have. Stand tall in your worth and embrace your one-of-a-kind brand of brilliance. There are things that will never be done if you do not do them. So if not now, then when? And if not you, then who? Your journey to this point in time has landed you in the perfect place to make the difference your difference makes.

Back in the 1960s Viktor Frankl said that ever more today people have the means to live but not the meaning to live for. The trendline has not improved. Studies have found that once we earn enough to have our basic needs fulfilled, extra money adds only incrementally to our happiness. What a tragedy it is that so many people spend so much of their lives desperate to be doing something other than what they are doing.

Little wonder that a study in the Harvard Business Review reported that more than 90 per cent of employees would be willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning in their work. When asked for the specifics, 2000+ respondents - workers across all ages and salary groups - said that they would forgo an average of 23 per cent of their future lifetime earnings in order to secure a meaningful job until they retire.

We all need a 'reason for being' that transcends the superficial, that taps into the deep human yearning to leave the world a little better off for our time here; to have lived a life that mattered even if our name was never put in lights and our story never etched in history.

As a boy, my dad spent several years...