Before we begin, let me get one thing clear.
The term “Purpose Church” is not my invention.
It’s from a coach called Katrina Ruth (Icon would be a better description than coach, but okay) whose Facebook page you can find here.
She uses the term Purpose Church for when her live streams get into preacher mode. She even has a banner hashtag PurposeChurchwithKat, which she may or may not choose to put up before she presses “Go live”.
But even more than borrowing the title Purpose Church from her,
my entire happiness hack would not have even existed, if I had not been diligently reprogramming my mind since December 2016, using her YouTube, her daily blog, and her paid programs.
I will credit myself for doing the WORK, but it was Katrina consistently showing up on social media to preach to the peoples, that allowed me to do so.
Because not doing the work, when Katrina Ruth is showing up every day, to give you anything you need to make your life a success, FOR FREE?
That’s almost rude.
Really.
If you feel a click with her, anyway.
So my first two reasons for bringing up Katrina Ruth are because I borrowed her term Purpose Church, and because I credit her consistent presence on social media for shaping me into the person I am today.
But there is a third one.
And that is because I m beginning to see that the difference between being happy and powerful, or frustrated and confused, is two things;
1.  an awareness of power dynamics, and conflicts of interest in ALL relationships.
2.  having purpose
But that’s theory.
In practice it is only one:
PURPOSE
Once you have purpose, you can drop studying power dynamics, because you’ll be so fired up pushing your own agenda, you simply don’t have time to put up with your employer signing you up for mandatory morning group chants.
An obsession to lose weight.
Be good.
Be accepted in any way.
Instead you’ll be like: “I have better things to do.”

Lately I ve come into contact with the work of two philosophers, Menno de Bree and Carl Cederström. 

Life for beginners | Menno de Bree | TEDxGroningen

Becoming optimized, from happiness to productivity | Carl Cederstrom&Andre Spicer | TEDxBratislava

The striking similarity between the two talks, and also the talk of Carl Cederström I attended yesterday in Lux Nijmegen, is how our desire to be successful in our work, makes us manipulable.
Our employers are using our pursuit of happiness – which we are translating as the pursuit of a fulfilling job – to make us internalize their productivity goals.
Menno De Bree states that because we are using our jobs to succeed on a personal level, if we lose our job, we don’t just have an economic problem, we have an existential problem.
We mistake how valuable we are at work, for how valuable we are are as humans. 

What I m stating here is that PURPOSE is the answer to becoming less manipulable at our work. And also to develop ourselves, be authentic, and yes, happy!
Purpose is the missing link in all problems regarding the pursuit of happiness.
And it’s not even half as complicated as you might think.
Purpose makes happiness surprisingly easy to attain, and not mysterious at all.

Let me first illustrate how purpose will make you more defiant in the workplace.

the Workplace and purpose

There’s two scenarios, here.

The first is that your purpose lies within your job.
In this case, purpose will help you defend yourself towards an overbearing employer.
You’ll easily ward off the next employee program giving it a firm:
“I’ve got better things to do.”
Purpose within your career makes you pretty much immune for any trick the employer tries to pull on you.
It reminds me of Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour, telling the king their weekly meeting could not be in the afternoon, because he needed to nap.
“Is that even allowed?” the king asked.
“I don’t think so,” Churchill replied. “But I m afraid it’s absolutely nessecary.”
Winston Churchill was an alcoholic, a workaholic, and he was the only thing that was standing between England and Hitler.
He didn’t have time for formalities.

The second scenario is that your purpose is not within your work, but outside of your work. Your salary is paying for your purpose.
In this case you’ll just do whatever you need to do to keep your job. You may find ways to make work less annoying or even enjoyable.
Yet “all” it will ever be, is a way to finance your real life, your purpose.
It prevents you from being manipulable by an employer, nor will you easily be swayed by the popular idea that happiness revolves around an authentic career in the first place.
An example would be if you have a job, but you’re also a YouTuber. Every night you have just enough time to make a new video, edit and upload.
Working late would mean you can’t film.
Since you took the job, because it allowed you to be a YouTuber – you will hard limit here.
Because your job is there to support the purpose.
The purpose is not there to support the job.

In both cases having purpose protects you from society or your employer injecting THEIR agenda into you.
If you don’t have a purpose, you re walking around with this huge hole in your soul, that will be filled by the first one coming close.
Not having a purpose is the most dangerous way anybody can live, because it makes you susceptible to anything from becoming a personal development junkie, to getting entangled in an organizational web, and even to joining terrorist organizations. 
In my opinion, not having purpose is the root of all evil, including unhappiness.
Which brings me to the question I promised I d answer for you:
How do we get purpose?

Purpose made simple

The dreaded word right? PURPOSE?
Elizabeth Gilbert points out in her book Big Magic, how intimidating the word Passion is – which is similar to purpose.
And she also gives a wonderful solution!
She states that if you have a passion, you’re probably already following that.
So her advice is for the people who don’t know what their passion is.
(don’t know what their purpose is…)
She gives passion in its earliest stages, a new name:
Curiosity.
Just forget about an all consuming passion and instead do tiny things that spark joy.
At a time in her life when Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t feel any passion, she bought some herbs for her garden. And then she started studying how she could take care of them.
A few years later, she had written an entire novel about a botanist.
Her curiosity had become a new passion project.
This doesn’t mean that curiosity doesn’t have any value, if you drop the subject.
Curiosity are miniature adventures, that may or may not end up being great adventures or passions. It’s all okay.

The similarity between Elizabeth Gilbert studying herbs;
The YouTuber filming every night;
And even Winston Churchill saving the country;
Is that they would all still be doing it, if no one paid them.

The things you do without getting paid, are the key to your happiness.

can you answer these questions?

Question 1:
What are the things you would want to do, watch, or undertake,
about which you have little to no knowledge or experience?
That is your curiosity.

Question 2:
What are the things you like doing, which you would still be doing if no one paid you? If there was no outcome, if they never became monotizable or if they stopped making you money?
That is your passion.

Question 3:
What is the thing that deeply fulfills you, and that you would go through great lengths to still do even when it would start costing (more) money, time, friendships, hours sleep, and unexpected setback would make it hard?
Now THAT my friend, is your purpose.

And happiness?
That is the feeling of deep fulfillment of living a life based on curiosity, on passion or on purpose.

And you may end up saving an entire nation while you re at it.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

About this blog

Hacking Happiness. For good. | Purpose Church with LS Harteveld
is Chapter 23 of my diary 7-figure Rock Star Writer

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