At the last Women’s Circle event we talked about fear and its various forms such as anxiety, anger, jealousy, resentment and any other form of negative thinking. The way to overcome fear and the fear perspective is to shift our focus and attention away from self and towards others’ needs.

**And here is the surprising thing:**
*In the process of serving the greater good we actually serve ourselves in a more satisfying and lasting way than we would if we only focused on our self-interest alone.*

The difference lies in the perspective, from which we undertake our actions – one is fear, the other one is…love. We call that perspective intention.

We talked a lot about intention and everyone appreciated how important - the most important intention is for all our actions and for all the reactions we get.

How can we serve the world in a meaningful way?

I have recently listened to Mark Zuckenberg’s speech he gave at Harvard University, and he said that if we want to leave a positive impression in this world, we need to start working on something we dream of. Ideas don’t emerge fully formed, we need to start working on something first, and with time it becomes clearer. The single Eureka moment is an illusion and a dangerous belief as it prevents all those with ideas to try.

Zuckenberg said : "In our society, we often don’t do big things because we’re so afraid of making mistakes.. The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. But that can’t keep us from starting."

When I started my coaching and training business 8 years ago, I heard two voices telling me how to do things – my mind, logical and analytical observant which also told me what others might think of my actions. Yes that very much was fear perspective. And my gut, which has always known my unique gifts and value I can bring to people’s lives. That has been the love perspective.

It has taken me years working with corporate clients, self doubt and enormous amount of holding back to finally realise what my biggest gift has been. I have since been working with individuals helping them uncover their drivers, blockages and inner power. I have been encouraging others to go deeper into themselves to uncover what their greatest gifts for themselves and the world are. Lack of confidence, self-acceptance, lack of resilience or courage which emerge in the process as they hold people back are all conquerable, that’s fear, I found.

If you are wondering what you could do with your life so that it's more purposeful, more love and not fear driven, here are Zuckenberg’s ideas:

" How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and asking volunteers to track their health data and share their genomes? Today we spend 50x more treating people who are sick than we spend finding cures so people don’t get sick in the first place. That makes no sense. We can fix this. How about modernizing democracy so everyone can vote online, and personalizing education so everyone can learn?

These achievements are within our reach. Let’s do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role."

The thing is you can do anything you like. You can do big things, you can do seemingly small things. Whatever you do, as long as it's done with the right intention, out of love, you will not go wrong... you will not fail. You cannot fail.

If you shift your attention away from your own needs. If your intention is contribution and sharing - no job is too small or insignificant.

We spend way too much time focusing on curing ourselves, on fulfilling our basic needs, feeding our ego, we constantly justify not being able to help as we have our own problems to deal with.

D.T. Suzuki’s once said:

“ Your mission in life is to find your gift.

Your purpose in life is to share it with others”

Everyone regardless of the stage of their development is able to try to shift their attention away from worry and anxiety caused by constantly needing recognition, love, sense of belonging, feeling worthy (any of the basic needs) and towards empowerment achieved only by giving more to others, by contribution, innovative thinking for the sake of collective rather than self gain. In the process of such actions they fulfill the very own needs at a much higher and deeper level plus more – they give to others.

How to achieve that?

It is much easier to give to others if we know what your gift is, who you are when you are at our best. One way (there are others) is to investigate the roles you have undertaken in life where you felt fulfilled.

There are roles, which we likely assign to ourselves such as a mother, wife, manager, (insert profession), girlfriend. And then there are those we have once undertaken and thrived in, but for some reason we never returned to that role again.

Or it may be something we only do occasionally but when we do we truly thrive in it, for example events coordinator or a MC.

What is it for you?

That very role plays a key part in identifying your strength, the gift you have to share with the world. Is it worth exploring?

If you believe it is, get onto it now. Download the Purpose exercise and start your journey to identify what your biggest gift is you have to contribute to this world.

Don’t worry about getting it perfect. Just get started. The pieces of the puzzle will come.

The main thing is that in the process of so doing you will shift your attention away from what you need most and towards what the world needs from you – and that is a very different story to the one you have been likely telling yourself or others..?

Purpose: What’s Your Gift to the World? That’s Your Right Intention.