He dies every day who lives a lingering life.
— Pienard Poullet
Conventional wisdom says, “If you have your health, you have everything.” Don’t believe it. It’s not so much that this old adage is wrong as that there is a higher truth.
The Law of Life Mission holds, “If you have a purpose, you have everything.”
Purpose. Your life’s mission. Your reason for existing. This law asks us to consider our great aim — the work we have been brought on this earth to do.
Everyone has a unique life mission. There is for each and every person a perfect self-expression. This consists of the role he or she is to fill. Finding this self-expression is a task no one else can accomplish; it is something special to you and to me. This is personal destiny!
If we intend to experience total wellness, discovering and following our unique purpose is mandatory.
The problem: most people haven’t the faintest notion of what their life mission is. The typical person, busy living what looks like a productive life, may be as far away from her or his true life mission as north is from south. Yet all the time a marvelous plan lies hidden deep within.
Millions upon millions of people have paid a high price for violating this law — always wondering, never fulfilled. Life satisfaction eludes them.
The Law of Life Mission demands that the genius within each of us be released. The perfect plan does exist. We must search diligently and continuously until that plan is clear. Settle for anything less and we will be disappointed.
Roger Burtonelli’s dramatic transformation came when he discovered his mission. Diagnosed with metastatic lymphoma, he was confined to his room, receiving morphine intravenously in order to manage his pain. I visited Roger and in the middle of our conversation felt led to ask, “What’s your mission?”
He was puzzled. “Well,” I continued, “You’re a man of great wisdom. Do you think you need to share that with others?”
Roger was silent. “What do you have in mind?” he finally asked, slowly and deliberately.
“I can’t be sure,” I replied. “But let me ask, have you shared the lessons you’ve learned in your rich and full life with your grandchildren?”
What happened next is something I have seen repeatedly in people who catch a vision of their mission. Roger’s face visibly brightened. His skin color went from ashen gray to vibrant pink. His whole demeanor began to make a shift. His posture changed: he’d been slumping over, and now he was sitting nearly erect in his chair. A smile came to his lips. He held his head high. He raised an arm as he spoke.
“I could write them letters,” he smiled. “That’s something I’m able to do.”
Roger started his writing mission. Each letter addressed one subject. The first was on persistence. The next, on the value of reading. Another, on how to handle failure.
Roger began to feel better.
Other letters followed — on true success, personal efficiency, happiness, and friendship.
Roger needed less morphine.
I phoned. “I think God has a plan for me right here in these letters,” said Roger. “This is not labor, it’s play.”
One of the certain signs we’re living life “on purpose” is that our labors are of such absorbing interest that they seem almost like play. When we find time passing unusually quickly, we can be sure the activity in which we’re engrossed is related in some way to our purpose.
Roger called about six months later. “I have twenty-three letters, each on a different subject. And I feel like my health is the best it’s been in over two years.”
Roger continues to write to this day. He asked me to help him contact a publisher because he believes he has a book in the making. I agree.
Purpose! Mission!
The Law of Life Mission has power we don’t understand.
Despite the evidence of its power, most people continue to violate this law. We are influenced by our parents in our career choices. We look to counselors to give direction to our lives. Peer pressure and economic concerns determine our futures. Yet none of this may have anything to do with our life mission.
It’s difficult to change a person’s life path once its direction is established. But implicit in the Law of Life Mission is an eternal compass that is always calling us in the right direction, leading us to higher ground.
The Law of Life Mission encompasses health, wealth, love, and a perfect expression of personal potential. Its achievement brings happiness. Big promises all, but not impossible.
Many people believe that adversity, including life-threatening illness, has a message in it — a call to get their life back “on purpose,” closer to their life mission.
In hindsight, I believe this was true in my experience of cancer. I learned the lesson firsthand from Mimi. Mimi’s illness — a form of lupus, the degenerative auto-immune disease that brings with it fever, skin lesions, and arthritic changes — brought her face-to-face with the fact that she always put herself and her needs second. Everyone else — including her husband, her two sons, and her co-workers — came first.
