Serving Beyond Yourself

You could consider this a follow-up to one of last week’s posts: Are You Most Loyal to Purpose or People? I want to share another way of framing the mindset of being loyal to purpose ahead of people, especially for those who’d prefer to shift into greater loyalty to purpose. Putting purpose first isn’t dehumanizing if you frame it a certain way – if your purpose actually involves serving people. If, however, your purpose is mainly self-centered, like if it’s based on individual achievements that will be of little or no benefit to others, then I think you’re more likely to run into trouble with this approach. I think one reason many people adopt a people-based loyalty ahead of a purpose-based approach is that they don’t give adequate thought to how a good purpose can really serve people at a deeper level. Here’s the key difference as I see it. When your loyalty is to people first, it’s really towards specific people – a teeny tiny subset of humanity like your family, friends, or coworkers. This kind of loyalty is small potatoes. There isn’t much to serve there. This limited version of loyalty is mostly a form of attachment; it’s a clingy kind of loyalty. When you give your loyalty to a bigger purpose that involves serving people in some way, you have more room to grow. You can stretch into serving more people, into serving people more deeply, or both. When I began earnestly focusing on the see...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Abundance Values Source Type: blogs