CGW Call #33 - Sunday, August 15, 8 am PDT

[Niall Doherty]

Hi all,

Once again, I'll be organizing the call this Sunday. I hope you can join. You don't have to be a CGW alum to partake, but the more familiar you are with Steve's 7 principles and terms like "Planet B," the better.

TIME:

We will start at 8 am PDT/ 11 am EDT / 3 pm GMT. Please check how that corresponds to your timezone here and plan accordingly.

I can spend a maximum of 90 minutes on the call, but of course you're free to carry on without me beyond that.

HOW:

Add me on Skype. My username is ndoherty13. We'll get everyone in a group chat first. Once folks are in there, I can add them to the conference call.

TOPIC:

This week's topic: Finding and living your purpose

Some potential discussion points:
1. What your purpose is and how you found it.
2. What you're doing to find your purpose.
3. Advice you'd give yourself if you were starting over again.
4. Do you prefer to keep your purpose broad or specific, and why?
5. Thoughts on Steve's article, How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes
6. Thoughts on Steve's six-part series, The Meaning of Life
7. Do you even need a purpose?

If anyone else has other discussion points that fall under this topic, please list them below. Those were just a few off the top of my head, but I'm sure we can come up with many more.

Also feel free to suggest a topic for our call the following week (August 22).

MODERATOR:

I've acted as the moderator for the last two weeks, but I'd like to give others the opportunity to moderate the call. All you have to do is make sure everyone gets an opportunity to speak. If you think you'd be good at that, put your hand up! I'm interested to see how other people moderate. Hopefully I can learn from observing different styles.

...

That's all. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Talk Sunday.

- Niall

[Burris5000]

I think those topics are a great idea for this week's skype call.

[barca1]

As a continuation of the planning-flowing topic we discussed last week I'd like to add this question:

8. Do you think it is normal to use discipline and so on to pursue a goal - or do you think that a need to discipline yourself is a sign that it is not YOUR PURPOSE truly?

[Niall Doherty]

Oooh, great question. Udi got me thinking about that last week, looking forward to discussing it more on this call.

Quick thoughts:

I think no matter what your true purpose is, you'll need strong levels of self-control and self-discipline to fulfill it.

As an example, I absolutely love personal development and helping people, but I have to discipline myself to read lots of books and practice my writing so I can absorb more info and deliver more value. I don't always feel like reading and writing so much, but there's no doubt that I'm better able to help people when I discipline myself to do those things regularly.

The real key is being clear on why you do those things. If there's something you don't particularly like/want to do, but you realize you must do it to fulfill your purpose, that's where you need self-discipline.

Public speaking is another example. I used to be terrified of it and felt really uncomfortable at my first few Toastmasters meetings. But I made myself keep going week after week because I knew it would help me become a better communicator. Without that self-discipline, I wouldn't have grown as much as I have in the past year, and I wouldn't be as far along the path to fulfilling my purpose.

[barca1]

Thanks Niall, Alex, Jack, Marwan, Mikki and Eloy for participation!
It was my 6th call and a first one without women taking part. Not good!

During the call we shared a lot of links to a topic concerning the issue of Life Purpose and besides it.
I ask Niall, Alex, Jack, Marwan, Mikki and Eloy to spend extra 5 minutes and decsribe every link they posted in a bit more detail.
I think it can be a substantional result of our call and can be helpful to other who is interested in the topic and didn't take part in a call with us.

Here are my links:
Mindvalley - a company dedicated to promote personal growth material. Its bosses pay their employees for 8 weekly hours spent on personal development in non-working hours.

Finerminds - blog about personal development by MindValley people that I find helpful

GratitudeLog - a service to express gratitude in a twitter-like manner


Other Links
Finding your life purpose
Alex Wu – Develop Your Intuition. Contact Your Spirit Guides. - somewhere here is a podcast on this topic can be found
the best goal is no goal | zen habits
Far Beyond The Stars | Live a Minimalist Lifestyle and Work from Anywhere
Full Time Pay for Half Time Work?


Books\resources:
Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now; A New Earth (I don't remember why we posed these books except the reason they are brilliant)
Byron Katie - Loving What Is
David Deida - The Way of the Superior Man
Deepak Chopra - Book of Secrets
Neil Donald Walsh - When Everything Changes, Change Everything
37signals - Rework
Robert Scheinfeld - Busting Loose From The Money Game (on subjective reality)
Timothy Ferriss - The 4-hour workweek (about minimalism, effectiness, discipline an not only)
Julia Cameron - The Artist's Way

[Niall Doherty]

Great idea, Pavel.

My links:

Finding your life purpose - I wrote this almost a year ago after reading Good to Great by Jim Collins. A section of the book describes how great companies have a hedgehog concept, and I believe the same principle can be used to find your life purpose.

the best goal is no goal - I offered up this link as we were discussing the need for a purpose in life. The question I asked: If it can sometimes be beneficial not to have any goals, can it sometimes be beneficial not to have any purpose?

Far Beyond The Stars - This is a great blog about minimalism and thinking differently about work. In the same vein, I believe I also recommended everyone watch Jason Fried's interviews on Big Think. Important stuff.

[Burris5000]

I chose intuitivewu.com podcast on finding your purpose because it has a podcast describing life purpose, and it debunks some falsehoods about finding your life purpose. Mainly, it is not one thing for most people, but many themes that are present in your life.

Podcast #4: The Real Truth about Your Life Purpose

[ColinH]

Wow .. good stuff guys!

[theorique]

Byron Katie - Loving What Is
This is a good book to get started with questioning and/or talking back to your thoughts. I'm interested in generalizing this approach along with the Sedona Method, since both approaches are essentially structured sequences of questions, and seem to fall under the broader category of NLP language patterns.

David Deida - The Way of the Superior Man
Great discussion of life purpose. DD's writing is poetic, flows well, and is inspiring to read. Obviously aimed at men, or those with a masculine mind-set, in particular.

Robert Scheinfeld - Busting Loose From The Money Game (on subjective reality)
Some cool mind tricks/exercises for reclaiming power from your fears of financial scarcity, but the exercises could well be applied to relationships, work, and other situations.

Julia Cameron - The Artist's Way
An inspiring book with lots of suggestions of exercises and practices to stimulate creativity, including the famous "morning pages"
The Basic Tools

[Mabel]

Originally Posted by theorique

David Deida - The Way of the Superior Man
Great discussion of life purpose. DD's writing is poetic, flows well, and is inspiring to read. Obviously aimed at men, or those with a masculine mind-set, in particular.

Wow Jack--I went to a relationship seminar a couple of weeks ago based on David Deida's material. It was great! I found his model of the three stages of relationships and his ideas about balancing masculine and feminine energies to be very helpful indeed!