What is your purpose?

In Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning, he wrote, “…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” (Frankl, p. 66). 

Conscious decision is one thing, but to decide against your “normal” behavior and create that habit is completely different. 

Some say it takes 90 days to create a habit and 21 days to make something feel comfortable.  But without commitment and support, conscious decision can quickly switch back to the routine you are used to.

“It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful,” (Frankl, p. 67).

I find that all change can be frustrating and I often fail when making the first attempt. I struggle with the idea of “deserving” better. However, when it comes to helping others, my advice is different. It’s stronger and clearer.

My 8-year-old, for example, is adjusting to e-learning due to the COVID-19 crisis. He just yelled to me to come upstairs. I knew he felt like he could not accomplish a school task. With tears in his eyes, he explained that he could not draw a cup of hot cocoa as part of this school assignments. I simply said to him, “If the kids can do it, you can do it. There is nothing others can do that you cannot.”

Then I walked back to my office to write this blog post and draw blanks on the content of it. I asked questions like, “What if I don’t think like other people?” “What if my information and content doesn’t help others?” Helping others is what I am passionate about, it always has been. But throughout my life, I’ve never taken the same drive to help myself.

It is not that I am not able to motivate, commit, or push to the finish line. I can and I have. It is that I do not take the time to identify what my finish line is. So, I push and forge down the same path that has led to unfulfillment, frustration, alcohol consumption, and an unclear, give-up, fuck it type of attitude.

My wife related to me a similar opinion that someone I respected had also said, “You aren’t qualified to do that.” The comment was regarding my ability to create a program that encourages people to believe in themselves, identify their purpose, and get shit done. I believed both of them, for about 3 days. 

So I put Prepare To Act to the side. I observed a quiet Thanksgiving with my family and my rested my mind. For once, I did not wrestle with the uphill climb of making this business that I began nine years ago.  For once, I began to accept that I was meant to be “just a cop,” blessed with a beautiful and healthy family.

But you see, there was a twinge that remained, a nagging distraction in my person whispering, “You’re meant to do more and you won’t be happy or fulfilled until you do it.”  There is something more in my future, a purpose that is unique to me. The future expects something from you, a purpose that is unique to you.

“Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life…This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning,” (Frankl, p. 99).

To find our purpose, define our passions and fulfill ourselves, we must focus on self-confidence, self-awareness, and the ability to self-evaluate. The business of Prepare To Act has always been focused on personal safety, which we will not stray from. For several months I have dug deeper to peal back the onion, to find my true passion and purpose and in the meantime identify my weaknesses: inconsistent self-confidence, sporadic self-destructive tendencies, and the feelings that being a police officer for twenty-five years only “qualifies” me to be that forever.

“Bullshit” I say, I’ve been in the trenches both in the streets and in my soul to find, identify, and forge my path of purpose and no one can tell me that I “can’t.”

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself,” (Frankl, P133, 134).

Frankl, V. (2006). Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.

ON AMAZON: Man's Search for Meaning