The idea behind understanding your purpose is that your purpose is the reason, or list of reasons that will give you the drive to succeed.   Your purpose is the reasons why you absolutely must achieve your desired outcome. 

Now that you know what your desired outcome is for your specific goal(s) you must develop your purpose - to understand why you are 110% committed to successfully achieving your desired outcome.

The purpose of this is to really get underneath the skin of your outcome, to reveal the feelings, emotions and differences it will make to your life to succeed i.e. what will it mean?

Going back to the example discussed during exercise one, if your outcome was to lose two stone in weight then your purpose could be:

to have the energy and vitality to get more out of life; to boost my self-esteem and self-confidence; to increase my strength, stamina and clarity; to make myself more attractive to my wife/husband/partner etc; so that I have the energy to spend more time playing with my children; and so on...

Alternatively the same purpose could be stated:

losing two stone will give me back the vitality and energy in my life that will allow me to achieve my dreams;  it will give me masses self-confidence and make me so much more attractive to (insert name); when I lose this weight I will be able to spend more time playing with and growing closer to my wife and children; and so on...

Again, questions can play an important role in uncovering your purpose:

• Why do I want to achieve this outcome?
• What will it give to me?
• What will it help me to contribute to others?
• How will it make me feel?

Exercise: take each outcome/result that you specified in the previous exercise and write out your purpose for each one. Note that there is no right or wrong answer and you should note what makes sense to you, not anyone else.

Next step > developing your plan of action!

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