Quotes about Purpose

Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives?

As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well—a law as inexorable as gravity.

Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you do, other people begin to sense that you're not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you're trying to do and you are excited about it.3

I think it should contain two basic parts: vision and principles. Vision deals with the mental picture of what you are about. And principles deal with how you go about it.

He can only answer to life by answering for his own life.

In Habit 2, Stephen challenges us to envision our own funeral, and consider, "What would you like each of the speakers to say about you and your life?… What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember?

What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time? How would I feel about my life if I knew what was ultimately important for me? Would a written statement of my life's purpose be valuable to me? Would it affect the way I spend my time and energy? How would a weekly reconnection to such a statement affect the things I choose to do during the week?

If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. It

To live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.

It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.

He measures our lives by how we love.

How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.