Workshop on “Know Your Purpose in life”

Once you read the title, you will definitely laugh and say, why do you have to attend this workshop, don’t you know your purpose in life?

Frankly speaking, if I had not attended this workshop then may be even I would join you and laugh along with you. But sometimes you need to think out of the box. I was given an opportunity to attend this 1 day workshop and I am glad I did.

The workshop was organized by Adrian Simoes, Founding Director of Alpha & Omega Consultancy, Goa.

After a few introductory slides Adrian displayed a slide with the question:

WHY DID YOU WAKE UP TODAY?
This question struck a chord in my brain. I was so busy with everything else in life that I realized I never actually sat and thought about it. This very question made me get lost in my thoughts, forcing me to think about various aspects of life.

Sometimes we need someone else to wake us up and make us realize certain things in life. It is not that we don’t know about these goals but we tend to ignore and side-line them thinking they are not important.

Thanks to Adrian, he helped the participants of his workshop focus on 7 main areas of goals in life:
1.Physical goals : Health, Appearance, Nutrition
2.Family goals : Our attitude and behaviour with family members, Time shared together, Love, Care and Support
3.Financial goals : Earnings, Savings, Investment
4.Social goals : Manners, Self-confidence, Sense of humour
5.Spiritual goals : Peace, Belief, Sense of purpose
6.Mental/intellectual goals : Knowledge, Creativity, Wisdom
7.Career goals : Job satisfaction, Effectiveness and purpose of job, Competence, Competition and Promotion)

As an exercise, we need to write down all 7 goals on a piece of paper and next to it write where we want to be 5 years from now.

We also learned about SMART Goals. In SMART goals each letter refers to:
S: Specific
M: Meaningful
A: Achievable
R: Reviewable
T: Time bound

One of the most important point he mentioned is that we should keep competing with our self and not with others. We should always try to be better than what we are and excel in whatever we do.

Also to make sure we achieve our goals, we should maintain a journal (a small note book) and write on it about our goals for 21 days, without fail. The reason for this is in 21 days you can either make or break a habit.

At the end of the day, make sure you enter what you did today to achieve the goal, what could have been better and how. We need to follow up on it every day. Make sure that this journal is time bound so that we can keep a check on the goals to achieve and if we are working towards it.

Finally, it is up to us what we want to do and what legacy we want to leave behind.

I have just briefed the above points as it is not possible for me to summarize everything that I have learned from the workshop.

I hope these few points mentioned above will help you to know your purpose in life.