I was reading the book by Daniel Pink called “Drive” and something Daniel said in his book really struck a nerve in me and paralysed me immediately. Daniel spoke about “Profit Maximisers” and how a lot of things are geared towards making more money and accumulating more wealth in this world. Those of you who own businesses or work in business at a senior level would have a fuller appreciation of the concept. The words Profit Maximizers are fairly self-explanatory and the average man on the street can also understand its meaning by dissecting the words. But just for clarity, I would put forward a definition:

Profit Maximising – “The tools and techniques a business (or person) uses to adjust output (productivity, efficiency, automation) in order to increase revenue and reduce cost so profits can be maximized”. In short, whatever you can do to make more money!

Daniel was saying that many of us are focusing on Profit Maximizing but how much of us are pushing and pressing towards Purpose Maximizing? Yes, now many of us are running towards Maximizing our Purpose when compared to maximising profit?

When Daniel made this point, I had to immediately reread the paragraphs then close the book and ponder with some deep self-reflection. To be honest, the reflection was easy because it was one sided and heavily leaning towards, “Dane is a profit maximiser”. I don’t mean that Dane loves money, in fact, I give away tremendous amounts of it and I actually budget a percentage of my income every month to give away in the service of others. The reason I say I am a profit maximiser is because  since I started to work or even before that while studying at school my energies was geared towards becoming successful.

From a young age my parents placed in me a passion for success and thoughts of doing better than them in all financial aspects. My dad always used to say, “Education is ammunition, the more you have the more you can fight”. This is why I always strived to be well educated, Daddy’s words etched in my mind. My mom was an employee turned entrepreneur owning a successful business 25 years and still going strong. Being fed with all this made me want to make them proud so I worked extremely hard on the job, looked for investments, educated myself and took all the necessary steps to maximize physical benefit in this life.

I wanted to make my earthly creators in that of my parents proud, but what about my heavenly creator and Father? Was He pushed to the side-line in terms of His desire for my life? The thing is, God also wants us to maximise profit (3 John 1:2). But even more than this, He wants us to Maximize Our Purpose in this life. This might come as a shock to some, but we cannot do both simultaneously and succeed and this is why the Lord said to seek he first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).

Do you ever question why it is that you are not as happy as you should be? Why isn’t there a feeling of fulfilment in your life? Well, the answer might just lie in what I listed above, in that you are serving the wrong master (Matthew 6:24). You are mastering to Profit Maximize as opposed to Purpose Maximise.

Today I want to encourage us all to shift our focus to the things that will truly bring us satisfaction and fulfilment. Lets’ stop running after things just to keep up with the Joneses. Because doing this does not bring the level of contentment we would expect. In fact, one of the reasons we feel so tired and stressed is because we are not seeking our purpose but profit instead and by profit I don’t mean money alone. In seeking to achieve our purpose, we will find more joy, and fulfilment and would even feel more energised.

As it is a New Year, we can start by making decisive decisions that feeds into our purpose more than anything else. It’s a good time to stop climbing the wrong mountain. God doesn’t want us to spend all our years climbing only to reach the top and then realize that you were climbing the wrong mountain all this time.

TIP

I leave you with two simple tips on how to maintain your purpose on a daily basis.

  1. At the start of each day (preferably during your prayer time with God) choose one thing that you can do to maximize your purpose for that day and go all out to execute it.
  2. Anything that you are doing which is not maximising your purpose will be feeding and strengthening some other purpose. So, you have to be conscious of what activities you are doing daily. To help with this I recommend that you ask the following question as you go about your daily routine, “Is this what I am doing or about to do, maximize my true purpose?” If we ask this question more, things like surfing the internet and watching excessive television will decrease and be replaced with more value adding activities.

God bless you and I pray that one year from now in December 2020 all of us can say that for the past 12 months we were truly Purpose Maximisers.

PS: Dane Miller was last seen descending a mountain not to look for a better one to climb, but the Right one to ascend.

Your Brother in the Lord,

Dane Miller | Author

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