The Life Purpose Podcast on Life Signatures Radio

🎉 New #Podcast! It takes two to tango. One can get overwhelmed, discouraged or unaccountable. A mastermind can provide encouragement, accountability, extra energy and more clarity. Once you have your personal vision, you can only do it so long solo. You need to find men and women of like passions that you can come together and do life together. That process helps you to cement the vision and give it wings to fly. Very many people have aborted their personal vision because they are trying to do it alone. Vision, in its own merit can be daunting, that's why we need help. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! The more information you have about something, the easier it is to own it. The more information you have about someone, the easier it is to be intimate with them. Once you have known what your vision is, it is in a delicate place just like a new born baby. It needs nurturing, caring and protection. All these things are brought about by ownership. Without ownership of vision, we risk aborting it. Here is one critical way that one can own their vision. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! Not all who pray are religious people. Take that to the bank. Anyone who notices that there are things in life that are far beyond their comprehension and yet they want to apprehend those things...pray. In talking about a personal vision, one easily comes to the realization that there is no fulfillment of personal vision unless that vision has been owned. There is a process of vision ownership that cements it and makes you inseparable from the vision so much so that if your name is mentioned, the vision comes up and vice versa. Prayer is smack in the middle of all this. Ask any visionary who built something huge. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! There are three important things about personal vision. The first thing is to know it. That goes without saying. However, after that, there is a very delicate period that follows after the knowledge of your vision. That period is the owning period of the vision. A new vision is very vulnerable and if we are not careful, we can easily dump it, walk away from it, ignore it or crowd it out. We might want to start running with it but we burn out of steam. That is why ownership of vision is important. This is one interesting way to own your personal vision. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! One can easily say that purpose and vision is not esoteric and far from our reach. If you engaged anyone just for a few minutes, you will realize quite a bit about them. You will know what they are passionate about, what their values are, what their desires are, and what they wish would be done positively to impact their world and the world. In other words, our personal visions are not so far away from us. We have them. However, there is one thing that we do with our vision over and over again world wide. We drop the ball and box the vision out. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! Personal vision is paramount to personal success. How else would you gauge your success if you did not have personal vision? Vision, just like success is personal. Yours is different from 7 billion others'. There are three critical things about personal vision that we need to be aware of. The first one is to know the vision, and the second one is to own it. Just the fact that you do know what it is does not mean that the chapter is closed. Vision can be one of the most vulnerable and delicate things especially at the conception stage. That's why ownership is important. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! There are legitimate shortcuts in life. People, for instance, will tell you to "work smart" instead of "work hard". They would be referring to applying methods that will be efficient and maximize effort at a less expense. The same applies to when you are seeking information, especially personal information relating to vision and purpose for your life. You can do it the long and arduous way, or you can use "shortcuts". These are not unethical means though. They are legitimate. If you want to know your purpose faster, this is one of the most potent ways to use. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! There are very many pieces of information in the world. A google search for anything gives you hundreds, thousands and even millions of links. However, not all the information is powerful. It is only what you can use that counts. One piece of information that google will never give you is your vision. The best they can do is to give you links to people who have talked about it, or give you its definition. To get to know your vision, this is one of simplest ways you can use. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! Simple things are not necessarily easy. And again, important things are not necessarily obvious. However, they are always there within reach. We complicate life when we think that the answers to it are complex, rocket science and brain surgery kind of stuff. But if you looked carefully, what we needed for life and love are already available. One of the things we need is vision. There are three things about vision. The first one is to know it on a personal level. Here is one obvious way to do that.

🎉 New #Podcast! Perhaps the reason why we do not seek to deploy our personal vision is that it does not feed us directly. In fact, it takes quite a bit of time to materialize. So we seek the byproducts of vision directly. We go after money, fame, fortune, treasures in a bid to "make it in life". Making it in life is not the most insightful thing for the human. There are three important things about personal vision. The first one is to know that vision. How? Here is just but one way. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! There are three things that are important about personal vision. At the foundation of it all, it is the idea of knowing it. Once you have intimately known what your vision is, the other two things are easy to carry out. However, it is possible to lead an entire life without vision. It possible to do this and that activity all our lives devoid of vision. That does not take away the fact that there is a vision that has to be served at an individual level. The first challenge with the individual vision is to know it intimately. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! At times the subject of vision seems to be too technical and too academic for people to handle. It is seldom taught in traditional school. Probably it is because you cannot examine it, rate it and score it. It is personal. Even though that is the case, there is no denying that regardless of people's gender, skin color and class, vision is one of the most common denominators in the lives of humanity. In fact, you cannot talk about success without talking about vision. It is personal. Listen to this.

