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Personal Effectiveness Purpose & Fulfilment

A Renewed Life of Purpose & Possibilities

As this is the time of the year to reflect, contemplate, meditate & understand what has passed & what is to come, I have titled this piece, “Seeing Inward & Outward: A Renewed Life of Purpose & Possibilities”.


A few quotes to get us going…
“An unexamined life is not worth living”. (Socrates)

“As Within, So Without, As Above, So Below”. (Hermes Trismegistus)

“Be the Change you want to See in the World”. (Mahatma Gandhi)

“And no message has been any clearer,
If you want to make the world a better place,
Take a Look at Yourself &
Make the Change.”
(Michael Jackson: Man in the Mirror)


The quotes above reflect the inter-connectedness (systemic thinking) of how micro issue at individual level (parents struggling with their roles, leaders struggling with their roles) can impact families & organisations (macro issues).


Who am I? What is/are my Roles?

  1. As humans, we all play many roles i.e. parent, son/daughter, uncle, nephew (home domain) & boss, supervisor, supervise (work domain), friend, confidante (social domain) etc.

  2. It is important to be able to “See” how well we understand & play our roles. What does my roles as a boss, employee, daughter, friend entail? Do I know what is important and then do my best to fulfil those roles? If I am unable to carry out my roles, is it a motivation or a competency issue?

  3. Understanding our roles doing do them well (motivation & abilities) will help one thrive in the various domains and prevent what management literature called, “The Peter Principle”: i.e.
    being promoted to our level of incompetence.


    I am more than my roles
  4. Who am I? Am I my Roles? My reflection having played different roles in the work & family domains, is that while it is important to clearly understand our roles, we are more than
    our roles.

  5. I’ve seen many people being sucked into their roles & eventually, losing their authenticity & realness as a human being. Needless to say, when that happened, people are less effective & less happy. So, are the people around them.

  6. To prevent fixation onto our multiple roles and losing our authenticity, a good starting point is to understand who we are, what is important to us and how our roles can reflect our true self, how our jobs can be our vocations. When we are happy, we are in a better position to create happiness around us.

  7. After all, we’re all CEOs (Chief Energy Officers). It’s good to ask ourselves periodically what energy we transmit with our various roles in our various domains. The energy defines the results/cultures (real: what we really do) vs intention/vision statements of an individual organisation (what we say we want to do).

  8. In short, we need to ask ourselves if we are “Bearers of Joy” or “bearers of pain” and what better time than the 1st month of a new year to stop doing & start looking inwards to ask ourselves this crucial question?

Extract below from Patrick Linsley: Now is the Time (170 ways to seize the moment)

seek authenticity

Be genuine.
Be the person you are inside.
Look for authenticity in others.
Praise it.
Encourage it.
Emulate it.
It will attract a matching response.
It will set you apart.


“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”
Henry David Thoreau (1817 -1862)


“The centre cannot hold, things fall apart”
(WB Yeats)

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