BH
ר״ל
Competition vs Purpose
As a branch from my last article on activating your talents and gifts. I’d like to elaborate on one point in a way I didn’t then.
The concept that each person has their very own specific mission in life can save from more than just a bad self esteem. It can save from chasing other people’s priorities, goals, likes, interests, and so on. It can save from wasting your time in life, trying to be something the world and your surroundings sold you on.
Here’s how…
Why do we keep up with the Jones’s? Or at least try to? Or at least want to? Or at least are suggested by our social circles to?
There’s a famous business book called Blue Ocean Strategy. It’s unbelievably helpful in business as in life, and it can be used to help explain how knowing you have a mission will save you a lot of time, energy, indecision, regret, sadness and more..
The red ocean strategy is a strategy completely run by competition. It’s this is what everyone wants and is focused on doing, and the way to be, is to focus on it and compete with them in it, because “that” is what is everyone decided is valuable. In business that may mean making the 30,000th replica of Instagram and posting it on the App Store. Or opening up a pizza parlor next to all the other pizza shops in Chicago. In life it can mean making sure you each have this type of car, or this type of vacation or this type of bar mitzvah with these things in it. Or could just mean my kid has to have this degree and work as either a doctor, lawyer or accountant, otherwise I failed as parent… and not because that’s the real goal.. but because jane’s kid is becoming a lawyer.
Blue ocean strategy is okay everyone is fighting for a small pie over there… I’m going to go over here where no one is even thinking of going because they are where everyone else is… and I’m going to have the pie that people don’t know even exists.
So too with life. People can become commonly estranged from their purpose with the majorities goals and values being imposed on them. Most people, unfortunately, live in red ocean strategy mode. What is everyone else doing? Okay maybe I can try to do it better than the rest of the 7 billion people doing it.
What if I said, “You have a purpose, and in your purpose, no one can take from you, no one can beat you, no one can make you feel wrong for pursuing it. It’s your pie. The only question is, “are you having your cake and eating it too?” “Is there a crum left on your plate?”
It may involve being a lawyer. For some people that’s a part of their purpose. My Grandfather of blessed memory used to always tell my Father that he was one of the only people he knew in his field that was fulfilled and happy being a lawyer. I’d imagine maybe some of them may have wondered if they left their blue ocean for what everyone else was doing somewhere along the way.
If we start our journies and carry them forward based on, “What’s my purpose?” “How am I a part of Your plan?” “What is the purpose you brought me here for?” and “What am I supposed to do?” We are asking “where’s my blue ocean?” Then if your purpose is to be janes son who’s a lawyer, your goal is to be the best you can be but because that’s your profession that is part of your purpose. It’s not your only and sole identity, you’re not playing in the red ocean where you need your work applauded, you are fulfilling your purpose.