Your Life Purpose is What You Will be Remembered For @ Your Death Bed: Are you Ready?

”If you would give the same amount of reflection to what we want out of life that we give to the question of what we do with two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days” ~ Dorothy Fisher?

Today when I woke up at 4:30am,??I undertook my quiet time devotion. I then quickly remembered it’s our day to reflect on purposeful living on our leadership platforms. On checking our leadership platforms (Corporate, Kenya ???? and Tanzania ???? Chapters ) I saw that our Head of Chapter at Tanzania ????, Phinias Opanga - a founding member of our leadership network and associated virtual platforms had lived one of our cardinal values. That’s to say, all our platforms were ready at 4:26am with the activity of the day! Yes, all our platforms open up at 4:30am every day and this has been going on since February 28, 2019 when the Servant Leadership Network Africa was founded with the initial name Servant Leadership Network East Africa. This, opening our virtual platforms at 4:30am everyday, is the one values that founded our leadership development programs. The initiative has impacted hundreds of members across the globe and has developed about thirty passionate leaders that support the programs directly as leadership moderators and mentors.

Today when I woke up at 4:30am,??I undertook my quiet time devotion. I then quickly remembered it’s our day to reflect on purposeful living on our leadership platforms.

After checking that all platforms were ready for the day, I then switched on to other issues of life and prepared to drop off my only daughter, Rani (15), to school ?? and head straight to the office. My routine is that I arrive early and before my office becomes a buzz ?? of activities I read for personal and professional development and focus only on matters leadership. Through this discipline, I have managed to pin down seven leadership development principles: passion, purpose, vision, mission, values, emotional intelligence and service first mindset also known as servant leadership. These principles of leadership development are well captured in my inaugural book -My Leadership Letters - a servant leadership perspective. As is my custom, I started looking deeply into our focus of the day - purposeful living. I quickly perused through?over ten or so white papers I have written on this subject - life purpose. In the process, an e-book ?? by Michael Hyatt- Creating Your Personal Life Plan caught my attention. The thesis or philosophy of his book is based on three important principles of purposeful living: Outcomes, Priorities and Action Plans. This reminded me of my recent consultancy assignment where I was tasked with sourcing two highly tech-driven young persons to drive the business technology of a new start up. So after headhunting and putting them on the job, I captured their imagination in the first three days?by taking them through a process of creating their first month action plan. They are now on autopilot mode and I will review the planned outcomes based on the current company priorities as put in the action plan. On this, I am in total agreement with Michael Hyatt - if you are going to live purposefully, set your outcomes (begin with the end), identify your priorities and put up an action plan. I might as well add, review the action plan regularly, preferably monthly and repeat the process all over again.

Before I digress and make you loose focus, remember our focus of the day is to trigger for ourselves and in us how to live purposefully. It is a pursuit of making meaning out of what we do. Michael Hyatt in his own e-book asked himself a poignant question: “What will they say when I am dead?” Remember, in whatever you do, begin with the end in mind! So, there goes your end - death. What will your spouse say about you? What will your children say about you? What will your family say about you? What will your colleagues say about you? What will your community say about you?

The acid test to these questions would be to try write ??? the responses down for yourself. One can even go one step further and ask these group of people (spouse, children, family, colleagues, community members) to write you their memoirs now. It is nostalgic!? This is how we become self-aware. We do personal reflection - a key principle in the values-based leadership.

"Self-reflection entails asking yourself questions about your values, assessing your strengths and failures, thinking about your perceptions and interactions with others, and imagining where you want to take your life in the future."–Robert L. Rosen

As I end this snippet, here is what Michael Hyatt wrote down how he would want his colleagues to remember him:

"I want my colleagues to remember my servant-leadership, my integrity, my humility, and my commitment to having fun. I want them to remember how much they learned and grew as a result of knowing me. Most of all, I want them to remember how I stood for the greatness in them and empowered them to accomplish far more than they ever thought possible.”

Ohh my! When I read his wish list to be remembered for, I almost thought he has been a member of our leadership platforms all a long. What a refreshing message for us on this platform. So, go out there and make a difference in someone’s life today. Mark Twain?would have said, “Let’s endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

"As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself....Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility." -Nelson Mandela

About the author: George Obado is a passionate leadership and organizational development consultant. He believes that for organizations to excel in their areas of purpose, the executive must be passionate about organizational calling, they themselves must live purposefully, they should be visionary leaders in their own right, they should have a dominant personal positive values to spur hope in the organization, they should be mission driven - that is to say, they do something daily toward their major goals however little, the leaders should be emotionally intelligent enough to draw and keep talent for the progression of the company and they should have a serve first mindset in their quest for leadership. He consults in the areas of organizational development, leadership development, corporate training, culture change, performance management, setting of relevant work objectives for the work force, and executive recruitment among others. For more information ?: [email protected]