🎉 New #Podcast! I came across Simon Sinek's video a while back that made me stop in my tracks. In this video, he says something to the effect that, "Not everyone has vision, but we can find vision and serve it. Not everyone is a visionary just like not everyone is a designer" I had to disagree and in this new series, we will revisit the subject of personal vision to see the three things what we can do about it. However, in this episode, I share why I disagree with Sinek. Listen.

🎉 New #Podcast! A life of urgency tends towards productivity, purpose and ultimately, fulfillment. Urgency makes you to do what matters to you and to stand by it until it is accomplished. It is possible to live our lives without being urgent in any way. In fact, quite a number of people do this their entire lives. There are several ways you can know that you are not being urgent with your life. Let's tackle just a few. Listen to this.

The fact is that we have confines in life. There are rules and lines we cannot cross because we are confined within some boundaries. Perhaps the most sinister of the boundaries is time....and the time of our lives at that. In other words, if we are not careful, there is such a thing as being late in life. You can only see that if you talk from the angle of urgency: doing that which matters to you so hard that you know it has to be accomplished. If you lack urgency in life, life seems cozy long enough until it comes to its tail end. You notice that the lack of urgency made you late on doing what matters. Listen to this.

If you looked at your life either in the past, recently or currently, you might notice that the pattern of high end productivity is directly connected to your level of involvement and urgency. The same applies to history. All high class performers in any area of life cannot have done what they did if they did not have a high sense and level of urgency. Mention any big name in religion, business, sports, governance and politics, you will find that it is true. Each of them had either a written creed or an espoused creed of urgency in their spirit. That's what we need. Can you imagine your life without this? Listen to this.

One of my mentors normally says, "I have never met a poor man who valued their time, and I have never met a wealthy man who didn't." It feels like wealth is connected somehow on the use of time. Probably that is not the only component to it but it does count. Our time usage can be seen on one thing: Urgency. If I think I have all the time in the world, I will not be urgent. If I become lazy, it is because I lack urgency. If I procrastinate, it is because I am not urgent. There are two groups of people in a free world. There are slaves and then there are masters. We all fall in one of those categories depending on how urgent we are with our lives. Listen to this.

When trouble comes our way, we find strength that we did not know we had. We galvanize ourselves. Our faculties become heightened. We become alert. We get urgent. Urgency is one great virtue that we need in life, especially if we are committed to productivity. It should be a mainstay in our existence. We see those fleeting moments of crisis that urgency comes and helps us through. What if we became urgent with our pursuits, our creations, our purpose and our productivity even when there was no crisis we are averting? Don't you think it will server us a great deal? Listen to this.

I have always said that one of the most critical fights of our lives is the fight for consistency. That fight is necessitated by another one: the fight for urgency. To be urgent is to be alive. You will know this when a crisis hits you. Before the crisis, you are all laisses faire about your appearance in life. You are cozy and comfortable, until a setback hits you. All of a sudden you galvanize yourself and find some resources out of the melee. That is how urgent you become. The question is, can we be urgent with our lives daily without waiting for a crisis to hit us? Listen to this.

When we want to build a structure, we get an architect to design for us a blueprint for it. Even though we have not seen it physically, the idea around it (the invisible resource) is given to the architect who will in turn produce a blue print. Further, an artist can create an impression of how the structure will look like once it's done. All these things are done by tapping into the invisible arena. It is these invisible resources that dictate how successful we shall be. If we wanted to succeed, it is important to tap into the invisible world and download that success from there. Listen to this.

