“Purpose is the sail on the boat, the yeast in the bread,” he explains, in analogies. “Once you know your purpose — that is, what matters — then everything else can fall into place. Getting your purpose clear is your defining truth.”

Purpose, according to Loehr, is the thing in your life you will fight for. “It is the ground you will defend at any cost. Purpose is not the same as ‘incentive,’ he clarifies. Rather, it’s the motor behind it, ‘the end that drives why you have energy for some things and not for others.’

If you find it difficult to discover your purpose, try the tombstone exercise, the author suggests. Bizarre it may sound, but it does help, to envision the end of your life and ask yourself how you want to be remembered or what the legacy you most want to leave. That way, you may find ‘your single most important navigational coordinate, fundamental purpose, which henceforth will drive everything you do.’

The ‘truth’ rule is that the story you tell should conform to known facts. Ask yourself: if the story is a work of fantasy, a lie you tell yourself, reflecting your biases and prejudices; or if you are sidestepping that parts of the story that are obviously untrue because they’re just too painful to confront.

Truth is achieved when your voices — both private and public — are aligned. “The public voice expresses the story we tell others,” the posture, the presentation. In contrast, the private voice is what tells the story to one’s self. “It can be the measured voice of reflection or the completely uncensored voice of cynicism. It can be our filter, our gut check, our crap detector, our relentless, brutal critic. It reflects our internal reality at the moment but may or may not reflect objective truth.”

The private voice is the voice of greatest power, the author declares. You may be able to unearth ‘surprisingly wise, confident and encouraging’ stories by amping up the volume and listening carefully to the story being told inside!

Action, the third rule, is premised on action. Engage, to achieve extraordinary depth, the author exhorts. It’s not about time, but energy, he urges. “With the one-foot-in, one-foot-out level of engagement characteristic of multi-tasking, a startling number of things, all relatively inconsequential, get achieved in a short time.”

The difference between full engagement and multitasking is not incremental, it’s binary, he adds. “If a tennis pro preparing to return a 140-mph serve has two thoughts going, and one of them does not have to do with returning that serve,” chances of returning well are not 10 per cent or 5 per cent but zero.

D. MURALI

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