If you’re lucky enough to live in the developed world then you’ll probably have around 30,000 days of life on Earth. Sounds like a lot, right? But you’ve probably already used up a whole lot of these, and if you’re anything like me you’re wondering what the hell you’ve been doing with all that time.

Each and every one of these precious days we are presented with a question: How will you spend this day?

How you answer this question from day to day will have a huge impact on your life and the lives of those around you. Our lives weave together in an intricate web of relationships, and the world in which we live is a product of the cumulative effect of the choices we all make every day.

It’s all about clarity and alignment

Knowing where we want to go helps to create the world we want. Leaders that cultivate clarity and alignment in themselves and in their teams do get better results, but they also create a sense of purpose that produces better relationships and fulfilment at work.

Without clarity we are lost. If we’re not clear on where we are and where we want to go then we can’t navigate and direct our actions towards our goal. If our actions are not aligned towards something worth striving for, or we don’t connect with others to direct our efforts in the same direction, then our hopes and dreams will come to naught.

How to create clarity and alignment is a big topic, but I want to focus on a simple recipe: envision a future that you want to see — your vision — and then find the mission that takes you there.

Vision tells you where want to go, calling you into relationship with your future self

It is an invitation to serve something that is yearning to be born. Vision calls us into deeper conversation with each new day and calls us into powerful action in the world. Vision is kindled in contemplation, in that place of imagining where we dream of what the world could be. Often it is found rather than created, emerging suddenly from quiet reflection, or taking form out of the mists of creative endeavour.

People often refer to a “vision statement” but this stands apart from the thing itself. A vision lives only in the hearts and minds of those who share it, not when it’s found only on the wall or in some forgotten artefact. A vision needs to be tended and nourished, surviving only when it finds expression in word and deed.

Dr Martin Luther King gave the world a powerful vision when he declared “I have a dream”, one that still resounds to this day. Dr King spoke of the beloved community in which people are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. His vision lives on with potency to this day, inviting us into deeper relationship with each other. It is a generator of action and an attractor that’s been drawing people together for decades.

Dr King’s vision stands as a clarion call into a new and brighter future, but your vision need not be anything so great and lofty. Everyone has different things they find meaningful, and it is what you find personally meaningful that rightly belongs at the heart of your vision.

The story of the world is woven from all the weird and wonderful ways that nature finds to create diversity and beauty in the world. Learning to serve what is meaningful to you is an act of generosity. It is your gift to the world.

Mission is how we move towards a vision

Mission is where the vision comes into contact with the world, the journey that leads from where we are to where we want to be. It is a pilgrimage in which the ever-changing scenery illuminates what stays the same, that which is unchanged by the passing seasons and the moving landscape.

Mission is where the change happens, where new gifts are given birth and brought into the world. The mission will make its own demands for change and growth, will ask us for things that may be hard to give. It is through the mission that we enter into deeper conversation with the world — with our past and future selves, with the unknown horizon, our shadow and our light, and with those parts of ourselves that lie hidden in the dark, unseen and ripe with potential.

If you can find companions for your journey, the mission will bind you together. Through the trials you encounter on the way your bonds become stronger, and you are forged into a greater union, a deeper fellowship that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

A vision can exist without a mission, but is then consigned to the realm of empty hope and dreams. Shielded from contact with the world, it loses the potency to bring new life into the world. Many visions live and die in this way, and never see the light of reality. Forever consigned to the safety of a hidden dream, the vision is shielded from contact with the world.

Nelson Mandela came to personify his mission to overcome the hatred and injustice of apartheid in South Africa, and in his great journey of strength and compassion he became deeply committed to those things within himself that remained strong and true in the face of oppression — the power of love and forgiveness, the importance of self-discipline, routine and ritual, and the simple power of finding joy in the everyday interactions of life. His mission first transformed himself and then the nation in an embrace of forgiveness and benevolence, healing a great divide that ran through the heart of his nation.

But yours need not be anything so great — not everyone is presented with the chance to serve in such powerful ways. And we should be glad of it! Your mission may be as simple as finding your own way into a better place for you or your loved ones, overcoming adversity or helping others in some small way. Whatever it may be, however great or small, it is an invitation for you to serve.

Purpose is what brings these things into alignment with the heart

It is how these things are meaningful to us on a personal level. Purpose is a rich source of resilience, and helps us to rise to adversity, holding fast to what is true and meaningful despite the challenges and setbacks on the way.

There is a deep and powerful motivation that is found when a mission becomes connected to purpose and meaning.

Purpose is found in what is meaningful. It’s a feeling, a sense of harmony and alignment. You can tell when something feels purposeful, and it’s usually found in relationship to something beyond the self.

Purpose connects the mission and the vision to what is meaningful, to a reason for being, to our “why”. Purpose is in fact the reason why all the bloody hard graft is worth the effort — despite the struggle and toil, despite the hardship and challenge, despite the fact that it keeps us away from the comfort and security of our warm spot on the couch.

People who live with purpose are happier and more driven. People who lead with purpose help those they lead to deliver their best work. Businesses that have a clear purpose have better retention, and the people who value this are often the very ones who you want to retain.

But really, why bother? This world is a rat race and he with the most toys wins. Working on purpose is time I’m not working to get ahead, right? The cold, hard logic of game theory teaches that we live in constant competition for scarce resources: what I don’t take for myself will be taken by my rival. All this talk of purpose and meaning sounds like a distraction from the business of getting ahead.

There’s a particular delight in hearing someone speak from a deep sense of purpose. I really believe that everyone has their own unique genius within them if they can find a way to situate themselves in their place of genius. I love the way that David Whyte speaks of genius as being relational, that it’s a relationship between an individual and a place where their genius is able to find expression.

It feels good to be in contact with someone who’s in the flow of their purpose. It’s magnetic and energising and, just like the electromagnetic force, it has a strange ability to bend the world in both subtle and powerful ways.

Here’s why you want purpose in your life

1. Purpose is powerful — it is an engine that propels you into action.
2. It’s sexy — there is a magnetism to people who are living with purpose.
3. Purpose is tough — a sense of purpose and meaning sustains us through hardship and adversity.
4. It’s magnetic — community forms around purpose; people want to give their time to what they find meaningful.
5. Purpose sells — “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”

And finally, why the hell not! What else are you going to do with this precious allotment of days you have on this earth?

A life lived with purpose is one in which you have honestly and courageously entered into relationship with the world, a life in which you have found the greatness of heart to make the world a little better for having lived.

What is your vision of the future? What’s the mission of meaning and purpose you can serve? How you answer this questions will help to make the world a better place.