In talking about invisible resources, we cannot finish that conversation without mentioning the power of vision. You cannot touch vision, neither can you "see" it physically. But the many good things (and the bad things) that we see on earth came from the power of vision. If we will succeed in like, it will be because we tapped into the power of vision. If we failed in life, partly it will be because we do not have vision. A scripture talks about people dying or "perishing" for lack of vision. The interesting part is that with what we don't see, we don't measure and we don't pursue. Partly the reason why many education systems do not teach personal vision...for they cannot examine, grade and accredit it. Listen to this.

There are very powerful invisible resources that we can leverage in life. These are things like vision, faith, hope, passion, purpose, values and many others. The truth of the matter is that "the thing behind the thing is the thing". What you see is always being backed up by what you don't see. A visionary doing wonders is backed by what we don't see. A dictator hanging onto powers is doing that by the invisible resources we don't see. It is important therefore for us to find out in full clarity what is the reason behind what we are doing. When we do, we shall be tapping into the powerful invisible resources. Listen to this.

There is not a doubt that we are affected by two worlds. We live in the visible and empirical world but we are also aware of the unseen world. There is no problem interacting and transacting our business with the seen world, that's where we live. However, where it matters the most, the unseen and invisible world is such a powerful and real thing. If we can find clarity of our invisible world, the way we appear in the physical world is dictated by that. It is a matter of learning to unearth what we don't see, feel or touch. Listen to this.

I have in the past had a series of episodes in this podcast talking specifically about numbers. They help us to measure. They help us to see progress. Numbers are connected to what can be seen and heard and touched and felt and accounted for. And yet success in life is not just about numbers. There are other powerful resources in life that cannot be seen, cannot be measured and we do not know their extent in full. We use them on a daily basis. Love. Faith. Hope. Passion. Purpose. Vision. Without these "software" of life, our success is not determined. And yet we ignore these an only focus on what we can measure. Listen to this.

On earth, there are two types of forces in general. There are the visible forces and then there are the invisible forces. There are those we can feel, see, touch, smell, measure and account for and then there are those that we can't. Albert Einstein said something powerful about these two: Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts. In other words, we need both. Unfortunately, we live in a world where we have to feel our way, see our way, account our way and measure our way through life in order to be successful. Is it any wonder that the unseen forces are never dwelt on in any school system? Listen to this.

I am one of those guys that need to reconcile to the fact that rest is not a waste of time. I am also one of those guys that need to find creative ways that I can maintain top notch productivity with my purpose. I have realized that to be productive and to be on purpose, there are practical and philosophical solutions that we can deploy. Here is a collection of six of them for overly productive and busy people that will need to rest and to also focus on their purpose. Listen.

If you are a full time employee and you have a vision for your own purpose pursuit, how do you get productive with that purpose? How do you get some time to rest and juggle between working for your boss and working for yourself? They always tell us not to leave our employment unless we are fully sorted and we have reserves. On the other hand, the bosses pay you just enough to live by, and not enough to save. The greatest currency here is time, not even money...but at times you need money to buy you time. How do you get that time? Listen to this.

If you find yourself overly busy and productive, you know that you will need rest. At times we catch ourselves saying that we wish the day had 36 hours, I kid you not. That's good news and bad news too. Good news because you have put your hands on the plough and you are really chunking down work. Bad news because there is only one of you. If you break down, nothing goes on. So how do we get you some time to rest and recuperate? There are philosophical and practical ways. Here is one of them.

Did you know that if you are incompetent, disorganized, not passionate and not efficient with anything you do, you will take more time with it and you will not enjoy the process? Work is not supposed to be drudgery. It is supposed to draw effort from us, but it is also meant to be enjoyable. One of the most successful US Presidents was a movie actor! He never had time in politics, just came out of Hollywood and became president. I believe he was called Roosevelt? When asked what his secret was (he was performing so well), he simply said, "I hire my weaknesses". Let's look at one more way in which a productive person can get "me time" for themselves so that they can even work better!

