What is your purpose?

Who are you? You were born in a country. You have a gender and race, even it isn't clear on your face. You had parents, at least when you took your first pace. You have a resume and experience of which you might be proud and many more assets to which you are endowed. You have a personality and talents as many can attest. But does that define you, the you that you are at your best?

Some day you will be gone and laid to rest. Your personality, your talents, your resume, and the rest. What will be left? What will be you when the you we know is a distant memory at best?

When you look past the ego and choose courage over fear, what emerges under that veneer?

Purpose. Your why. It is the reason you try when the odds are against you and there is no reward. It is the impact you make that will ripple on. It is the you that will surf until long after the rest of you is no longer true.

It is your purpose, but one that you share with millions of others if only they dare. It resides at your core and directs your path when you listen and aren't distracted by unneeded cash.

Now your purpose isn't a cause or a mission to Mars, it is the little things that will help you travel far. Purpose is the reason you get up in the morning and gives you hope for each day. It is the reason you choose to care when you could look the other way.

For you, it might be in helping each person you meet thrive or creating the all-star team at your hive. Perhaps you are among the third who look for something bigger and want to move the herd. Which ripple is yours is already known. Look inside you and see what moves you to act and you will know that it is a fact.

Perhaps you see injustice, and think, the field must be leveled. You won't let one person be bedeviled or left in our wake. Or do you see responsibility in each of us to make the choices we make, regardless of our make? The sea is never level, this thinking would go. The ones who move us forward sail at full mast and don't dwell on the past.

But how will you make the impact that is you? Must you be Gandhi or that famous Jew? Flex your arm and you will see the super powers that are yours but might need some work. Practice makes perfect and you soon it will be stark, what gifts you have been given to make your mark.

Knowledge is power and you might find that exposing the truth is what makes you flower. But if that isn't you, your talents might lay in empowering others to know what role they must play. You might be able to see the design that emerges when you listen, really listen, and see what no one else sees. Or perhaps you lack those but are the builder who develops the very systems which others can follow to move down the track.

You pull it together and metaphors become mixed but something emerges that defines what you seek. Your purpose is you and why you should never be meek.

So there it is, your purpose is now known. The choice is now yours, to own it or go home.

Three Stages of Leadership Development - eBook

In our research at Imperative, we have identified three stages in the development of purpose-driven leaders. They serve as a framework to design leadership development programs and to measure purpose within an organization. Imperative has just released a guide to developing purpose-driven leaders that includes step-by-step advice on how to invest in purpose in your organization.

Download the eBook: Purpose-Driven Leaders - The Three Phases of Development

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Aaron Hurst is an Ashoka Fellow, award-winning entrepreneur and globally recognized leader in fields of purpose at work and social innovation. He is the CEO of Imperativeand founder of the Taproot Foundation which he led for a dozen years. Aaron is the author of the Purpose Economy and has written for or been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg TV and is the author of the Fast Company Purposeful CEO series.