As many of you know I’m a big fan of social media, especially Twitter.com (@kevinhouchin) and Facebook (Kevin E. Houchin). I recently posted the following and received a couple responses that motivated me to start writing.

The question about HOW to recognize purpose is a question that a lot of people have. While I don’t profess to have THE answer, I think I have AN answer–one that I’ve shared in my Fuel the Spark books, in my workshops, seminars, and keynotes, and will definitely share again in my next book: The Secrets of Creative Business. But I don’t want you to have to wait or have to pay for this, because sharing this information is at the heart of MY purpose on the planet.

First, and this is VERY important, understand that you are not searching for your purpose, instead, the goal is to recognize your purpose. Searching for your purpose will lead you to failure every time, because by searching, you are looking outside yourself to find something that’s already inside you. If you search outside yourself, you’ll be fooled into accepting what other people think your purpose should be as what your purpose really is.

Second, know that you probably have more than one purpose, or at least more than one way to manifest that purpose in the world. Properly stated, your purpose will never be “completed” but you will always be in the process of fulfilling the purpose without “failure.”  Many times, if you feel that you have more than one purpose, each purpose you state will be related in some form to a higher purpose that you have not yet recognized and articulated. I’ll give you an example and then we’ll move on to why recognizing your purpose has become so difficult.

I created my purpose statement using the tools and structure from the book Inspire: What Great Leaders Do by Lance Secretan. (No, I don’t have an affiliate relationship with Lance.) This is one of my favorite books ever and one I think everyone should read.  My kids will be required to read this as soon as I think they can understand what’s being discussed and I’ll probably read it out loud to them well before they can read it on their own. Lance breaks purpose down into three statements: Destiny, Cause, and Calling.  Here are mine:

1. Destiny: To reach my full potential in this lifetime by helping as many other people as I can reach their full potential in this lifetime.
2. Cause: Every person on Earth recognizes their personal spark of divinity and begins to share their flame.
3. Calling: Writing and speaking around the world to share the recognition of the personal divine spark and give people the tools they need to be accountable and share their spark.

This essay is a step toward fulfilling my purpose on the planet. My law practice, where I help people find ways to make their living through creative business (sharing their spark of divinity) is another. My books and speaking events are a literal calling to help people understand these concepts and then have the tools to act on what they’ve recognized in themselves. In a quite moment last night I literally heard my little voice say I needed to write this essay for my friends Terri and Marla who commented on Facebook, and share the essay with the world via my blog. I know my purpose. Now let’s get back to recognizing yours.

Understand that it’s not your fault if you can’t articulate your purpose yet, because it’s not something we’re taught in Western culture. In fact, our entire culture seems to be structured around obscuring your purpose or providing you with all kinds of false paths. This isn’t done intentionally. Most of the people providing these false paths to nowhere do it out of love and pure intention, but as we’ve discussed, anything coming from outside yourself is going to be a false path. Most of the time, these folks who are trying to help you find your purpose really have no sense of their own which means this isn’t really their fault either.

Your parents provided purpose in your life. They sent you to school, they taught by example, they taught by providing positive and negative feedback for your actions. Many of us discuss what we want to be when we grow up with our parents and sometimes our parents do far too much to drive that decision down a path that THEY define as “success” or “security” out of love for you and sometimes out of a desire to reach some unrecognized or unfulfilled purpose of their own.

If you were lucky enough to have some great teachers in your life, they probably exhibited some examples of purpose for you. How many people wanted to grow to be like one of their teachers or coaches? While at school, you find friends and those friends help shape your dreams, goals, and definitions of success – for better or worse. After school, you go to work and the culture of the job or company shapes your purpose.

The religion of your parents, friends, and nation also shapes your definition of life purpose, usually with a moral undertone, but again as an influence from outside. How many times has religion been used as a tool to bend people’s purposes from what is inside them to what is willed from behind the pulpit. No religion is exempt from these examples and I believe that most of the time the outside influence is delivered with the purest of intentions. But none of these influences will guide you to your true life purpose, because your purpose can’t be FOUND because it’s not LOST.  It’s inside you right now. All you need to do is recognize, accept, and surrender.

