I am ALWAYS recommending good books to read. Here’s the thing—Very Successful People are always reading great books, articles, and blogs. The reason: “We want to know as much as we can so that we can continue to grow and explode our achievements,” which leads me to Gary Keller’s The One Thing and the idea of “entrepreneurial” vs. “purposeful” (or “E” to “P”).
Gifts and Talents Are Great, But Limited
Something Keller argues very convincingly in his remarkable book is that “what got you HERE won’t get you THERE” (pg. 179). You see, we all have natural gifts and talents that we use to achieve everything we do in all parts of our lives. We all are different and it’s no coincidence that we all achieve different results. We also all eventually hit a ceiling – the “entrepreneurial ceiling.”
This is the point at which our natural gifts and abilities will take us no higher. We’ve arrived at the outer limit of our abilities. It’s often a nice place. It’s comfortable…for a while. The problem is that we then get stuck and drift in this place for, in some cases, a very long time. Maybe even a lifetime. The reason is that we just don’t know what to do, and we don’t look for help because we don’t know we should.
Living Out Purpose
He argues that the only way to break through this ceiling is to know our purpose. We need to know what we care about, what drives us, and why we get up and go to work every day. If we know our purpose, then we know if we have achieved all we want to achieve. If we know our purpose, then we begin to look to others to find what we need to blow through the ceiling that has us stuck. We can then begin to see what is possible for us and move to make it happen.
We move from living at the limit of our skills to the vast vistas of our purpose. We move from “E” to “P”.
This is exciting to some of us, not most of us. If you find that it is exciting to you, read Keller’s incredible book—and then join Top Practices, because we are all focused on this every month and day of the year.
