Your Primary Aim

You can and should reverse engineer your life.

I could paraphrase this next bit, but it is better just to quote Michael Gerber from his book, The E Myth Revisited:

I’d like you to imagine that you are about to attend one of the most important occasions of your life.

It will be held in a room sufficiently large to seat all of your friends, your family, your business associates—anyone and everyone to whom you are important and who is important to you.

Can you see it?

The walls are draped with deep golden tapestries. The lighting is subdued, soft, casting a warm glow in the faces of your expectant guests. Their chairs are handsomely upholstered in a golden fabric that matches the tapestries. The golden carpeting is deeply piled.

At the front of the room is a dais, and on the dais a large, beautifully decorated table, with candles burning at either end.

On the table, in the center, is the object of everyone’s attention.  A large, shining, ornate box. And in the box is…you! Stiff as the proverbial board.

Do you see yourself lying in the box, not a dry eye in the room?

Now listen.

From the four corners of the room comes a tape recording of your voice. Can you hear it? You’re addressing your guests. You’re telling them the story of your life.

How would you like that story to go?

That’s your Primary Aim.

What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it?

That’s your Primary Aim.

If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read?

That’s your Primary Aim.

And once you’ve created the script, all you need to do is make it come true.

All you need to do is begin living your life as if it were important.

All you need to do is take your life seriously.

To create it intentionally.

To actively make your life into the life you wish it to be.

Simple? Yes.

Easy? No.

If we start with the end in mind, it helps us focus on what we really want. It helps to actually write your own obituary. No, seriously. This isn’t just my idea, but one I’ve heard from more than one life coach type of person. Write out your obituary. What is the story of your life? What is the script that you want people to read at your funeral?

I was at a memorial service for a lady in our community who had worked in the local small school district, attended a local church, helped with after-school Good News Clubs for decades, and had a “stove-top ministry” for her kids’ friends and their friends’ friends. I’d known her since my late teens, about 35 years ago. The testimony of her life, though I think it was cut a bit short in her mid-60s, was beautiful. Her life pointed to Jesus and she had a joyful countenance and a clear smile. She bore the aroma of Christ very well. She knew her life purpose and she lived it out—simply, joyfully, beautifully. She had her faults, true, but the lasting story of her life, how she will be remembered, is a story very dear to her family and those close to her.

Once we have a clear picture of our Primary Aim, we can work back from that endpoint.

And here is a bit more from Michael Gerber:

As with Mature companies, I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going.

Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day.

They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.

Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.

They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.

I believe it’s true that the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.

The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.

The difference between the two is living intentionally and living by accident.

So, what is your Primary Aim? Do you feel like you have a clear purpose and calling on your life?

Are you pursuing True Wealth?

How about your health? Is your fitness level where it needs to be to attain your goals? Too many people die before their time, before they have accomplished what they really believe they were meant to do in this life. Don’t let that be you. I will have much more to say about that topic in coming articles.

Did you see or hear about Robert F. Kennedy, age 69, doing push-ups? Age 69 and running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. He is very fit. Intentionally fit. He has the kind of fitness that will serve him well in accomplishing his life purpose.

How about your relationships? Are you actively investing in relationships? Are you learning skills for improving your own emotional intelligence? Are you good at getting through conflicts in a positive way? Do you have the tools you need to have honest, deep relationships with those close to you?

How about your finances? Is your job or businesses going to take you to the financial freedom that you can see in your mind’s eye? How much money will you need to do the things you wish to do? And by when will you need it or be able to obtain it?

Some people make lists and bullet points of their future self. Some people envision it and take time to think about their future self every day. I remember Bob Goff, in a podcast interview with Donald Miller, talking about his “new” Bob, the Bob that was just created 5 minutes ago. He is always looking 10 years ahead and seeing how to grow into that vision of what “new Bob” is like. So, some people do it like that. You can read how he did some audacious things in “Love Does” (how he got into law school by sitting on a bench outside the dean’s office; how he convinced “Sweet Maria” to marry him; how he built a lodge in Alaska where world leaders can come together and do peace treaties). His life has made an impression on me. Bob Goff is one of the great people that Michael Gerber is talking about.

Not all of us live as intentionally as we would like to. We need to change that. Maybe you won’t, but I will.

Have you ever paddled a canoe or stand-up paddle board or a rowboat across a lake? How do you get to where you want to go? Do you even know where you want to end up on the other side? Do you just look a little ways ahead of your boat and try to head in the general direction of where you want to go? Good luck with that method. Wind and currents have a way of turning you almost in circles. No, the best way to reach a certain destination is by picking a point on the horizon beyond where you are headed and aim for it, making tiny adjustments all along the way to stay on track.

The same is true in life. To just keep paddling and let the wind and current take you wherever it wills will result in a much different outcome than you were expecting. We wouldn’t paddle a canoe or paddle board that way, but we often live life that way.

We must do better if we want to fulfill our Primary Aim. I must do more to live intentionally in my own Pursuit of True Wealth. I have made progress, but there is more ground to be gained. I keep pressing on.

One more thing.  How do we plan for the unexpected, or the things beyond our control? Because that will certainly happen. (COVID anyone?) First, see change as opportunity and a challenge, not a disaster. Look to see how to pivot rather than fighting change. Change will certainly come, and it will change our strategy, but not our primary aim. It will impact how we get there, but our primary aim needs to be big enough and true enough that circumstances can’t derail it.

So let’s go. Let’s Pursue True Wealth. Let’s accumulate abundant, balanced wealth in health, finances and relationships. Let’s store up treasure that outlasts this lifetime.  Treasure that is priceless. Money helps, just like shoes on a long journey, but itself is not the treasure that is true, that really lasts. It is just part of the means to the end, the true wealth.