Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud

Conclusion

How to Use Purpose to Make the Rest of Your Life More Meaningful

Regret for the things we did can be tempered over time; it is regret for things we did not do that is inconsolable.

—Sydney J. Harris

Earlier in this book you read about the two big human needs: connection and meaning. These don’t just apply to work; they apply to everything. I didn’t always know this, at least not consciously. For the first 29 years of my life, I was focused on achievement.

I had what I now refer to as a check the box life.

Go to college; check. Get good grades; check. Get a good job; check. Work hard to get promoted; check. Get married; check. Buy a house; check. Work harder for more promotions; check. I always assumed that if you checked all the boxes, you would eventually be happy.

I was wrong.

I did all the things in life you were supposed to do, I checked all the boxes, but I wasn’t any happier in my 20s than I had been in my teens. But then, in my late 20s, I got a hard reset, a very hard reset: When I was 29 years old and seven months pregnant with my first child, I lost my 53-year-old mother to breast cancer.

We all experience wake-up moments—that instant in time when you quit going through the motions and actually think about your life and what it all really means. Like many people who have lost a parent, I experienced a wake-up moment at my mother’s funeral.

We hadn’t had a perfect relationship. We’d had falling-outs over the years, but during her illness we were able to put ...