Everybody at the office probably gets sick of me talking about Heroes, Missions, General Purpose, and all of that fun stuff because I find it applicable to practically every conversation that I’m in. It’s like beating a dead horse.

I am 97% sure.

That being said, I think Purpose and Missions are a great way to look at our lives and our businesses.

When you’re talking about life or business, your General Purpose is why you are what you are. Why your business is what it is. The general purpose is what you have left when you boil everything down into its simplest form and understand who you want to be.

We have different lives. Business, Personal, Social, etc. So look at one of your lives and boil it down and what do you see? Is it what you expected?

I think too often people don’t know or forget about or don’t know what their purpose is. They are lost and it can affect you at an emotional level. Understanding and moving toward your purpose is very important.

So how do you do that? Through what I like to call Missions.

Your North Star Mission is that big mission that’s going to help you significantly move toward your purpose. Multiple Missions need to exist that help you work to achieve or to move toward that North Star Mission.

Missions are almost like goals but Missions breaks the goal down into action items and milestones so you have a road map to success. It allows you to see the destination off in the distance.

We should do this in our lives. We should do this in business.

PIC (my company) runs on EOS. EOS and as well as the book E-Myth (a book I’m reading right now and would recommend) talk about working “ON” something in working “IN” something.

The EOS stance is that a lot of people get caught up in the day-to-day what they call the whirlwind and they end up working “IN” and strongly neglect working “ON”.

The idea is to take time, step out of the whirlwind and start working on your life, rather than in your life. You need to stop and you need to look and see what your purpose is in life and you need to start working on your life rather than in it.

When you start breaking down your General Purpose and set a North Star Mission and then the Missions that you need to focus on in order to achieve that North Star Mission, you have kind of a clear framework. A step-by-step process that you work on to keep you focused and on point.

That’s where the value of going through that Mission exercise in life and in business allows you to stop for a second, stop working “IN” and start working “ON” so that you don’t get lost in the whirlwind.

It’s very easy to get lost in a whirlwind because your head is down and you’re just focusing hour to hour, day to day, on what has to get done. It’s easy to get into the habit of not looking up.

So the takeaway from this ramble is to stop for a minute, look up, and see where you’re going. Ask yourself, is this where I want to go? If not, work to figure out where you want to go.

Make sure that you’re going in the direction that takes you toward your Purpose.