Doing business and doing life isn't always about ‘putting your best foot forward’. Of course that’s important too, and you should always strive for that.
It’s also not about controlling a situation, or ‘spinning a narrative’ to achieve your own ends, in an attempt to make yourself look good to outsiders who may not know you well.
Instead, sometimes it’s about relinquishing control of a situation to someone bigger than you, trusting in the path that you've been set upon in this world, and walking that path with confidence and bravery, no matter how scary it looks at the start of it.
Sometimes, you better serve those who need you by allowing yourself to be vulnerable, by sharing your ‘real’ story, by letting people get a glimpse into the struggles you have lived through in your life.
Sometimes, by sharing the lessons those struggles have taught you, and ultimately, how you applied those lessons to improve yourself and the way you do life, you can make more of an impact on those around you than even the best branding and marketing campaign could ever hope to achieve.
We All Have a Life Purpose
Most of the time we have more than one. Some of them are big, some of them are small. Maybe you have a life purpose to make the world around you a little brighter by smiling at everyone you meet.
Maybe you have a life purpose to be kinder, and you manifest this by remembering to hold the door for someone else when you walk into an establishment, or you make it a practice to buy a stranger a meal a few times a week at your local diner.
Maybe you have a bigger life purpose that you strive to meet, like feeding hungry children in impoverished countries, and you do it by adopting a child and paying your commitment faithfully every month, or you set out on mission trips in an effort to get your hands dirty and really put yourself out there for someone else.
Maybe your life purpose is relatively modest, and self-contained. Your feel as though your mission is to do good work, support the people you love, provide a good living for your family, and make a difference in someone’s life somewhere while you do it.
And you can do exactly that, simply by sharing your story, the real, unedited, raw narrative of your life, and how you got where you are right now, in this moment, with someone who really needs to hear it. Someone who may even be facing similar struggles. Someone who may not even realize how badly they need to hear what you've got to say.
Truth is, you may never know how sharing parts of yourself, warts and all, might impact someone else. And that’s OK. There’s someone who does know, who has a plan. Your big mission is to share your story, and let Him do the rest. You just never know how much your words can matter, to someone, somewhere.