Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery spells PAM. We could make a logo of that and carry it around to remind us each day that if those three elements can be attained , then we will be doing much better in our lives.
I’m thinking that this is the right order. That we need to find the Purpose first. Is the purpose a biggie like: “What is my purpose on earth?” or something small like:”What is the purpose of my work?” or even smaller as: “What is the purpose of my being in school?”. Some answers will come quickly, other not so quickly. Probably the ones that take longer to come up with are more important?
After that we need to look at Autonomy.…learning to do things ourselves. If we define the purpose of our work is to “advocate for people who are in trouble” then we have to find out what that means in each of our daily lives. Yours is probably very different from mine, even though we say we have the same Purpose.
Having strength to know what YOU alone can do is the key. That doesn’t mean you don’t need others to help but you are the leader and define the path.
Last, we come to Mastery. Here once you know your Purpose and have decided how you alone will fulfill that purpose, then you have to venture out in the world and teach yourself how to do it. As we discussed in previous posts, you will find others who have already Mastered your purpose and can learn from them. You will explore exactly what Mastery means for you . Mastery involves learning but at a deeper level than most of us have experienced. To become a “Master” one must fail and learn from each failure. Think of how many times you screwed up learning something like how to play Chess, but mastering it became fun, especially when you could beat your parent!
Now I’m going to let you onto a little secret. If you are having trouble figuring out what purpose goals you have or where to start, begin by writing out your Mission Statements. One is for your personal life and one for your professional life. Here you will find out where your values are and how to expand them into your everyday life.
And you will have PAM.