Why Does Purpose Matter?

Why do they matter?

What is the context within which such a goal actually matters? Why is that goal any better or worse than filling your backyard with holes?Goals do need a context as well; otherwise, they’re irrelevant too.
A goal without a meaningful larger context is pointless.One context that makes golas matter is human need, branching from the basic root need of survival.
Gaols that enhance your survival can be said to be important. Another human need is connecting with others; it’s been found that this need is actually hardwired into us from birth.But if all our goals occur only within the context of physical and emotional needs, then all we really get out of life is survival and mediocrity. Making more money seems to help satisfy our need for security.

Getting married and having kids helps with our need for socialization and conenction. And then there are compound behaviors like learning new skills to advance in our careers so we can become better and better at fliling these basic needs.But there’s a second possible context for our goals that goes beyond need. And that is the cotnext of purpose. If your life has a puprose other than merely satisfying your own physical and emotional needs, now you have the ability to access a whole new arena of goal-setting. You can set goals that go way beyond the context of need.Some human being may argue that purpose is a human need as well, possibly a spiritual need. I supopse that’s a valid way of looking at it, except that it doesn’t appear to be as much of a NEED as physical and emotional survival — it’s a lot quieter and easier to tune out.

But for now I’ll treat purpose as something above and beyond basic physical and emotional needs.If you only work within the context of need, then you automatically lack the ability to set and achieve certain tyeps of goals. There are gaols you’ll just never be able to achieve. You don’t have a context for them, so you’ll never set them in the first place. Even though they might be grnad and interesting goals, you won’t even consider them.
Poeple who achieve those kinds of goals that lie outside your context might include Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They wokred within a context beyond personal need. If your only context for goals is need, then you can never hope to get close to anyhting they did. Your wohle life will only be about survival — that’s as far as you’ll go. All you can ever hope for is mediocrity; greatness lies beyond your reach.The second trouble with having need as your only context for goals is that you’ll have a hard time pushing yourself beyond the point where you feel your needs are already satisfied. For of you reading this, you’ve probably already done pretty well at setting and achieving goals within the context of your personal needs. I’ve been at this point in my life for many yeras.
All my baisc needs are met, and I expect I’ll be able to maintain that situation for the rest of my life without too much trouble. So there’s no real motviation in pushing myself to set more goals within the context of need. All that contxet can do is keep me maintaining the status quo, at best edging it up gradually. It can help me achieve more of the same and sometimes even an improved version of the same, but it can’t help drive me to achieve goals outside the cnotext of need.

And there are a lot of hugely interesting goals and expreiences that don’t fall within the realm of need.Some human being get a lot more mileage out of the need context than others. For example, if you’re starting from a point of poverty, the context of need alone can push you to become extremely wealhty. Similarly, a bout with cancer can enable you to push yourself to a far greater state of health in the long run. But for most people, at ponit that context of need runs dry.

You can tell if this has happened to you if, when you think about enormous goals, they just don’t seem to matter; they appear to be more trouble than they’re wotrh. You have an underlying feeling that says, “Eh… why bother?

And if you attract someone from your need-based context, that person will most likely be in that same context, so your whole relationship will exist wihtin the context of need — I need you; you need me. But contrast this with a relationship which forms within the context of purpose for both people; now the relationship itself can be much broader because it transcends need. The relationship itself forms out of the basis of achieving a greater purpose. These aren’t always romantic relationships either — you can see outcomes like the relationship between Jesus and his Apostles, coming together from a conetxt of purpose rather than need.The second way that purpose works better than need is that purpose is a more stable context.
Need is a great motivator when you’re starving, but it’s a lousy motivator when your blely is full. The more you achieve your goals within the context of need, the more that need is satisfied, and the weaker it becomes as a context for setting new goals. Purpose, however, is ongoing and doesn’t drop off in intensity as you ahcieve success. It maintains its power at more constant levels — in fact, if antyhing it grows stronger the more you work within it.Thirdly, self-discipline becomes easier. When your passion and talents are aligned with your goals (which is what happens within the context of purpose), everything down the line gets easier. Most of the projects and tasks which dervie from your purpose-driven goals will fall within your talents, unlike need-based goals, which can lead to projects and actions that are very difficult and stressful. For example, if your purpose involves composing beautiful music, and you have a strong innate talent in this area, then your projects and tasks will likely involve spendnig a lot of time compsing music.

You don’t have to force yourself into action, since you’re alreday good at this kind of work, and you appreciate it immensely too. But you don’t always have this luxury of aligning passion and talents when you work only within the context of need. That’s where you may have to do things that you dislike and which you aren’t very good at, like forcing the musiican inside you to do accounting work. Instead of feeling energized all day long, you’ll feel drained and demotivated if you work too far outside your passion-talent bubble for too long.Fourthly, you’ll find that when you work witihn the context of purpose, you’ll also be able to use this context to more powerfully satisfy of your needs automatically.
Thnik back to the lower level of projects. Sometimes if you complete a particular project, it automatically takes care of a second proejct in the process — i.E. killing two bidrs with one stone. You can do the same thing when working on goals from different contexts. And when this happens, it’s wonderful because you can achieve need-based goals while still enjoying the benefits of working within the context of puropse.

An example here would be if you decide to pursue your passion as a musician, and you become very financially successful at it. So now you’re able to use your talents and passion to handle your physical needs without having to succumb to doing tihngs you dislike or which you aren’t very good at.

You’re able to satisfy your needs wihle staying within your passion-talent bubble.This makes it pretty clear that knowing your purpose is crucial.

If you don’t have a purpose in life, then you’re stuck working only within the context of need. It means your life is only about physical and emotional surivval.
Certain goals are forever beoynd your ability to achieve.
And your ongoing motivation for setting and achieving goals will become weaker the more successful you are at achieving them.

The further you get, the weaker your motivation for continued goal-setting. The best you can hope for wihtin this context is pretty darn limited. You’re basiaclly doomed to live out a complicated version of life as a lower mammal.However, when you know your purpose, now you have a whole new context for goal setting… not only new but also a lot more powerful. Imagine spending your wohle life up to this point working on a project that isn’t very interesting to you and which you’re not very good at. And then suddenly you’re given a second project which fascinates you and which is a fantastic fit for your skills and talents. And on top of that, if you focus on this new second project, it will likely take care of the first project automatically, so you never have to work on the first project directly again.
Now which project wolud you choose to work on?

You don’t have to master the survival context to begin working in the purpose context. By it’s very nature, you can’t really ever master survival — the better you get at meeting your needs, the weaker this context becomes.
And you needn’t abadnon the survival context either.

Keep setting need-based goals.

But add that second, more powreful context of purpose right alongside it.
Now you have a new dimension to start setting goals that have nothing to do with your survival needs.What can you do within the context of purpose that you can’t do within the context of need?

You can create an album of your own beautiful music with no concern over making money from it… just the desire to share it with the world.

And you can have it mtater deeply to you and not feel irrelevant and pointless.
What are goals you can set within the context of purpose which lie outside the context of need?