Like I have kept saying, the human species has no problem with taking action. Every waking day, the streets are filled early with people running up and down to do stuff. And so we find that our calendars are as populated as a productive mango tree. But at the end of the day, not every mango fruit is ripe off of that tree. In other words, not all the activities that we delve into on a daily basis will result into productivity. Neither should we even do these. The pareto principle in part says that 20% of activities will account for 80% of output. Aha! Do you now what those 20% are? Listen to this.

Ever found that there is so much to do in the day that you needed a 36-Hour Day? I heard Arianna Huffington one day criticize Elon Musk for claiming that he spent 24 hours on his birthday working. At some point in time, we do need some "me time" in order to recharge and recuperate. We know that this is important, but at times we find ourselves working even on Sundays. In this episode, let's check out one simple trick that can create acres of space in or calendar for me time. It is a simple way to look at our activities and restructure them. Listen to this.

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing". I love that quote. So let's ask ourselves this question: What's the main thing in life? Perhaps different people will give you different answers. It is the same as asking everyone: What matters to you? You will get as many answers as there are passionate independent thinkers. At the end of the day, I bet you that the most important thing in life is productivity. But there is another option that most people are following: To make it in life. How do you balance those two? Listen to this.

Business books often talk about the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. This is important in life, for we have no problem being efficient. However, at the end of the day, were we productive? To be productive as an individual simply means to do that which you were designed to do in the fast place. Therefore, productivity is connected firmly to the message of a life of purpose. Can you say that a person living outside of the life of purpose is a productive soul? Debatable, but if you are to go with the definition, the answer is no. Listen to this.

I honestly believe that there is no bigger reason for the existence of the human being other than to be productive. And I am going to focus not on a whole human race, but just on individuals. You and me. There could be no other bigger reason for our existence. Therefore, productivity is a critical aspect of our lives, probably on a daily basis. We have no problem taking action daily. The question is: are we being productive with it? Listen to this.

The most inexhaustible treasure trove in the world I believe is human potential. I am not going to take away the fact that the earth itself has incredible amounts of treasure when excavated. However, when push comes to shove all those treasures are useless without the human. That is why the human is an important aspect in life, and the human himself is filled with so much incredible potential that is inexhaustible. We need to learn how we can start and how we can continue to exploit that potential. Like I have said, the most sinister thing about potential is words used to describe it: Dormant, Unused, Untapped. Let it not be so. Here are some ways we can change the narrative.

You know this very well. That comfort is the conquered frontier. Discomfort is the unconquered frontier. Therefore, if potential has to be excavated, you and I will have to cherish the discomfort. There is nothing new for growth that is found in comfort, but there is always great reserves of potential that can be exploited when we are uncomfortable. This goes without saying. Let us see exactly how that is done. Listen to this.

There are two things about inventions and innovations. First, there is proximity. You invent or innovate with what you have, or around where you are, or where there is a need and a problem to be solved. Second, there is passion. You invent or innovate in response to the undying passion locked up within you. Either way, one of the best ways to utilize your potential and actually to excavate it is to invent something or to innovate. This doesn't mean that you have to be an Einstein or an Edison. All you can do in life has not already been done. There is more. Think of new way of doing things ever so often and that's how innovations come to you. Listen to this.

The most sinister thing about potential are the words used to describe it. "Dormant" force. "Latent" energy. "Unused" power. Think about that. The definition does not talk about unavailability. It does not talk about rarity. If anything, it talks about abundance. One can even talk about neglect when it comes to it. In fact, the world over, one of the most neglected powers we have is the power of potential. So how can we excavate it? How do we put it to use? How do we make it come to the fore? I believe that we can synergize and deploy our potential. Athletes use a system called Pace Makers. Listen to this.

In one of Aesop's fables, we learn a powerful story about familiarity. That we can be so contemptuous when we are "familiar". It is easy for a servant to take a King for granted because they are too familiar with him. Well, guess what? That is the same thing that we do with our potential. In fact, some people never put their potential to action because they are so contemptuous with it. They didn't get it by blood, sweat and tears...so they see it not as important as compared to a green card to the USA. Listen to this.

I once challenged a radio personality on social media by asserting that IQ is overrated. They shot back and said that they could host me on their radio show to defend my position. I took up the challenge and we had an interesting discussion. This is exactly how it went. Listen to this.

