What's Shaping Your Life?
Consider this. Your life is always being shaped by something. If
that's the case--and for the moment I'm asking you to consider
that it is--then what shapes our lives before we're clear about
what our true life purpose is?
If you look at the world I believe you'll agree that most of our
lives are not being shaped by God's Universal Unconditional
Love, a bold vision of what's possible, our core values, or the
essence of who we are. So what is this second shaping force?
It begins forming in the early years of our lives, what the old
Wonder Bread commercials used to call the "formative years." Of
course, many things influence our early lives, including our
parents, siblings, teachers, where we grow up, socioeconomic
status, family's religion, and the media, to name just a few.
Actually, it's our response or reaction to all these factors
that begins to shape our lives as we're growing up. I call this
shaping force the "inherited purpose."
Here's an example of how an inherited purpose forms. On May 6,
1957 Orrin Swift, better known by his friends as "Swifty," wrote
the following note to his wife, Pattie, on the way out the door
on a fishing trip:
If I catch too many fish I'll come home and clean them for
supper. Don't worry, most likely I'll catch everything but fish.
I love you. Swifty
A little over 48 hours later, his body was pulled from Long Pond
in Freetown, Massachusetts. A heart attack had killed him less
than two weeks before my eighth birthday. My life was tossed
topsy-turvy. Not only had I lost my dad, he hadn't planned to
die at 43, so he left us with no insurance to speak of and no
real savings.
We sold the house in Massachusetts and moved to North Carolina
where my mother's family could help her raise two sons. One of
my most vivid memories from that time is of my mother sitting at
her little desk in the corner of the living room of our much
smaller home, muttering about how there were too many bills and
not enough money. I didn't realize it at the time, but those
overheard conversations contributed significantly to my
inherited purpose being formed: "I must be smart and know all
the answers or pretend that I do, and I must work really hard to
get ahead so I won't be poor and so people won't leave me."
That became the major shaping force of my life for the next 35
years, eventually leading me to contemplating suicide on the
bathroom floor. I had worked hard, depended on my intelligence,
and avoided poverty. But somehow in the process I'd managed to
drive away most of the people in my life. Most importantly,
missing from my life was any sense of satisfaction, fulfillment,
or meaning.