Finding Your Purpose

How do you find your purpose? What drives you? What do you hope to change or do with your day to day lives? It could be a problem you are looking to solve or advocating a belief you have.  These are very big questions everyone has asked themselves at some point in their lives. The day you find out what your purpose is, expect a type of clarity you’ve never experienced before!

However, if you don’t know what your purpose is then you don’t know why you are here, and it can be hard to keep going. This same very principle applies to your business as well.

When I look back on my life, I remember talking to a lot of my colleagues and business coach, always struggling to articulate what my purpose is. I guess one of the things that I got taught and have also spent much of my time thinking about is that a purpose has to be something that you enjoy doing, something that actually excites you to your core, something that makes you happy and brings you peace.

I recently met up with some old friends, we used to spend a lot of time playing computer games together. And the more I thought about it, the more I feel its a form of addiction. You play the games, you enjoy and you want to spend your time hanging out with your “guild” or “herd”.  I am a self-professed ex-addict. I remember when I used to play World of Warcraft, for those of you who don’t know it,  it is the biggest online role-playing video game where a very large number of people participate simultaneously. I used to spend 27 hours a week playing it and that included having a full-time job and I had a girlfriend at that time as well. Addiction? Yes! I can’t think of a better way to define it!

Some good has come out of this because when I look back at why I enjoyed playing these games so much and what exactly was it that I enjoyed doing in these games. I’ve realised that the role I always played in these games was actually that of providing support. For example, In the game called “Wolfenstein”, I was always the “medic”. I was always the guy who was running around trying to jab people with a syringe to revive them and so that they could continue fighting for the team. When I played “World of Warcraft”, I was the “priest”. The “priest” is a healer, basically, they’re tasked with healing the main character who is fighting the monsters or mobs and in the game “Dark Age of Camelot”, I was the “cleric”, once again, the same thing.

The point that I am trying to make is that, when I look back at my journey throughout life thus far, I’ve always been a supporting character and I began to ask myself, why do I do that? And I guess when I think about it, I really do enjoy being part of a team that is achieving something for a higher purpose. Whether it is in the form of a computer game mission or in a real-life business, I enjoy helping people!

Right now with 20-80 Solutions that is what our purpose is, which is an extension of my own personal purpose, which is to help health medical practise owners run very successful businesses. One of the things I have noticed over the years is that health medical practitioners, tend to have a mindset where they have to sacrifice themselves to ensure that their patients have the best healthcare. Sacrifice? I mean that they’re not charging enough money or being too high strung with the private health insurance companies.

One of the things you should consider as a practice, is how can you optimise your operations to provide the best services for your patients? By investing in your team, for example, you’ll be able to train other doctors with niche skills you already have! That is the mindset you need to have and you can further develop that by knowing what your purpose is.

In the health and medical care industry, most professionals have a similar purpose, that is to help people. But in order to do this, you need to be able to build a team to provide services to achieve your purpose and mission. So, don’t feel alone on your journey.

As a practice and business owner myself, I understand how hard this is. I also feel that knowing that you have a team standing with you, as you tackle key areas in developing your business be it from a marketing perspective or from the operational end will you give you an unparalleled confidence and advantage in achieving your purpose and mission!