Leaping Towards Higher Purpose

I’m fascinated by the distinction between people who follow their purpose and those who don’t. Over the years, I have managed to develop a specialism: finding ways to increase the number of people who make a choice to align with their higher purpose. My work is all about making this happen – particularly in Guernsey, a location with the capacity to support relatively quick change.

So how do people leap the possibility gap, to live their higher purpose? I have developed a 3-step process that seems to get a lot of people to change course.

First, burn the platform a person is currently standing on

I get people to take a reality check – and recognise that things can be different. What is really important to them? I help them to realise that the way they live their life now will not necessarily produce the outcomes they truly want. This can happen in many ways:

• helping the person to understand that their life doesn’t have the meaning they desire, deep down.
• challenging some of the notions of security they have built, which don’t reflect what could happen to the economy or the market.
• personal triggers – like my own realisation that I was sacrificing myself for my children’s sake. In doing so, I was modelling to them that they should give up their needs for their own children. In multi-generational sacrifice, who fully lives? To empower our children to love themselves, we need to love ourselves enough, too, and show our children how this is done.

Each individual clings to their own version of reality. Once that reality starts to dismantle, there is the possibility of moving towards something higher.

The second step is to connect people with their calling

One question I often ask people is: ‘If anything was possible, what’s the one problem in the world you would solve, if you could?”

This is a provocation, to get to the essence of someone’s potential life purpose. The intuitive response to a question like this is often quite revealing. Within anyone’s life story, there’s a series of experiences that create the person’s unique insight on the world. Quite often, there is pain involved. When people find the deeper meaning in their story, they find a deeper clarity of purpose for the road ahead.

Essentially,  your Karma heavily influences your Dharma. Once you have integrated the meaning of your life story/struggle, the wisdom you gain from this helps you to find your dharma, ikigai, or purpose in life. Personally, I had a moment of sudden realisation that I was here to bring greater ease to the world, and once I understood that – there was no going back. The overwhelming force of discovering my higher purpose has driven me on to do everything I do today.

The 3rd step is to lessen the distance to a new life or higher purpose

The smaller the perceived gap between someone’s present life and a new, improved one that fulfils their sense of purpose, the more likely an individual is to overcome fear, and take a leap. You can get them to do this by simply demonstrating an easier way for it to happen; by providing a supportive community around the individual, or by connecting them to resources.

I often ask people to go and have 50 coffees and talk about about their higher purpose with 50 people – just to see what happens. We often assume that things are hard, not realising there are like-minded people out there, who share the same mission. The first step to getting what you need to make it happen is to tell the world about it.

Ultimately, the easier it seems to be to make a change, the more likely it is that change will occur.

In our work at The Dandelion Foundation, we create situations in which people are taken through some, or all, of these steps. We call people who take the leap towards their higher purpose ‘snappers’. We can see the surge of energy that comes from them discovering a higher purpose and committing to following that path. Something in their eyes changes – and their lives change forever.

In order to effect community transformation, encouraging people to undergo these personal transformations is paramount, for the meaningful long-term progression of any community, nation or society. We are talking about investing our philanthropic resources in future leadership as a priority, and we recognise the value of such ‘manufactured leadership’ in making things easier for everyone, and in securing our community’s future.

What if it only cost £5000 to create a new leader in a community? Isn’t it worth that investment to create a brighter future, for all?

The creation of that moment of realisation and commitment in an individual is hard to measure – yet, it births a prosperous society. It’s the spark that ignites the fire.

To leaping.

Marc

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