How To Find Clarity of Purpose and Unlock Your Greatness with Anita Clinton

Kathi: I'm so excited today because I have a friend of mine named Anita AC Clinton, and she's an author, speaker, purpose strategist, the go-to person for all types of trying to figure out what's your purpose. She's passionate about helping purpose seekers find happiness, fulfillment, and make money doing what they actually love. Anita is the founder and president of Be Great Global and the host of the Be Great Global podcast. Make sure to check that out as well. She also is the author of a book called Destiny Starter: How to Discover What You're Called to Do and Do It. She's a woman after my own heart. And thank you, Anita, for being here. I'm so psyched that you're part of the summit.

Anita: Thank you for having me. I too am excited.

Kathi: So, okay, let's talk about purpose a little bit. I know that as entrepreneurs, we all start our businesses typically because we have that little thing in the back of our mind. We think this is what we're supposed to be doing on purpose, right? So how would you define purpose, since you're the purpose expert?

Anita: I love it. So, purpose is the reason a thing was created or exists. And so, when I think about purpose, and specifically purpose in life, I think about why are you here? I believe that we all were put on this earth for a unique reason, that we are here to be the solution and the answer to at least one problem in the earth. And so it goes back to why are you here? What is the reason for your existence? And everything that you need to be successful in whatever that is, you've already been equipped with it. Now, yeah, you can sharpen the saw and perfect a couple things, but the foundation of what you need is already there.

We are here to be the solution and the answer to at least one problem in the earth.

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Kathi: I love that, and I so resonate with that. I like what you said, that we have at least one thing built into us that we can solve someone's problem. We can solve something on earth. And I think that truly that's the best definition I've heard so far.

Anita: I love it. I love it. There's a quote by Myles Munroe, the late Dr. Myles Munroe, and he said, when purpose is unknown, abuse is inevitable. And if you think about it, even if you just look at it from the standpoint of relationships, right? When the purpose inside of a relationship is unknown, abuse is inevitable. And I think about, so, I do quite a bit of volunteer work, and in instances where you're volunteering, people need help. And so if you're good at something, they will pull and pull and pull and pull some more and pull some more. They will try to pull out all that they can, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But once you understand the purpose or the reason why you're doing what you're doing, it just makes life so much better. It makes it easier to say no to things, especially if you're someone like me who has a hard time saying no. Right now, I'm very clear with what my purpose is, and when people are calling and asking me to do stuff or to help with this or that, if it aligns with my purpose and I can fit it into the schedule, it's yes. If it doesn't align with my purpose, unfortunately, the answer is going to be no, right? But it makes it so much easier to make those decisions.

Once you understand the purpose or the reason why you're doing what you're doing, it just makes life so much better.

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Kathi: Ah, that is so in alignment. I say all the time, if you don't know what you should be doing, you don't know what you shouldn't be doing.

Anita: Exactly.

Kathi: If you don't know the purpose behind what you're doing, you can't say no to things that might not align with where you're trying to go in life. Isn't that funny how we all say the same message in different words? And that's why we resonate so much. The majority of people on this podcast, we're saying similar things, just in different ways. So that's why I just love having all the different experts on, because everybody's going to resonate with different people. I think that's fantastic. Okay. So, how do you find purpose in life? What do you think is the ticket there?

Anita: Yeah. So I have something that I call the zone of greatness. And so, the zone of greatness is this sweet spot where there are three components. The first component is passion, right? So, what are the things that you're passionate about, that you're excited to do? I say all the time, it's the things or thing that you would do whether you were compensated to do it or not. Now, that doesn't mean that you're not compensated. It just means that you enjoy doing it so much that you would do it for free if you had to, right? So, that's the first one. And then the second part is genius, or skill, or talent. And so, you think about, what are your skills? What are you good at doing? And it could be natural talents and/or it could be skills and knowledge that you've acquired over time, through institutional education, through working in your job, through volunteering at the local nonprofit. What are those things? And Albert Einstein has this amazing quote that I love, and he said, "Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it's stupid." Now, think about that for a second. You have a fish, you put a fish in water, in its element, in its atmosphere, it can do some amazing things. But you take that same fish out of its element and lean it against a tree, it has no clue what to do there. And the same is true for us. If we can find our element, our atmosphere, we can do some amazing things. But when we're in the wrong lane and the wrong environment and the wrong business and the wrong career, we can sometimes feel like we're stupid, as if we don't belong there. Because guess what? There is a place for you. There is a place that you are gifted and talented to operate in. And when you find your atmosphere, your zone, great things happen. Period. Genius shows up. And then the third component is service, right? I believe that we are all here to positively impact the lives of others, to use our gifts, talents, knowledge, skills to impact other people. The place where the three of those connect, that's where you belong.