Now that we know that some of the greatest answers we are looking for in life are already available to us but shrouded in potential, how do we excavate this potential? It is amazing that we can leave these answers that are already available and we go on a journey outside of our potential seeking the foreign, exotic and probably complicated solutions. However, when we look keenly enough on our potential we realize that the answers we find are not just for us, but also for a bigger part of humanity. Here is one of the ways you can put your potential in perspective.

As already explained previously, the answers we are looking for in life are around us and within us. They are all shrouded in our potential. The fortunate thing about potential is that it always speaks, like that spark that begs to be fanned aflame. So we have answers in life in potential, and this potential is daily calling on us. It has a language and it has different voices. It speaks. Are we listening? In this episode, let us find out how potential communicates to us. Listen to this.

Probably we all have answers to life that we are looking for. The answers come in form of seeds. That's why maybe we keep passing by these answers on our journey to look for readily available fruits. Potential is the answer. Perhaps the most sinister thing a creator can ever do is to fashion something of someone and deprive them of potential. Fortunately, that is not the case. We are all laden with it. Listen to this.

This is a continuation of a conversation that I had with Mr. Solution Ngonzi, a Growth Coach, farmer and founder of Gone Rogue Strategies. At times in life, we come to a place where we are boxed in and seemingly, we have no options. What do we do at such moments? What can we learn about the act of "standing still?" What instructions can we receive that can help us in that moment? Listen to this.

What do you do when you are caught between a rock and a hard place? I had a conversation with Mr. Solution Ngonzi about a wide range of things. In that conversation, a beautiful story came up that covers up the subject matter. Chances are that what we are looking for in life are all available around us or even within us in terms of seeds. Our environments are potent, covered with many possibilities but shrouded in a mystery of the unknown, which is protected by a layer of fear in our hearts. Listen to this.

It has been an interesting electioneering process in Uganda. The slogan that the ruling party went with into the elections was "Securing Your Future". It seemed such a slogan to use on such matters. It probably was communicating promise and stability. However, a couple of episodes back, I caught myself in spontaneity saying, *"You cannot secure the future because it is an unknown variable"* . Well, soon after, I had an opportunity to talk to one of my friends about it. Here is how our conversation went. Listen to this.

Fear can be both a good thing or a bad thing. If you are afraid of heights, it could save you from jumping from the third floor to your death. If you are afraid of public speaking though, it could rob you of an opportunity to influence and inspire. As such, it is important for us to not over-analyze the fear. If we know what matters to us and yet we are afraid of taking action, we ought to actually go ahead and take the action. That is the way we get to know what lies on the other side of our fears. Here are four questions we can ask that can help buttress us so that we can feel the fear and still do it any way. Listen to this.

One of the easiest ways to gain courage is to hang around the courageous. If you wanted to be wealthy, you could hang around the wealthy. If you wanted to be wise, you could hang around the wise. We don't have many things in our lives because we are afraid of the unknown. And so we stay in the tried, the proven and the tested, not wanting to venture out. To discover our purpose, we might want to hang around the courageous, the fearless, the vision-filled people who are having results in their lives. Listen to this.

One of my favorite quotes is by Teddy Roosevelt. He said, "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that neither knows victory nor defeat" Let's face it: In our attempts to know what our purpose is, we have to embrace the fear of the unknown and we have to do it anyway. When we do that the feedback we get tends to move us closer to our purpose than when we were before we did it afraid. That's why the person daring to do great stuff is closer to their purpose than the one looking for comfort. Listen to this.

I saw a very powerful quote from T.D Jakes about #Fear. In his book, Instinct, he says, "If fear is in the car, that is Ok, for as long as it is not in the driver's seat". In other words, you might not do away with fear. The presence of fear should not stop you from moving forward. In discovering your purpose, at times, fear is the indication of what you ought to do. If you are afraid of public speaking, how about you do it? If you are afraid of publishing the book, or article, or podcast, how about you do it? It seems as if the obstacle is the way. How can we learn to embrace fear in the journey of our purpose discovery? Listen to this.