“The only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger.”

—Dan Sullivan, Entrepreneur Coach

Your purpose gives you power. We all feel the most alive and in our flow when we are aligned with our purpose. It helps you transcend the drama of the moment and take the action that is most aligned with who you want to be in the long term. It makes you feel good and right in who you are.

Your purpose is what you are here for, whether in the moment or for your life. You may have multiple purposes: to be a role model for your children, to grow those on your team, to bring creative solutions to problems, to leave generational wealth, and/or to have as much fun as possible. In any given meeting or project you might also have an overarching purpose above your specific functional role, such as to lead inclusively.

Too often we find ourselves losing sight of our purpose in our daily routine. The moment‐to‐moment demands of our insanely full to‐do lists can grab all of our attention, and then simply getting through the day becomes our purpose. But emotional overload is not the only thief, we can derail ourselves from acting in the service of our own purpose.

Playing Your Small Game versus Your Big Game

When I said no to the White House, I put myself out of my power. It had nothing to do with what Tipper Gore or her Chief of Staff said. I had an internal picture in my mind of who I thought I should be and what I should know. I fell short in my own evaluation and feared they would evaluate me similarly.

Human brains track and monitor what we believe others’ opinions are of us, activating fear that they will judge, criticize, or abandon us. We're wired to attend to this threat before we can put energy into fulfilling our potential or purpose. Saying no to the White House was my way of reducing my fear of judgment, which I prioritized over the contribution I could have made to millions of families.

On any given day we can find ourselves doing this silent interpersonal calculation. Common examples include when you second‐guess, pressure yourself to be perfect, compete to prove you're worthy, or feel guilty about not doing enough anywhere in your work‐life juggling act. To the extent you don't have deep trust in yourself, you look to other people in order to know what to believe about yourself.

As referenced in Chapter 1, if you feel unworthy, self‐critical, or in any way concerned about what others will think about you, you will involve other people in your effort to feel worthy and valued. These behaviors are Indirect—your doubts motivate you to get others to think well of you, hoping they will act back toward you in a way that helps you feel secure. These approaches start as adaptations to interactions with early caregivers and have the survival intention to get basic needs met (such as not getting rejected, eliciting the feeling you matter, maintaining emotional/physical safety). We'll continue to outsource our feeling about ourselves into adulthood until we can source this trust from within and from connection to our purpose.

With this Indirect approach, you allow other people's response to determine how you feel about yourself. It makes you vulnerable to be at the effect of their behavior, which is the thing you can least control. You’ll never feel powerful because your energies are not going toward building it. Let's say you did a bang‐up job on a presentation, but your manager didn't give you positive feedback because she was preoccupied thinking about a personal matter having nothing to do with you. You might get deflated or feel unsure about next steps to take on your goals. You give away your power.¹

Indirect behaviors focus on your momentary personalized concerns such as “What will they think of me?” and “What can I do to get them to think well of me?” It’s a controlling energy, not one that magnetizes. To control their perception, you might talk a lot or loud to show people how smart you are, micromanage so people think you're perfect, or not speak up with a great idea, and so forth. All the behaviors we do to please, protect, and try to be perfect are less about the actual work and more to get other people to approve, not reject, you and feel safe with them. What is the net win of these strategies? Only temporary relief from potential judgment or a quick compliment you shrug off anyway. These automatic responses get you through that situation but don't build self‐reliance within. They are like a sugar high, a fleeting temporary bump in confidence or relief from criticism. And who is the primary beneficiary of this shortsighted strategy? Only you.

This is your “small game.”

When I said no to the White House, I had an opportunity to play big, but I opted to play small. (Though it didn't feel like a conscious choice at the time.)

To play your “big game,” Go Direct! Your big game is your purpose, your legacy, your opportunity to use your power to make the ongoing situation better. When you focus on your purpose, it's not about just what's happening in the moment, it's acting to further the values that run deep in you and that follow your long‐term vision. The effect is not only for you but all the people who will benefit from your actions.

Purpose helps connect us to something bigger than ourselves. It lifts you up from your self‐judgments, and plugs you into an overall flow of progress that puts wind behind the sails of your intentions. Its focus is less on “What do they think about me?” and more on “What am I here to do?”

A leader can only be as effective as how far out into the future they focus on with their vision for all involved. Instead of trying to get worthiness from others, you can give others a sense of worthiness. Leaders Go Direct!

