The Life You Want is Possible

Build an intentional life by defining your purpose

The Life You Want is Possible

Everyone wants a dream life, but nobody really knows how to pursue it, and there isn’t a whole lot of help out there to guide you toward it. I believe the life you want is possible when you understand your purpose.

So why don’t we prioritize understanding our purpose?

Part of the reason, I believe, is that it’s hard to find it.
Some of us know. Sometimes we discover our life purpose after a traumatic experience, or a health scare, or a powerful moment such as falling in love.

But for many (I’d argue, most) people, we require a guide to help identify our purpose.

As a former CEO of a consultancy, I can tell you that the majority of big companies use frameworks to find their purpose. They have tools (and hire consultants) to take ephemeral concepts out of ideation and create actionable, goal-oriented KPIs.

I’ve always wondered why the toolkits used in corporate America to help brands flourish have never been adapted to help individuals flourish.

Why don’t we use structured tools to help find purpose? After all the end result is a life you love living.

Introducing the CBIM

Anyone who worked with my consultancy knows I loved “The Corporate Brand Identity Matrix (CBIM),” a framework created by Stephen A. Greyser, the Richard P. Chapman Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, and Mats Urde, an associate professor at Lund University School of Economics and Management.

The concept is simple: a 9-component matrix to craft internal and external positioning for a brand.

“A clear, unified corporate identity can be critical to competitive strategy, as firms like Apple, Philips, and Unilever understand. It serves as a north star, providing direction and purpose. It can also enhance the image of individual products, help firms recruit and retain employees, and provide protection against reputational damage in times of trouble.”

The CBIM is an awesome tool to understand a brand purpose. It increases motivation and serves as the driving force for WHY a brand exists.

What is Your “Identify Matrix?”

Big brands spend a lot of time, and money, on identifying all the components and reasons they exist.

But we, as individuals, rarely give our identify a second thought.

When is the last time you sat down and truly thought about YOU.

Not necessarily in terms of a brand, but as your full identify.

What if we looked at tools like the CBIM under the lens of…. you?

I believe that truly understanding your values, relationships, and intentions helps you craft your outward identity and attracts the right relationships and partners to you.

I believe that your core competencies–the skills, experience and wisdom–combined with your goals enables you to accomplish acts of meaning.

Embracing your culture, and the culture you created for yourself helps you gain insight into your core personality traits and how you express yourself.

Instead of a brand core, your purpose becomes the defining center.

Finding your “why” becomes much more clear when it is based on a foundation of all these components.

Just like a big company defining their north star with a structured process, we, as people, can define our own north stars.

Download the identity matrix

The Life You Want is Possible When You Live Your Purpose

Knowing our life purpose is so powerful because it fundamentally shapes our experiences, motivations, and mental well-being. It gives us a reason to wake up each day with motivation, and it helps us get the life we want.

If you’re in the midst of a total transformation– maybe the kids have gone to college or you, yourself are graduating from college.

Maybe you are ending a relationship, beginning one, moving…all these new beginnings require us to understand who we are today, and perhaps reframe how the entire world perceives us.

As we go through life, we have multiple iterations of ourselves, and we rarely (if ever) conduct an exercise where we strive to understand ourselves.

I suggest that we take finding our purpose (and all the things that help us identify it), as seriously as we take our jobs, and the things you do for others.

If you’d like a guide to help you identify your purpose, we’ve created a protocol specifically for that.

Our Purpose Protocol also blends principles of Traditional Ways and functional health principles to truly embrace the core of a healthy mind, body, and spirit.

learn more

Author

Julie Elaine Brown

Julie is the CEO and Co-founder of Rêve Health. She is a serial entrepreneur, accredited investor, and marketing strategist. She ran and sold a funded ecommerce wellness retreat company in 2012 and then started a strategy & transformation consultancy serving Fortune 100 clients. She has a Masters degree in Journalism from Northeastern University and a B.A. in English Literature with a Minor in Exercise Science. As a former Journalist, she is an avid researcher and reader. She enjoys hiking, biohacking, walking her dog, travel, wellness retreats, and watching sci-fi.
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