I am an optimistic personat heart; I love feeling positiveabout the future and lookingat the world as a glass half full.But times are scary right now.People are being laid–off. Thestock market is down. Andmorale is low. The questionhangs in the air: What do wedo?
Former New York MayorRudy Guiliani shared someinteresting insights after 9/11.He said when hard times come,as they did on 9/11, and whenyou feel lost, go back to what isfamiliar; go back to what youknow. I see this as re–seekingthe “comforts” of life.
How do we do this? Whenhard times come, what do youhave to fall back on? What areyour basic “comforts” in life?
There is no perfect recipefor responding to what is goingon today. But I think two keyelements can help us moveforward and sort through allthe bad news. If your head isspinning and you’re not surehow to move forward, ponderthese two sources of comfort:community and purpose.
Community:
Aristotle pointed out thathumans are essentially socialcreatures. We develop our senseof self through interactionswith others. Community can befound in several different ways.For some, it may be in a bookclub. For others, a church. TheBible shares this wisdom: “Twoare better off than one, becausetogether, they can work moreeffectively. If one of them fallsdown, the other can help himup…two people can resist anattack that would defeat oneperson alone. A rope made ofthree cords is hard to break.”(Ecclesiastes 4:9.)
We are not meant to walkthis road alone. Join a Biblestudy or a book club. Find asupport group and start walkingin fellowship with others ifyou are not already. Realizingyou are not alone is one of thegreatest feelings of comfortwhen tough times hit.
Purpose:
The second basic truth ispurpose. What is your purposein life? At the end of the day,when you crawl in bed andclose your eyes, what makesyou want to wake up the nextmorning? What makes you live?Some of our children’s literaturecan hold such profound lessons,as in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice'sAdventures in Wonderland”:
'Would you tell me, please,which way I ought to go fromhere?'
'That depends a good deal onwhere you want to get to,' saidthe Cat.
'I don't much care where ––'said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which wayyou go,' said the Cat.
'––so long as I get somewhere,'Alice added as an explanation.
The point here is that Alicesimply wanted to “go” withoutknowing exactly where she wasgoing. I encounter this a lot in myindustry. Students write to me andask for advice about getting intothe field of television. They ask,“How can I get on TV?” but haveno reason for why they want to beon TV. Perhaps you’ve encounteredsimilar questions in your careerfield. Often the answer is “to makemoney.” But what happens whenthat money stops? We are in sucha moment right now with oureconomy, which leads to peopleprobing deeply into the question:“why?
William Damon, a professorat Stanford University anddirector of the Stanford Center onAdolescence, has found that onlyabout 20 percent of today's youthhave developed a purpose in life.He reports his research in his 2008book, "The Path to Purpose."
But simply knowing that youneed a purpose isn’t enough.How does one go about finding apurpose?
If this is a question you are tryingto answer, right now might be agood time to write out your missionstatement. A personal missionstatement is a brief description ofwhat you want to focus on, whatyou want to accomplish and whoyou want to become in a particulararea of your life over the next oneto three years. It is a way of focusingyour energy, actions, behaviors anddecisions toward the things that aremost important to you. And even ifyou have achieved a certain level ofsuccess, writing a mission statementcan be helpful in decipheringwhether you have really stayed trueto your convictions, and will helpre–establish your core values.
If you aren’t sure how toget started, the web site www.timethoughts.com recommendscompleting these three sentences:
1. I value ____ in life. 2. My desire to achieve _______is because I believe ________. 3. I will never compromise _____when achieving my goals.
Filling in these blanks might justget the creative juices flowing again.And finally, what if lifedoesn’t end here on this earth?Motivational author and PastorRick Warren says, “God has apurpose for your life on Earth, but itdoesn’t end here. His plan involvesfar more than the few decades youwill spend on this planet.”
So, perhaps our final sentence onour mission statement might be:
4. Above all else, I believe in_____.
