BUILDING A PRACTICE ON PURPOSE SERIES PART #4 Identifying the Fear-based Culture of Your Business
In the personal life coaching I do as a Life On Purpose Coach I
work with my clients to help them uncover their Inherited
Purpose. This is the fear, lack, struggling to survive-based
force that shapes people's lives especially whenever we feel
threatened which for most people is quite often in today's times.
One way to think of a business is that it's a group of people
who have come together for a common cause or purpose. For a
veterinary practice that is generally to offer services to pets
and their owners. So, it makes sense that when a group of people
come together that their individual Inherited Purposes also come
together to form a fear-based culture of business.
Now the insidious thing about a person's individual Inherited
Purpose and the Collective Inherited Purpose of a business (and
for that matter of a profession as a whole) is that for the most
part the IP operates most effectively in the background of our
consciousness and awareness. After all each person's IP begins
to get formed very early in life -- those formative years that
the old Wonder Bread commercials used to refer to -- so that by
the time most of us are in our early to mid-teens our IP has
been well formed and operating to shape our life, to keep us
safe and secure.
Therefore, by the time we enter the business world our IP's are
well engrained in the background of our awareness shaping much
of our life like a master saboteur without our even being aware
of it.
For example, my Inherited Purpose began to be formed when 2
weeks before my 7th birthday I came skipping home from the
second grade only to find a living room full of very sad adults
including my mom who had just learned that my dad who had gone
on a fishing trip a day or two before had died of a massive
heart attack. Not expecting to die at 43, he left his wife and
two young sons with no savings nor life insurance, so in the
subsequent years it took
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for us to recover, my Inherited Purpose
became: "I must be smart and know all the answers (or pretend
that I do), and I must work really hard so I won't be poor and
so people won't leave me."
It was that Inherited Purpose that shaped so much of the next 30
years of my life that by the age of 37, although to all outward
appearances I was a successful veterinarian, inside my life felt
so empty that I seriously contemplated suicide. Both the
individual and the collective Inherited Purpose has tremendous
shaping power, often leading to burnout or a life that leaves us
asking the question, "Is this all there is?"
Uncovering your personal Inherited Purpose and the Collective
Inherited Purpose of your business can be some of the most
challenging work to creating a Practice On Purpose, yet will
ultimately make a profound difference. So, here are a few
questions to ponder:
What's been shaping your life, especially when you feel
threatened that's based in fear, a sense of lack or a need to
struggle to survive?
How about your staff?
What do you imagine the Collective Inherited Purpose of your
practice to be? How about of our profession?
Tough questions, I realize. Tough enough that the answers could
transform your life and your business.
©2005 Brad Swift of Life On Purpose Institute, Inc. This article
can be reprinted freely online, as long as the entire article
and this resource box are included.
About the author:
Dr. Brad Swift founded Life On Purpose Institute in 1996 with
the vision of creating a World On Purpose by assisting people
like yourself to clarify their life purpose & live true to it.
Determine how on or off purpose your life is with the fun &
insightful Self Test at:
http://lifeonpurpose.com/_forms/self-test.php?source=ezart
Inspire yourself with a fr.ee subscription to Purposeful
Pondering Ezine: http://lifeonpurpose.com/
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