How To Tune In To Your Ideal Career: Your Purpose and Your Platform

Last Saturday, I consulted with a Foundation to do a workshop on how to discover your right career to a group of 150 participants. During the workshop, I shared what it takes to discover a career that you want to do for this season in your life.

The truth is, the channels we use to express ourselves are often temporary. These channels are the careers we take on, our jobs, our societal roles, and so on. The purpose we want to deliver to the world though, is permanent. If we focus on what our purpose instead of our platform we use to get there, it leaves us with endless outlets we can use to express our purpose. What is your message? By message, I’m really referring to tuning in to our life purpose; what we want to achieve and bring to this world through our existence here.

For example, my life message (personal mission statement) is “To use my experiences, charisma and my relentless optimism to help others live braver, high-performance lifestyles that will increase their self- worth, net worth and ability to leave their community better because they were in it“. Consequently, I use all kinds of mediums around me to express this message. I use my Freedom Papers blog to write articles to help others to live their best lives. I do 1-1 coaching to help others learn high performance habits that bring out their best. I do training and speaking to move others to take action in creating a life of significance. These are the 3 platforms I’ve identified as most compatible with my message back before I first started pursuing my passion.

At the same time, platforms aren’t permanent. At any point where a platform becomes incompatible with my message, I’ll let it go. In the past year as I continue to grow and developed myself in all 3 mediums, I may find my greatest affinity is with blogging. I like group training because it’s interactive and I experience tremendous joy knowing new people and connecting with them during my workshops but speaking still makes me feel the focus is on me and I don’t feel it is as effective a medium compared to blogging where I can reach out to a large amount of people at one time. Also with my speaking engagements, I need to be present with every speech, and a good amount of preparation time is required to develop content and material – it’s a direct trade of my time with money. I enjoy speaking and I plan to continue to speak, just not at such a high frequency as what I’m doing now.

I enjoy 1-1 coaching – working with others on a 1-1 basis has blessed me with perspective into their lives, and seeing them growing every step of the way is a very rewarding experience. It’s a great complement to what I do. I’ve gotten to know a lot of amazing, amazing people through my 1-1 coaching and although I moved to a new Continent, I continue to remain in touch with many of my past clients. However, the 1-1 nature of coaching requires a high investment of time and effort, and there is only 1 of me to help 1 person at any point in time.

In this new season while getting settled in Nigeria, blogging is a great fit with my personal values. I have flexibility and effectiveness. Flexibility because blogging doesn’t require me to be geographically situated in a place – I can blog anytime I want, anywhere I want. I can be blogging while I’m on a plane, in Abuja, in Lagos, or sitting in a cafe in Gambia – pretty much anywhere with an internet connection.

Blogging is a boundless platform. The articles I write will remain here for my lifetime for any one on the net to read. Anyone can read the articles while I’m sleeping, traveling, eating, or away from the computer, and my prayer is that they will find benefit from the content. My physical presence is not required for others to gain value from my past writings. All it requires is for me to invest X hours or X days in the writing of the article, and everyone, both current and future readers, can benefit from it after I publish it online.

Be loyal to your purpose, not the platform

My loyalty is to my purpose, and not my platform, which opens me to tons of different ways of expressing my message. I don’t vigilantly stick to certain mediums just because I’ve been using them. I’m constantly looking at my message and asking myself: “What is the platform that can allow me to best achieve my life purpose? What is the platform that will enable me to impact key people, and give them incredible value for their investment of time and trust in me? “

Unfortunately, many of us are loyal to the platform but not the purpose. We look at our current jobs/roles, and we get rigidly stuck to that. We look at our likes and hearts on what we post and fail to see if people are actually engaged for change or just looking for clicks, and neither party is finding any way forward. That’s because your platform has already expired in its ability to express your message. Platforms expire, messages aligned with purpose don’t. If you keep thinking within the scope of an expired platform, you’re not growing, your clicking.

Your message (from your purpose) and platform are separate

Your message is your message, and your current platform is what you are on at the moment. Both are entirely separate things. Don’t confuse the two of them as one thing.

One simple analogy is this: Imagine a glass of water. Is the water the same thing as the glass? No, it’s not. How can they be the same? Obviously, the water is water; the glass is a glass. The relationship between the water and the glass is that the glass is a temporary means to hold the water. Likewise, your current career/job is just a temporary means to express your message to the world. Rather than be overly concerned about the status of your current career and how to make it work out, your key question should be whether this career is letting you express your life purpose/message in the best manner possible. Platforms come and go; messages don’t. It’s possible for one to start off with a seemingly suitable platform at the beginning, only to outgrow it later on.

To identify a platform(s) that fit your message, I’ve come up with 6 simple steps for you to reflect on and take some action. I used these steps while I was thinking about pursuing my passion, and it was following these steps that helped me through a time where I felt my worth was questionable. Today, I feel fulfilled, I have deep joy and my faith is stronger than it has been. The thing is, you can do that too by following these 6 steps.

1) Define your purpose message first

To live a life by your design and not by default, you need to start thinking about the message you want to bring to this world first – whether it’s to grow and be at your highest potential, to express your full creative talents, to create and nurture, to help others grow, etc -, then the platforms you want to use to express that. Having a clear message defined will definitely help you to get clarity on what to do next.