Heather exemplified this shift to her big game. She worked in the equipment leasing finance department of a manufacturing company. She was frustrated with her boss and ready to leave. She didn't feel seen, so she micro‐tracked what he said or didn't say to value her. She was the thermometer, getting resentful when he didn't take an opportunity to recognize her or to give her the support she asked for.

Instead, she started to focus on her purpose to be a problem‐solver. A company‐wide breakdown in billing systems caused consternation for hers and other groups. Passionate about resolving this major technology issue, she initiated a cross‐functional meeting of all parties interested in the matter, starting the first month with the business partners she knew well. They thought the meeting was so productive they asked to invite their key colleagues. By the third month, it became the go‐to meeting for company influencers. Because she was leading a process that started to get results and provided a valuable forum for “get it done” types to connect, senior leaders from across divisions were jockeying to be invited.

She lost interest in her daily monitoring of her manager's validation. In place, she poured herself into the visible win of finding an alternative to the company's broken technology issue. She had the satisfaction of getting a result, and as an extra bonus she got a lot of kudos. She made relationships that allowed her to have the influence she hoped she would have through her manager.

Her manager should have been recognizing her and supporting her, but he wasn't. He was still the same, but she's not playing the losing game of trying to get her validation from him. She transcended her stuck situation and became a respected thought leader who could write her own ticket (which led to a promotion four months later). Just as important, she enjoyed her role again.

In another example, Richard is the president of a company. He wanted to instill a greater commitment to sustainability throughout the company. But he was feeling worried about whether he was being upstaged at his company by a talented employee he'd hired to work with consultants.

This younger man he'd brought in made no bones about his aspiration to become president of the company someday, and the confidence he exuded derailed Richard into doubting himself. In our discussion, he refocused on his purpose as a leader: “He can do a great job in achieving our company goals. That's why I hired him,” he said to me, but really he was reminding himself. He realized that he shouldn't see his hire as competition, reflecting, “He is my wingman. His success will be a reflection of my guidance. And he will help me achieve my big‐picture vision.”

Richard was able to lift himself up from playing the small game of his competitive concerns, and that allowed him to redirect his energies to playing the longer big game of driving other strategic wins for the business.

Now it's your turn:

1. What are the Indirect behaviors you do that set you up to be put out of your power? Who are you giving away your power to?
2. Where do you recognize you are playing your small game?
3. Where are you playing or could play your big game?
4. Describe what your big game looks like.
5. Take a few minutes to describe what you could do to Go Direct!

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Finding Your Purpose

The first step to connect with your sense of purpose is to take a little time to reflect deeply on what you see as your purpose. Have you ever written down your thoughts about what you want your purpose to be or a purpose statement?

A great exercise for doing this is based on the so‐called 5 Whys.¹⁰ It's a means of digging into any problem you want to solve. It fast‐tracks you to the roots of purpose by reconnecting with why it is so important to you. With each layer deeper, you refine more clearly the essence of that core reason you're devoting your efforts to. (You can also leverage assessments such as StrengthsFinder™.)

The first why is to write an initial answer to the question:

1. What is your purpose? __________________________________________________________________.
2. Next comes: And why is that important to you? __________________________________________________________________.
3. And why is that important to you? __________________________________________________________________.
4. And why is that important to you? __________________________________________________________________.
5. And why is that important to you? __________________________________________________________________.

When I went through this exercise with my client Deborah Borg, who is the Chief Human Resources and Diversity Officer of a Fortune 500 company, she already had this sense of purpose vaguely in her head, so it was helpful to articulate it out loud so she could remind herself of it. She got to: “To create opportunity for our 25,000 employees and the people in their families and communities.”

Like many of us who want to make a meaningful contribution, she had been putting lots of pressure on herself with concerns that as the top “people officer,” all eyes were on her and then focusing on what the executive team thought about how effective she was. She'd been telling herself that she had to have all the answers about how the company could foster a more intentional culture rather than how she could be the best facilitator of change.¹¹

Focused on her purpose, she realized she didn't need to have all the answers and didn't need to make sure that people thought she had them all. Your Purpose is a way of freeing yourself from expectations of other people. She told me, “The real shift for me was realizing that the most important thing is less that my point of view is adopted but that we have a consistent and harmonious view across the organization.” She saw that the bigger impact she could make was to hold space for conversations (even uncomfortable ones) at the management level to get to the root cause of where the organization was resistant to change. By refocusing on the end goal, she understood that “I can still have my point of view and suggest a direction, but why do I need to have all the answers? This is a new space for us. We are all finding our way.” That freed her from her self‐doubt. “I'm not second‐guessing or overthinking things or racing three steps ahead to what they are going to say. It was extremely liberating to take a different approach to the same set of problems and in moments of stress anchor back into my purpose.”

