What Does It Mean to Live With Purpose?

I've had these words running through my head all week.

"Live with purpose."

It hasn't stopped. I don't know where it came from. I wasn't searching for a slogan. A few days ago I woke up and I was saying it to myself in the morning.

"Live with purpose. Live with purpose."

What does that mean to me? A few things...

There's a difference between living with purpose and finding your purpose

Your life's purpose can change. Everyone lays in bed some nights and asks "what am I doing here? What's my purpose?"

That's not what this is about.

Your purpose in life isn't static. It's dynamic. It's rolling in and out with the tides and changing with the seasons. Your purpose today probably won't be your purpose 5 years from now.

This is about is living with purpose, it's different.

Living. Really living means participating. It means interacting. It means being deliberate.

I haven't stopped thinking about this

I remember exactly where I was when I thought of the idea "Putting Recovery on the Map" for Sober Nation. That identity gave me something to believe in. It gave me something to grab a hold of.

Similarly, I remember exactly where Bryan and I were and what we were doing when we thought of the concept of Stodzy. It was like everything made sense all at once. We had a direction and an identity and we knew what we believed in. We knew how we were going to help people and bring value into the world.

I feel that way now.

It's a real problem. Most of us just go about our days without any real direction or without any drive. Living with purpose is an antidote to the mundane existence that most of us feel.

Because we don't have any real challenges. We don't have to hunt. We don't ever have to be cold. We don't have to fight off waring tribes or even cook if we don't want to. Look, I'm not saying that life is easy, I'm saying that we find purpose in struggle, in working towards something bigger than ourselves. Not many of us have that.

For the most part, we wake up, sit down all day, come home, cook microwavable dinners, sit down some more and watch The Voice.

Then we do it again the next day.

I'm not advocating that you give yourself a pep talk and you start training for a marathon, I'm simply advocating that you start living with purpose.

What is it that you are doing right now? Why are you doing it? What's the purpose? What's the intention?

Is there something bigger in mind? Is this it?

This is how I want to be of service

I want to help people build purpose into their day. I want to help people in their lives, by winning each day as it comes. You win the day with purposeful living.

I think it would be cool to find other people who are "living with purpose." I bet if I looked, I would find some amazing people doing some truly impactful work in this world. I think if I asked around, I would find that a common denominator in people leaving an impact is purposeful living. I think I would find that successful people live with intention.

They move, they speak, the think and they act with intention. There is a reason why successful people do what they do.

"Live with purpose."

It does have a nice ring to it.