Having a purpose is the difference between making a living and making a life.
[Tom Thiss]
Pursuing Noble Goals involves connecting your daily choices with your overarching sense of purpose. Noble Goals activate all of the other competencies in the Six Seconds Model. When people examine their personal vision, mission, and legacy and use that conviction to set their goals and objectives, emotional intelligence gains relevance and power. When you are clear about your Noble Goal, you feel compelled to pay fierce attention to your daily choices to ensure that you are not undermining your life’s purpose. Pursuing a Noble Goal facilitates integrity and ethical behavior, which helps you maintain focus, inspire others, and access your full power and potential.
Anchoring our goals and our Noble Goal together is important because it keeps propelling us forward. In fact, Josh Freedman of Six Seconds describes our Noble Goal in a very practical way, as something we strive to live every day.
5 Criteria for a Noble Goal*:
- Something that has impact beyond your lifetime.
- The focus is outward.
- It integrates all domains of life.
- It gets you out of bed in the morning.
- No one is made less by you striving for your noble goal.
*By Six Seconds
Identifying what that Noble Goal is — and actually putting it into words — can seem daunting. The good news is, when we connect with the core values that inspire and lift us up in our lives, identifying our Noble Goal can become much easier.
Five Questions to Help You Focus
In the spirit of living forward into our best selves, this quarter and beyond, here are few questions for starting to craft your own Noble Goal:
- What inspires you?
- What legacy do you want to leave?
- Choose six words that describe the aspects of life that you value the most.
- How would you want someone to sum up what your life was about?
- What positive impact in the world do you care most passionately about making, even on a small level?
You can now start compiling your noble goal statement by reflecting on your answers.
Once you have arrived at your noble goal statement, it will be invaluable in your leadership as it will help you manage your reactions and to check whether your behavior is serving your ego or your noble goal.
Daniel Pink says that everyone needs a sentence and then once you have your sentence, ask yourself each day whether you were better today than yesterday. You can watch his video called Drive to explore more on this topic.
As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
[Steve Jobs]
Once we have our noble goal it is like having a compass or North Star to guide you and as long as you have that you will always find energy for what matters! You can start thinking about what actions you can take every day this year that will bring you one step closer to achieving your Noble Goal and living your purpose.
If every day you add something to the world you will find more energy to live and lead. A noble goal statement or sentence can be a simple as Walt Disney’s which was ‘To make people happy’ or Nelson Mandela’s which was ‘to nurture equality’. One of my favourites is, ‘To be the change you want to see in the world’.
I challenge you to “Live as if your choices send ripples beyond your lifetime.”