I saw her showing up bigger in those conversations, and her authenticity and intentionality inspired others to do the same. Borg said, “I noticed an immediate benefit to my well‐being. And over time [I] see there's been a great benefit to the organization of me being more in my power.” Her senior leadership team is much more connected and aligned on issues. “We've tackled important topics that will impact our full workforce and the communities we operate in. Every so often when I get a note thanking me for the work of our team, it really feels good.” Note that she was now seeing that positive evaluation of her contribution as the icing on the cake of an already deep sense of satisfaction from fulfilling her purpose, not as the necessary praise that would tell her she was on track. This is what it looks like to Go Direct.

This is an excellent example of what it feels like to be able to put yourself back in your power. You want to be able to “get the feels” from the meaningful reward of your contribution and from your own felt sense that you are living your purpose.

Lisa Earle McLeod, author of Selling with Noble Purpose, highlights, “People tend to think that [having a purpose] is about this inner search for your gifts. The thing that people miss about purpose is, we feel the most satisfied when we're making a difference to other people.”

Connected to your purpose, you see it as your responsibility to use your power to bring people along toward that purpose. When you show up in your power, you raise others.

When you live and breathe your purpose, you can tap into it even when not performing a specific role. Tasha Morrison, New York Times bestselling author of Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation, exemplified this when she said being in her power “is about understanding who I am.¹² I'm not defined by what I do, or who other people think I am. That was freeing for me. I'm a change agent, and bridge builder, and a leader. And I can do that in any capacity and anywhere, I can do that in the middle of the grocery store.” The more you connect with your purpose, the easier it is to connect to it when you are in the throes of being pulled out of your power and the more it becomes your way of walking in the world.

Shift Your Focus to Those You're Serving

If you've ever had the idea of stepping into a more powerful version of yourself but then asked yourself “Who am I to take that on?” then you've allowed your concerns about what other people will think to determine your impact. You've put yourself out of your power with their imagined judgments.

Instead, try changing your question and ask, “Who will benefit from me speaking up, asking for resources, offering ideas, taking on more responsibility, etc.?” These people are the end users and beneficiaries of you being in your power. If you are going to worry about what other people think of you, at least worry about the right things! Instead of worrying about their judgments of you, worry about their challenges. Deepen your empathy of their plight or their customer journey, and put your worries into how you can help them. Be so filled with a sense of purpose that you have no bandwidth to think about your worries, only how to bring more value to those you can uplift. Instead of trying to feel valued, be valuable. Enjoy the experience of yourself feeling valuable.

Consciously shifting to a focus on the end users of her actions was the slight tweak my client Brenda Salce‐Garcia needed. She was in a leadership position at an advertising technology company. People were working to the bone, morale was dropping, and some people had resigned. She felt that the elephant in the room was the C‐suite's opportunity to set the culture. Yet she was a level below the executive team and sometimes intimidated to speak up. “I was the only woman and woman of color at that level, and newly promoted. I was nervous because I felt that if I wasn't 1000% sure I was correct, I shouldn't speak up. During that time, I was very inward, living in my head, over‐analyzing everything I did or didn't do. It would exhaust me. I used up energy I needed for other efforts.”

“Then,” she said, “I thought of my purpose: I'm not doing this for Brenda. I have to think beyond myself. I thought about who I'm sticking up for. About my colleagues who were burning out. And my customers. I thought that's not a life I want to live where my customers walk out when there was a potential solution that's not being raised. That got me to speak up.”

“I started off shaking, but from our coaching I went through with it. I asked the C‐suite team: What are we doing to protect customer retention? and I tied examples of employee dissatisfaction to risk of customer retention.” She said, “If we don't figure this out soon, more people are going to walk out the door, and if people walk out the door, then this whole next generation advertising platform you want to do, it's going to take a heck of a lot longer to implement.” The leadership team followed her lead and even asked her to start leading their meetings so they could keep getting her perspective. Her energies now channeled effectively toward her purpose, and she was able to end her days being present with her husband and son.

