Purpose and Measurement
What is your purpose?
And just how are you going to measure it?
A few months back, I met a stranger in a coffee shop in Chamonix, freshly landed from Colorado to compete in her first UTMB.
It was pure Jane Austin.
She sat down next to me and we started talking about running and being.
For 3 hours we traded existential quick-fire questions, covering every conversational aspect of life there could be.
I still think about one of her questions to this day.
“What is your purpose?”
This is something that I work with corporate teams in my workshops to develop, so I should have instinctively known the answer myself…..and I did:
“To give my daughter an epic life”, I responded.
But what does my purpose even mean, and how can I even start to measure whether I’m achieving it?
Let’s deconstruct it:
“To give” This gift is not mine to give, she owns her life, her mistakes, her experiences, her path
“My” This is possessive, I do not own her, she is a child of the world
“Daughter” Yes, but this purpose also applies to anyone around me, friends, clients, teams , strangers
“An Epic” How do you even start to measure this?
“Life” Is life predetermined or created by the individual?
Looking at my purpose through this deconstructive lens, there’s more to it than just a simple fatherly aspiration and nice series of words.
And whilst I try not to overthink it, the conundrum arises when I try to measure it.
Because how does anyone measure their purpose to evaluate whether or not it is being achieved?
For me it all comes down to running, my chosen source of a healthy mind, body and spirit. Without this, I cannot offer my daughter the best version of her father.
And whilst it may feel clunky and unromantic, my VO2 max is about as close as it’s going to get in measuring bodily health and fitness. So long as the graph goes up and to the right, then it’s a good foundation for achieving my purpose.
A bit like growth targets for organisations.
So I’ll ask you what I was asked in that coffee shop.
What is your purpose?
And just how are you going to measure it?