There is a place that you are gifted and talented to operate in.

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Kathi: That's the sweet spot. And that leads to happiness and joy and fulfillment and peace and energy, right? Very much. You're energized because you can feel all that coming together into the perfect mix of who you are.

Anita: Absolutely. Yeah. There's nothing like waking up every morning excited to do whatever it is that you do, right? And that's different for everybody. It could be for a mother, right? I have a friend who loves her kids. Now, I know most people will say, "Yeah, but most mothers love their kids." But she enjoys being with her kids so much. I told her, I said, "You know what? Your purpose inside of being a mother may be to teach other women how to be successful and effective mothers," because she has mastered this thing. And she has four.

Kathi: That's a lot. That's a bevy of kids to wrangle, right?

Anita: Yes.

Kathi: Yeah, it's funny, because you can see some parents who are just natural, and some other parents who it's really difficult. So, that's definitely her zone for now. And I love the idea. I bet she really grooved on that, of teaching other women how to be better moms.

Anita: She did. She was like, that's something to consider. If you just think about it, all of the kids that are in child protective services, I think that some of them could be back home with their parents if their parents understood how to effectively manage their kids, how to parent their kids. It makes a huge difference. I don't have kids, but I used to say all the time that in the hospital there should be some type of training after you give birth for some parents, right, on how do you effectively do this thing?

Kathi: I mean, really, we have to get a driver's license and learn how to drive, but we don't have any lessons to learn how to raise kids. It seems kind of strange, actually, when you think about it. So let's talk about family. So, purpose within family: how does that look? Is it like a family purpose, or is it your purpose within a family, or what's the spin on that?

Anita: Yeah. Well, it could go in any direction, but I think of it more of, what does our family stand for? What are our morals? What are our values? And make those known so that everyone's in agreement with, okay, this is who we are as a family, and this is what we do or don't do, right? And so, I'll give you the perfect example. I was watching a television movie, and I don't remember the name of the movie, but in the movie it was a young lady who had been given this amazing gift to sing. Now, she could really, really sing. And during her birth her mother died, and her father went into alcoholism because he couldn't handle it. And so the aunt ended up raising the little girl. And so the aunt, she raised her in church. She raised her with what she knew. And so the little girl is just singing in church, and then she gets out and she becomes a country singer. And so throughout her entire life, the aunt gave her three rules of engagement for their family. And the first one was always be honest. The second one was always be fair. And the third one was always keep your promises. And so before that little girl went to sleep every night, she would say to her, now remember, always be honest, always be fair, and always keep your promises. And so as she grew up, that got instilled in her. And so when she went to Nashville to become a country singer, she failed on the three things. And in the movie, everything just crumbled for her. And then she had to get back into it. But that was instilled in her. She still remembered it, though. And she recognized when she was failing in those three areas. And so she had to come back around and make things right, and she did. She lost her voice for a little bit, and then she ended up getting it back in the movie. But I thought that it was a perfect example of how can you create purpose inside of your family. So as a family, this is what we believe, and this is how we choose to operate or to not operate. There are some families that do family crests or coats of arms. All of that is defining who our family is. What's the purpose for our family?

Kathi: And I think now it's more important than ever to do this, with everybody in the house at the same time, 24/7, during this time of sequester. If you have the overall purpose, it's like guidelines of how to behave, and if everybody follows the same thing, it really helps. I always encourage my families to have family meeting nights every Sunday as part of their time management: let's check in, let's have a family meeting, let's see what's going on. It was more important when people had to run around and do all different types of things, but I think it's really critical now as well. It's like, I see my husband, and we just took a walk, and I'm like, "I feel like I never see you," and he goes, "Yeah, we're together 24/7." I'm like, "I know, but having quality time is way different now."

Anita: It is. And the other thing that you can do inside of setting and creating purpose inside of family is each year set a goal for the family. This year we want to do what? I'll never forget, years ago I was listening to a podcast. And so I'm not married, but I want to be married. And so I decided that I would find this podcast. It's called Marriage Today. And I listen to the podcast because it's given me advice on how I can be a great wife to my husband whenever he comes. And so in one of the episodes the husband and wife team was having a conversation, and they were talking about how each year they set aside time and they go away, and the entire time is devoted to planning out what they're going to do in the incoming year. And I thought that that was absolutely amazing, because they not only defined the goals for the year, but they created the action items to go along with those goals. So by the end of the year, when they came back the next year, they could check off those items that they had achieved.

