Hi there and welcome. I’m Kerstin Jatho a transformational coach from 4Seeds Consulting, helping organisations and individuals shift from languishing to flourishing, thereby achieving the ultimate potential. In this audio, I want to share with you the importance of why your work tasks are important, and what’s the purpose of it.
As human beings, we are meaning-making machines. We always need to understand the reason why we are doing something, who benefits from it, how we benefit from it, and what impact it has on others. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, honourable, compassionate, and to make a difference that you have lived and lived well.”
So, looking at that, we can see that it’s all about how we’ve contributed to others’ as well as our own lives. Purpose is important because it adds to your overall well-being. Without purpose, we become quite quickly directionless, hopeless, and life has no meaning. We wake up in the morning going through the motions, not knowing really who we impact.
And if you look at that from a work perspective, understanding your why in your work tasks is absolutely critical. You need to stop thinking about, is this a job, a career, or an absolute calling? A job is something you go to from eight until five. You watch the hours and you’re very happy to knock off at five.
It’s just going through the motions of your daily work. And earning a salary at the end of the day. A career brings in more passion and purpose. You want to create change. You want to have impact. You want to really alter something. So, a passion and purpose become very aligned. A calling is where you have absolute meaning in your work.
You’re so entrenched in it. It’s a virtuous life. You don’t really do your work to earn money. That is an absolute a bonus. So, somebody who has a calling, or very often people in volunteering work, or Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and often people who are in the ministry serving. So, for us, moving from a job to a career is quite important.
And as I mentioned before, it adds to your well-being. The question is, how do you get there? How do you find your purpose? And I just want to share with you a little story before I give you three ways of how you can find your purpose. In 2017, I had a severe accident, and I was bedridden for four months.
During these four months, I had a lot of time to think about many probing questions in my life. One of them was: what is my purpose? And I came to a crossroads with my actual career and my business. And one of them was: what is the purpose? Do I still get meaning out of my work? And if I didn’t, this was the perfect time to close the business and let it be.
I had to really, really dig deep to see if my work gives me absolute fulfilment. And if it aligns with why I think I’m here, often days of pondering on the questions. I realised that my purpose has always been to help people. As a child, I wanted to be a nurse because I wanted to help people. That didn’t materialise.
But now I do it in a different way because I help people by giving them life skills and educating them on how to create well-being and happier lives, finding meaning and purpose in their lives. Be it as individuals, leaders, or in organisations. And that discovery helped me understand, again, my why, what my purpose was. And this helps me understand what my intrinsic motivators are, what really motivates me.
Coming back to your why in a task. It is the same. What really motivates you in a task? What excites and delights you about the task? So that is one thing. The other one that gives you purpose is how does your task align with your personal goals? How do your work goals align with your personal goals? Is there alignment, because if there isn’t, there is a mismatch, and the focus will dwindle. A good way of finding purpose especially in the working environment is to give back to others. You can do that through mentoring or coaching, or even volunteering your knowledge and skills to others. And that helps you often find your calling, your passion, and your purpose in your skills and your competencies by paying it forward.
Think of your purpose as giving it to others and paying it forward to others.
I want to invite you to experiment with what really delights you in a day. What really gives you passion? What gives you purpose is you. Is work right now regarded for you as just as a job, or is it as a career, or is it a calling? If it is a job, what would it take for you to be raising it to a career? How could you find more value and fulfilment in your work that will help you find more purpose and naturally increase your level of well-being?
Over to you for sharing your comments and experiences.
Are you clear of why you do certain work tasks?
About the Author: Kerstin Jatho
Kerstin is the senior transformational coach and team development facilitator for 4Seeds Consulting. She is also the author of Growing Butterfly Wings, a book on applying positive psychology principles during a lengthy recovery. Her passion is to develop people-centred organisations where people thrive and achieve their potential in the workplace. You can find Kerstin on LinkedIn, Soundcloud, YouTube and Facebook.
