“The people whose lives you touch may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — David B. Haight
There are a lot of yardsticks you could potentially use to measure your life. Some work better than others. If you use a “me”-centered yardstick, chances are you’ll fall short. You amplify the power of purpose when you focus on the greater good, and the role you play within that.
Passion and purpose ignite us.
Stephen Covey, Randy Pausch, and others teach us that it’s not the things we did, it’s the things we didn’t do in life that we regret. But how do we measure life along the way, and what’s our North Star?
Measure Against Your Mission
We can take a page out of the playbook of non-profits. They don’t measure their success against profit. They measure their success against their mission. This is where your purpose comes into play. Are you giving your best, where you’ve got your best to give?
Seasons of Love
If you’ve seen Rent, you know the song, “Seasons of Love.” It starts off by putting time into perspective … “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.” Those are the minutes in a year. But counting the minutes, doesn’t count the smiles, the laughter, the sunsets, or even the cups of coffeee.
But you can measure in love … the seasons of love.
The People Whose Lives You Touch
Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and author, shares his insight on how to measure a life and choose the right yardstick:
“I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research. I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted the disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant the impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess m life isn’t dollars, but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.”
That’s a pretty clear yardstick … “the people whose lives I’ve touched.”
If you want to explore more, you might enjoy my guest posts, How Do You Measure a Life and What is the Meaning of Life, and Clayton Christensen’s HBR article, How Will You Measure Your Life.
We are All Rocket Surgeons