I’m about to share with you the most powerful (yet simple) tool and process for recognizing your life’s purpose that I’ve found, and I’ve been working on this for YEARS. But first you have to be in a state to use the tool. This process can be used in your personal life, your career, or even at a business planning level. To make it work, you have to be able to get quiet.

Western culture doesn’t like people to be quiet. We’re bombarded with stuff every second. I do workshops and ask the attendees to just sit quietly and look at a dot on the wall for just one minute. To a person all of them think it’s the longest 60 seconds they’ve ever spent. We are taught to multi-task. We are taught to be on the go all the time. We are not taught to just be. We are not taught how to find the space between thoughts, but it’s in the space between that we find the place where God, the Universe, Spirit, Zero Point Field, or whatever you call the higher power can speak to us in a language we understand. It’s there right now trying to help you recognize your purpose. The tool I’m about to share can help you find the space between thoughts and get quiet enough to recognize why you’re on the planet. Nobody can do this for you.

This process is not about searching, but it does involve some work, focus and commitment. It’s not hard, and if done right is actually fun, fulfilling, instantly and permanently rewarding.  Are you ready to start?

Good.

It starts with this quote from an incredible book called The Universal Traveler:

The most profound choice in life is either to accept things as they exist or to accept the personal responsibility for changing them.

What does that quote have to do with life purpose? EVERYTHING.

Your life purpose is simply the thing you accept personal responsibility to change.

It really is that simple, because when you’ve truly accepted the personal responsibility to change something in the world, your path unfolds with opportunities for inspired action and your life will never be the same. Everything you do will be moving you toward the goal of fulfilling the responsibility you have accepted and if something doesn’t move you toward that change you either won’t do it for long or you won’t do it at all.

The work is figuring out where you TRULY and DEEPLY ACCEPT the PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to CHANGE something.

There are plenty of problems in the world that need solved. There are plenty of things that need changed. What are you going to accept as your problem or problems to solve?

What can you NOT live with as it exists?

I can’t live with people going through life in ignorance of the spark of divinity that lives inside them. I can’t stomach people living lives of quiet desperation working in a cubical at a job they hate waiting to have fun only on the weekends because they don’t know how to start their own businesses doing what they love. So, I became a Creative Business Lawyer, started this blog, and have been writing in an effort to change that situation.

I can’t stand how law school takes our brightest, most idealistic young people and beats the creativity and idealism out of them, redefining the definition of success into a trap of top 10% and six-figure salaries doing work they hate and feeding a lifestyle of internal and external conflict. So, I try to help change law schools through helping law school administrators better define their branding, and wrote a book to help law students stay balanced in the face of this 3-year+ hazing ritual. Finally, I wrote a book to help practicing attorneys recognize the trap they may be in and find a way out in order to truly use their passion and skill to manifest their purpose in life.

What can YOU not live with as is?

When you answer that question in the sincerity of your heart and soul, you’ve taken the most profound step toward recognizing your purpose(s) in life because all you have to do is flip the statement around.

Your purpose in life is to change the thing(s) that you can’t live with as they exist.

It’s just that simple.  And that difficult.

When you’ve found the quiet place to do this work, it will come to you. You will recognize your purpose. You will be inspired to act in authenticity in every element of your being and every moment of every day.

I could expand on this quite a bit – and in fact, I will. IMPLEMENTING this work is at the core of my next book, The Secrets of Creative Business. When you know your purpose, it will be time to act and I believe at a soul-level that the best way to implement one’s purpose in life is through founding and building one’s own busines and aligning one’s VOCATION with one’s Purpose and AVOCATION.

Recognize your purpose. Accept the personal responsibility. Surrender to that path and you will find more power than you’ve ever imagined you could wield.

Recognize Your Spark.  Share Your flame.

One of the cool things about this is that Ann and I just reconnected due to our respective books for prospective law students and via Twitter and Facebook. However, we had worked together about a decade ago when she was at DU Law and I was at Stamats Communications. I was the account exectuve that lead the production of the DU Law admissions marketing materials and she worked in the student services office there and coordinated the photoshoots and student interviews for the project. She had a different last name then, and it feels like a lifetime ago to me, but it’s VERY nice to reconnect and proves the point that it’s always smart to be nice to people who come in and out of your life, because they’ll be back.

