With purpose comes success

 

Find something to look forward to and life becomes richer.

 

When you stop and think about life, do you think about whether you have a purpose? How clear is your aim? During a study, where adults over 65 were asked the question:

 

“If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?” most of them said they would be more reflective, more courageous and clearer about their purpose.

 

Commitment to what you believe in gives you boundless energy. If you have something to look forward to, you may get tired, but you will never get bored.

 

Matsushita Konosuke, founder of Matsushita Electric Industries which has brands such as National Panasonic, only received formal education till he was six years old. Yet he went on to create an organisation that reached out to millions.

 

Considered by many as the ‘God of Japanese management’, he urged his employees to have a purpose — his own was to make electrical goods cheap and readily available to the masses at prices they could afford.

 

Once, Matsushita was walking along the road when he came across a man who was sweating and was visibly tired and thirsty. The man stopped in front of somebody’s house and drank water from a tap on the wall.

 

Matsushita saw the look of satisfaction and relief on the face of the man as he quenched his thirst and then it dawned on him that the man was actually drinking from somebody else’s tap, which, strictly speaking could be labelled as theft.

 

As this chain of thought continued, he went on to conclude that because water is essential for survival, people did not complain if others came and helped themselves to it.

 

He pondered over the idea and came to the conclusion that the reason people didn’t mind if others took water from them was because it was so cheap. And the reason it was inexpensive was because water, is available in abundance!

 

Stemming from this insight, he went on to deduce that for members of society to enjoy better and more comfortable lives, other amenities and products that were expensive had to be produced in larger quantities to create abundance, making them as cheap as water.

 

This later came to be known as the ‘Matsushita tap-water philosophy’. And ever since, Matsushita figured out his philosophy of mass production, he realised had a purpose.

 

Armed with this sense of purpose, he became so intensely involved that his outlook changed.Obstacles and things that bothered him earlier, now ceased to matter to him. Those who saw and sensed his intensity and sincerity were attracted to his dynamism and gravitated to buying from Matsushita.

 

This example is a great point in study. It teaches us why it is so important to have a purpose in life. Having one helps us to become more passionate about life and about what we are doing on a daily basis — whether it is taking us towards the direction of our good or not.

 

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