The meaning of life is to give your gift away

One of my key teachings to my clients around leadership and communications is:

“When you are sick to death of communicating your message…

… you are probably halfway there.”

See: “Leadership – Repeat ad nauseam” and multiple other posts.

Today I’m therefore repeating a thought I’ve shared many times before in different forms, and it is around this quote that I first shared in a post over three years ago, entitled: “Purpose, work, gifts, sharing“:

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”

David Viscott

The quote from Viscott above came back to me this week when I had a one-hour mentoring call with a business owner through a programme with a network I support. They emailed me after the call to thank me and to note some specific learnings and actions they will take (I love it when people get specific!). However, at the end, they finished with: “I really do appreciate you sparing the time.”

This choice of language does sometimes come up when I take time to listen to people unconditionally, offering them space and time for reflection, then (if they wish) then offering insights, ideas for them to use for further reflection so they can move towards action and change. The language patterns used in such notes are often those of scarcity, of where they have unexpectedly received something that is not normally available and that somehow they “owe” someone for “sparing the time”. I typically then gently respond in a way to note how I LOVE to provide such support and that I come from a place of abundance, often using words like “absolute pleasure” and “it was a privilege” and meaning those words deeply.

I am told that I am somewhat unusual in loving to “give my gift away”, so perhaps a little around how that came to pass may be of value to some.

For the first two decades of my career I was quite successful in conventional terms, working exceptionally hard and making money and relative wealth for myself, my family and the businesses I helped build, grow, sell. However, gradually it started to gnaw at me that my work lacked purpose and meaning, I had no answer to the question: “why am I here apart from making money?”.

Around fifteen years ago, then, I started to move onto a different path, first gradually and then more radically, such that for the past decade or so I have been clear on my purpose and gifts and focus on both continuing to grow and develop them and then embracing: “the meaning of life is to give your gift away”.

I now live a life consciously constructed around this, where I work with a very limited number of clients. This both means that my clients get exceptional levels of focus and attention as I am “always active, never busy”, and also that I spend over half of my time continuing my own learning and in “giving my gift away” through random conversations, mentoring and more.

So, if you see yourself in the description on my home page of a certain type of leader, one who answers “yes!” to the question “Are you ready for Open Leadership?“, please do take a moment to book a video call with me, only a few people become clients, and at the same time I talk to many and love every conversation, whether a one off interaction or something that leads to more.

Closing with one more repetition:

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”

David Viscott