Kathi: What a great idea. I love that. So that leads us into business and purpose. I think that we hit on it a little bit if you think about it from a business perspective. It's the same thing, the goal setting. But what else would you add about finding your purpose in business, as most of the people here listening are entrepreneurs?

Anita: Yeah. So, for business, I think that whatever the work is that you're doing should align with those three things that we talked about, right? So passion, genius, and then service or impact. And there are several companies that are great examples, but there's one example that I've been talking about and researching a lot, and it's a company called Bombas. They used to only make socks, but now they make more than that. But when they first started, they created socks, right? So, I'm sorry, they had a why. And their why was they wanted to help homeless people. And because they found out that socks were the number one requested item in homeless shelters, socks became their what. So their why became, we want to help homeless people, make a difference. And then socks became their what. And so they created these amazing socks. And so their entire platform is advertised and marketed around the greatest sock never sold. How about that? Right? The greatest sock never sold, because every sock that a person buys, they give one sock away to someone in a homeless shelter, right? And so they've given away 10 million socks. Now do the math. If they've given away 10 million socks, that means that they've sold 10 million socks. Now do the math on that. And the socks are not a dollar each, right? They've given to homeless shelters 10 million socks, the number one requested item for homeless shelters. Talk about purpose in business.

Kathi: Yeah. And I'm going to plant that one in my mind, too, because for a long time I've been on a water kick. I've been distributing water a lot, and socks is another good thing. I like to shop for stuff.

Anita: Yeah.

Kathi: An excuse. I'll go and buy some socks.

Anita: That's great. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm a sock wearer, right? So you better believe I'm now buying socks from Bombas, right? Because I love their why. I love what they're doing. You've got to buy socks anyway. Why not go and support this amazing company that's having this huge impact in the lives of people that need it?

Kathi: How do you spell that?

Anita: B-O-M-B-A-S. Bombas.

Kathi: Bombas. Okay. Yeah, I've seen them. I just didn't know about the backstory. That's huge. That's huge. Okay. Amazing. We're winding down, but I want to talk a little bit about… Oh, look who I have. We have a visitor. He has to be on screen. Come on, pop up. Love it. Anyhow, so starting today, if people are feeling fuzzy on their purpose, what do you feel is the step that they can take to start getting the clarity? Maybe they've lost their way from their purpose.

Anita: Yes. So, I have one little small activity, right? And hopefully you're not going to find it challenging or weird, because it could be a little weird. So, I got this from somewhere, I just can't remember where I got it from, but I like to say that we all have a start date and we all have an end date. And in between is this little dash. And so, the activity is: take some time to sit down and determine what you want your dash to represent, right? When you're gone, what do you want people to say about you? What do you want the world to say? He or she did this in the world, right? Sit down, think about it, right? So, sometimes I've heard people say it: sit down and write your obituary. Write what you want people to say about you inside of your obituary. And then once you have that, take a step back and look at all of the things that you're doing, and see if it aligns with whatever that thing may be. And if it doesn't align, start making the necessary adjustments to get into alignment, so that when you get to your end date, you have accomplished whatever you wanted that dash to represent.

Take some time to sit down and determine what you want your dash to represent.

Kathi: That's brilliant. All right, I'm going to be thinking about my dash for sure. That's such an easier way to see it as well, an easier way to get it together. Okay, Anita. So, I am so happy that you've given us your time and your information. I'm totally jazzed, and actually pretty inspired, as always speaking with you. And so what are you going to give? Oh, look. He wants to be in there, too. What are you going to give the guests as your free gift for listening?

Anita: Yes. So, I'm super excited about it. So, I have put together the seven steps to kickstart your life's purpose. And so if you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling like, I'm not quite sure if this is giving me the fulfillment that I'm looking for, then definitely download the free ebook, the seven steps to kickstart your life's purpose, and we'll get you right in alignment with where you need to be. Super excited for you, and super excited to see what you bring forth into the world.

Kathi: Absolutely. Because we all have that gift to give, and you're the perfect person to help people find that out. So, I really appreciate your time, and thank you for being part of this interview.

Anita: Thank you for having me.