2) Evaluate if your current medium is a fit for your message

What is the career/job/role you’re in right now? This is the platform you are currently using to express yourself to the world. Here’s a simple checklist to see if this medium is a right fit for you:

1. Does this medium allow you to express your message/passion/interests?

2. Does this medium match your personality? E.g., if you enjoy working with people, is this medium letting you work with people?

3. Do you look forward to doing this every day?

4. Do you see yourself doing this every day for the rest of your life?

5. Can you think of other things you’d rather do than this?

If you answered Yes to Q1-4 and No to Q5, then you’re on the right track. If you answered No to Q1-4 and Yes to Q5, then perhaps it’s time to rethink about this platform. It’s probably not a good fit for what you want to deliver to this world. And if it isn’t, there’s nothing to fret about. Maybe you’re a customer service officer but you have a passion for design. Maybe you’re an accountant but you have a passion for cooking. Maybe you’re an engineer but you have a passion for photography. It’s perfectly normal – we outgrow our platforms all the time. What may seem like a perfect outlet in the past, may well expire after a while.

3) Brainstorm on other platforms you can use

The next step then is to identify other platforms you can use to express your message. Think about your life purpose. How do you want to deliver your message to the rest of the world? Come up with a list of possible platforms you can use to express your message. Here’s a short list of possible platforms you can start off with:

· Blogging

· Coaching

· Coding

· Composing

· Consulting

· Counseling

· Creating (Art, Acting)

· Dancing

· Designing

· Directing

· Drawing

· Entrepreneurship

· Events

· Filming

· Hosting

· Investing

· Managing

· Mentoring

· Photography

· Podcasting

· Producing

· Singing

· Speaking

· Supervising

· Teaching

· Training

· Video casting

· Writing

· YouTubing (Vlogging, Video How-To’s)

Note that for all the “platforms” I’ve written above, I’ve conveyed them as the method of expression, such as writing, teaching, etc vs. specific jobs like teacher or teacher. That’s because there are many specific platforms that can be derived from a particular method – for example, with writing, you can be a journalist, a travel writer, a book author, a ghost writer, a copywriter, an editor, and so on. Rather than narrow yourself to that level, first define your preferred methods of expression. You can then zoom down to the specific channels later on. Specific channels are also dependent on other factors like technology. Some platforms that exist in the past may not exist today; platforms that exist today may not exist in the future.

Since we’re talking about platforms that let you express your message to the world, each mode of expression involves an action where you provide something to others, be it content, ideas, – something that adds value to people’s lives. Something like “sleeping” or “resting” isn’t valid as it doesn’t add any value to others nor does it help you to convey your message.

The list above is by no means exhaustive. Beyond referring to the list, think about people out there in the world whom you look up to; who are living the life that you want to lead. What are they doing? How are they expressing their message? Are they running businesses? What businesses are they running? Are they releasing books? Creating music? Producing videos? Saving lives? Write them all down. With so many people in this world, chances are there’s at least someone out there who is already doing what you want to do and found a way to do that. Just by looking out there, you can get tons of ideas on what you can do too.

4) Pick the platform(s) that best fit you and your message and life purpose

Now, pick the platform(s) that best fit how you and your message can fulfil your purpose. Consider your personality and your values. What is your personality like? What do you value? Do you like to work with people up-close and personal? Do you prefer sitting behind a computer? Do you like to be on the go? Do you prefer to be at the same spot? Do you like stable structure, fixed working hours? Do you prefer to work as and when you want to? Answering these questions will help you select the appropriate platform.

5) Visualize and paint your ideal scenario

Think about the ideal scenario where you express your message to the fullest. Use the platforms you highlighted in #4 as reference points. This is the scenario where you can truly look at and say to yourself “I am living my best life “. What would you be doing in this scenario? How would you be expressing your purpose – What channels would you be using? How successful would you be? For example, if you want to be a writer, how many books would you have published? How many copies would you have sold? How much money would you be earning every month? How proficient would you be in your work?

Think of your 4 key needs – Mind, Body, Heart and Soul.

6) Create your action plan and get started

With your ideal scenario visualized, create your action plan and get started. Break down your end goal into mini-goals and identify your key action steps so you can get started. You may want to use my Empowerful Planner as a guide.

Now, put all your energy towards bringing your plan to life. Focus on achieving your first milestone, then get started on the next. If you’ve selected more than 1 platform in Step 4, build yourself in your top platform of choice. When you establish yourself in 1 platform, you’re not just building your expertise on that platform – you’re also developing expertise in yourself as the conveyor of the message. This makes it easy for you to take on other platforms with ease subsequently.

The last note I want to leave with you is to focus on fully aligning yourself with your purpose at every moment as you act on your plan. Just like water, your message is omnipresent, boundless and limitless, and can be expressed even within your current outlets. See the world as having endless number of pockets and channels where your message can fit and ask yourself how you can live true to your purpose in this moment. This is how you live a truly empowered life because you are not deferring it to an arbitrary point in the future.

Continued blessings and I know you have it in you to achieve everything you want to do, and more!