In this chapter you define your life purpose. If you are familiar with the self-help genre of books, tapes or seminars then you will probably be familiar with this exercise. This is a deceptively simple exercise and each time that I do it, I have a different answer, and each time I answer I feel that my response is stronger than the last time.

So, without further adieu… here is the most recent incarnation of my life purpose….

My purpose is to use my creativity and willingness to explore the unknown to inspire others to do the same, and live the lives that they dream of.

This may sound a little canned, and I do admit that there must be a better way to state this, however from all of my thinking on this subject, this is what I want to do. I want to have an amazing life so that hopefully you can catch even just 1% of what I’ve done and use it to inspire yourself towards your own ambitions.

When I was small my parents told me that when I grew up I could be anything. At 13 during a family dinner I was asked what I wanted to do when I grow up. I told them confidently that I wanted to be in the NBA. My family likes to be sarcastic and nearly all of them laughed at my dream of being in the NBA… perhaps the NBA was a little too ambitious, and sadly I gave up that dream on that day. I still regret that decision, but perhaps as a white kid just shy of 6 feet it was for the best. Previous dream jobs included fighter jet pilot, comic book artist, video game designer, jewel thief, rock star and millionaire – I realize now that being a millionaire isn’t necessarily a career path, but at 6 years old it seemed more than possible.

So how does this rant relate to my life purpose? I really believed, and still believe that I can do and achieve anything that I want to be. The problem is that there aren’t that many people who think like this. The childhood dreams are dead and gone for many, and to me, that’s really a shame. The world at times seems like a really boring place when I talk to my friends. They fell backward into a job that pays ok, and had health benefits and they pretty much resigned those childhood dreams and are now just serving time for the next thirty to forty years until they can collect a pension. This doesn’t really seem like living to me… this really seems like dying, and dying a slow, drawn out, painful death….

I hope that by going against the grain and my willingness to explore alternative paths that I can inspire at least some people to look into a life that has some semblance of what they dreamed about when they were a kid, or at least something a little more imaginative than falling backward into a somewhat stable job.

Don’t get me wrong… there’s nothing wrong with taking the job path, it’s just that I wish that more people would tap into their creative side a little more and have faith in themselves enough to at least try for a little more. Ok… rant over, let’s keep moving.

Of all the principles in this book… this is the one that I feel that I am closest to mastering. Having started reading the book several times over the past few years I’ve really come to realize that it is me who is in control of things and that it is my responsibility to have the life I want. No one else is going to give me what I want, I must take it for myself. This applies not only to financial goals but also to relationship, health and every goal that I’ll ever dream up for myself.

I let go of the blame and instead of placing it on circumstance or another person, I look inward and point the finger of blame at myself and ask what I could have done different or better to achieve the desired outcome from a situation. Looking at life from this point of view is interesting in that you are ultimately in control of everything that happens to you. Sure, you may not have the tools at this exact moment to successfully handle many of the problems that come to you, but by looking inward you will be starting the process of learning and improving from every situation that you encounter.

Off to a flying start. What’s next?