Here’s the view out the kitchen door this morning. The snow started late yesterday afternoon (after a bunch of sleet and rain).  This is about 12 hours worth and it’s supposed to go for another 24.  Looks like I’ll be getting the chains out for the trucks again and it’s good thing I didn’t put the Carhart Coveralls and Sorel boots away.

I’ve not been blogging very much because life has been very busy with kids and clients.  I’ve been using Twitter.com and Facebook a lot to stay in touch with people and build a wonderful assortment of new business and personal friendships. That work has even lead to several booking to do CLE ethics workshops on the legal issues of social media and how lawyers can use social media ethically and effectively to build their business.

Several law schools have also contacted me about potentially coming to campus this fall to do keynotes and workshops for entering law students based on the Fuel The Spark book.  That’s exciting.

I’ll keep you posted.

Looks like I’ll be on the mountain today.

I’ll have a release date soon.

Fuel The Spark:
5 Guiding Values for Success in Law School and Beyond

Sample Chapter

We also conducted some major project including a national study of prospective law students through my higher-education marketing firm Wooden Pencil.

Moving up the mountain is proving to be a good change. I’ve got an office set up in the house and can now block some quality time to actually complete the work people are hiring me to do. Sometimes it feels like I run from meeting to meeting, so having a block of “work time” almost every day seems to be making things work more efficiently.

This week I give presentations on copyright and trademark in two venues. See the events calendar for details.

For a long time I’ve told marketing clients, especially in admissions marketing/higher education, that the goal was simple. We simply show the prospect other people who were happy with their decision to attend the institution in question. Specifically: “That person reminds me of me and they are obviously happy with their decision, so I think I’ll make the same decision and attend that school.”

What I realized this morning is that I’d hit on a simple formula for almost every marketing problem. It’s a syllogysm.

[Variable A: person, business type, situation, goal, etc.] is like me.

[Variable A] is [Variable B: happy, smart, sexy, rich, efficient, etc.] for having decided to [Variable C: buy the product, attend the school, invest in the company, hire the consultant, etc.].

Therefore, I should [Variable C], because then I will be/feel [Variable B].

The only hard part about this formula is filling in the three variables:

A: What NICHE are you targeting?

B: What EMOTION are you trying to connect with your product/service?

C: What RESULT are you promising?

Those three decisions are the most important decisions you’ll make in your marketing adventure.

—

Dear Law School Leader,

I’m betting you’re not in law school administration for the money. In fact, you probably believe that our society is lead by lawyers, and that lawyers continue to create and shape belief systems established during their law school experience. Why? Because lawyers like you are in your job to make a difference.

I may be the only law school branding and admissions marketing consultant with a J.D. and an active law practice. Because of this, I am continuously motivated to work with law schools, much like you are–to contribute to society. We can do this by working together to shape the law school experience of our future leaders.

We’re probably alike in other ways. For example, you’re probably tired of over-blown, mysteriously-priced proposals from marketing firms chasing your admissions marketing business; I know I’m tired of those. Is your account executive, consultant, and marketing firm actually worth the price of the hidden mark-ups added to their creative services and printing? Maybe, but you simply can’t tell from most proposals or invoices.

So, I’m doing something radically different in the higher education branding and admissions marketing business–making the process transparent.

Proposal: Do you really want to make a difference?

My proposal is simple: for a fee of $5,000/month for 1 year, plus a 10% mark-up on all my out-of-pocket creative and production costs, I’ll plan, direct, and execute top-quality branding and admissions marketing materials for your institution. This includes market research, email marketing, and publications development. For a bit extra, I’ll tackle your Website as part of the project.

Now that’s a deal worth investing in.

I will admit, this model isn’t for everyone; I’m only going to take on 4 clients per year. If you need new admissions materials for Fall of 2008, now is the time to start working on your admissions materials. I’m happy to discuss your situation and preferences. Call me with any questions you have at 970-493-1070 or email kevin@guidingvalue.com.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
Kevin E. Houchin, Esq.
Principal Creative and Attorney

For more information on the TransparencFEE program, please download the PDF file below.