She had given up her dream of living in Maine because her husband worked in the aerospace industry and the only opportunities were in Southern California. Her sons wanted to play sports, something Mimi had little interest in, yet she was expected to chauffeur them to all their sporting activities. She wanted to return to work in some church-related way. But she had accepted a part-time job in a mission for the homeless because the commute to a full-time job would have been too great.
It all added up to Mimi putting her life on hold for the benefit of others. Then lupus…at age forty-one.
Mimi was not doing well until she read about how illness can be a message to change, to get our lives back “on purpose.” She began to respond to her life mission and today is a writer for a religious television show.
The message of illness: get our lives on purpose, back to fulfilling our mission.
Shelly was a highly successful writer. Her income topped a quarter of a million dollars a year for five years. But she despised the work. In Shelly’s heart she knew this wasn’t her mission. Her response? She went back to school and earned a master’s degree in education. She was meant to be the best elementary school teacher she could be.
And that is precisely what she is doing today.
But listen carefully: a mission is not synonymous with a goal. A mission cannot be checked off and reached. A mission is fulfilled, continuously, in every moment. Goals that can be defined and obtained are only way stations along the road that is life’s mission.
The Law of Life Mission calls us to invest our lives in unique ways. This raises the all-important question, How do I discover my life mission?
The most effective way I know to understand and clarify life purpose is to develop a personal mission statement. This is really a personal philosophy or creed, a statement unique to you that describes what you believe God wants you to do with your life.
In his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey encourages us to consider our mission in three distinct areas. First, focus on what we want to be: our character. Next, consider what we want to do: our contributions and achievements. Finally, consider the values and principles upon which our character and contributions are based: our life “center.”
The Law of Life Mission calls us to get in touch with this center. Each of us has a center, although we usually don’t recognize it as such. It’s the lens through which we filter all our life experiences, the north star by which we navigate.
People build their lives around all manner of centers. There are career centers, family centers, hobby centers, and goal centers. There are health centers, money centers, power centers, recognition centers, possession centers, friend centers, enemy centers, church centers, and, of course, self-centers.
What stands at your center? Sometimes it isn’t that easy to see. If career is at the center, you’ll be driven to produce at the sacrifice of health, relationships, and other important areas of life. I know a woman who is enemy centered, her life consumed by the perceived injustices of her ex-husband. At one time I was church centered, so caught up in the projects and programs of the organization that I became blind to my own needs. It’s one of the reasons I nearly died from lung cancer.
Recognize that you do have a center. Perhaps it’s leisure — a quest responsible for many premature deaths. Maybe it’s fun — a path filled with deep holes. Detach, and view your life for a moment to discover your center. What drives you? What is of prime importance?
Answering these questions with sincerity is the core work of wellness. The Law of Life Mission demands this work of us. And from this effort flow the character and contributions of our lives.
What distinctive attributes, ethical traits, and personal reputation will you shape for yourself? Living a life of integrity is one of the greatest missions we can undertake. What contributions will you make? Maybe you’ll bring up a child in an atmosphere of love. Perhaps you’ll serve others through your talents in music. Maybe your mission is to correct an oppressive social condition.
For most of us, no dramatic shift is required; we’ll probably find all the mission opportunities we need within a ten-minute drive of our front door. You probably won’t have to move or change jobs. Bloom where you are planted! What is required is a vision of a great calling, a sense that we are becoming all we were meant to be. That comes from within.
Our lives can be powerfully shaped by what we long to become. I believe the dream of what might be is more important than the record of what has been. We must, however, be serious about that vision.
For me to feel the deep personal satisfaction of living life on purpose, I needed a sense that my unique life mission was inspired by God. Once I found that sense, I became seriously determined about pursuing the dream. And through that pursuit, I have found more fulfillment than I ever imagined.
It’s the Law of Life Mission.
What is comes from what may be as well as what has been. Seek mission.
The truth is that our highest and greatest well-being is dependent on giving and sharing. Mission is not about what comes back; it is about what goes out.
Become keenly aware of what’s going out. It’s the key to successfully applying the non-negotiable Law of Life Mission.