You may have been socialized with expectations on how to act, but that is not your purpose. Your purpose is not “to make people comfortable.” At work, your purpose is to fulfill a role that contributes to an overall result and to play your part in creating a collective culture for the organization in which everyone thrives. Get above your personal concerns, and allow this purpose to guide you. Even if you don't have all the answers, you can convey that confidently in the service of your purpose, such as “This part I know, and this part I don't have all the answers on. But here's how we're trying to figure it out, and here's why I wanted to raise this issue now even before the data is in.”

Like Brenda, you might start out being scared of what other people—including senior leaders—might think of you, causing you to hold back and cautiously observe other people in order to determine what you should say and when. Get courage from standing for those you are serving. When you channel energy away from your self‐judgment and into your purpose, you will experience enormous unleashing of energy that was previously trapped in your mental swirl. You are likely to experience recognition and see opportunities come to you that are even better than what you were trying to accomplish, without trying to make it happen.

That's what happens when you Go Direct and show up in your purpose: You play a bigger game. People are attracted to this kind of power and leadership—they want to be a part of what you are doing, follow you, and see how much higher you can take them. “I'll have what (he or) she's having!”

Where in your life can you shift your question from, Who am I? to, Who will benefit when I'm in my power and act in my purpose?

Be the Champion and Steward of Your Beneficiaries

Here's a related way of thinking about acting in the service of your purpose. In a study of cadets at West Point (the US military leader training academy), what do you think was in the top traits of the most successful leaders during combat? The capacity to love!¹³ Leaders with this trait made decisions based on the needs of their charges. These leaders saw themselves as the champions and stewards of the cadets.

You can eject yourself out of your small game by accessing your love for others. This comes naturally to you, that's why I know you're going to be good at it. I too had this inflection point recently when I was invited to keynote—wait for it—the West Point women's conference!

I was honored, and out of appreciation for their service I really wanted to give an experience that would profoundly nourish and expand them. But when it came time to write my speech, I went to that doubting place: “What could I possibly say about power and resilience to women who have survived infamous bootcamp training, coordinated logistics for hundreds of thousands on the front lines of war, and held leadership positions in one of the most male‐dominated institutions on Earth? Surely all I could tell them would be things they already knew.”

But I'm authoring a book on being in my power, wasn't there something in these pages that could rock their world? All I had to do was to not get ahead of my skis and simply devote myself to them. I asked for a mini‐focus group with the planning committee, and I got a laundry list of challenges they face for which I absolutely had solutions.

And, in the presentation, I set up an interactive experience where they could see themselves reflected in the eyes of their West Point sisters. So they could find that place to deeply appreciate themselves, be proud of their own sense of purpose, and help other West Point women do the same (okay, yes, a few tissues were needed, because it’s such a profound experience to be recognized for your purpose).

This kind of connection to your own confidence and self‐love is a shift that fuels your ability to raise others. Indirect approaches are controlling, and on some level you're trying to get people to need you (because when you please and are perfect, you are indispensable to them). But if you want to truly uplevel your power, show up in a way where team members/followers/clients not only need you but want you, meaning they want to be like you and a part of what you are doing. They want to have your energy; they want to have the impact you are having.

When you walk through your life embodying that persona and that purpose, people attach to a version of who they'd like to be themselves. And they associate this desired persona with you. This becomes an effortless way of influencing others and doesn't require a heavy lift to get other people to change because it helps them be who they want to be simply by you being who you are.

In sum, trying to control what other people will think about you by seeking their acknowledgment, preventing their criticism, or not disappointing them is a detour that keeps you in your “small game.” And it's unwinnable. It's a never‐ending vicious cycle, where the more you source your sense of power from others, the more you need to keep doing so because you haven't built it from within. It's stressful and exhausting. And it's not what you're here for. Focusing on your purpose lifts you from an out‐of‐your‐power state. It reconnects your focus to your true north and connects you to that inner renewable energy source that is your innate sense of purpose.

When you have self‐reliant ways of staying connected to your purpose regardless of the challenge, your life will get on a virtuous cycle. You won't need or live for the recognition, but you will get it in greater spades because of the bigger‐game contribution you make. Opportunities you have wanted will show up or ones that are even better. In fact, I did actually present at the White House 15 years later (to help the team deal with stress and prevent burnout) along with countless opportunities to present around the world. I'm even acting in the service of my purpose and playing my big game right now as I whisper in your ear to get back in and stay in your power.

In order to do that, you need to free yourself from that self‐critical story you have for your life, which is exactly what I'm going to show you how to do in the next portal.