In many of my recent posts, I have written about the principles behind personal mastery and its relevance to our lives and the world around us. In this post, I would like to highlight how this journey or outlook is so powerful in clarifying our own roles and their context in the world around us.

We all play multiple roles in our life – at work, with family, with friends, and in society and so on. How do we become clear of our purpose in life and its interconnectedness with our various roles? How do we prioritize among the numerous options of spending our time and energies – between personal goals, community work and building relationships…?

I am a life and executive coach and in my coaching practice, have the privilege of working with people often discovering answers to these very questions. These situations are not unique to coaching conversations but are common place occurrences in all our lives. Let me share some examples. A visionary leader of a voluntary organization I was working with, was deeply committed to making a substantial difference in the lives of the under-privileged. Driven by his ambition in his chosen field, he was often stressed and while in his early 40s, had become hypertensive. Now, given that we may often believe that people involved in the area of giving have greater meaning in life and are hence worry-free, the health situation of this leader may seem paradoxical. In another example, consider the case of a courageous single mother who was substantially stretched in her roles as a senior executive at work and as a mother. While she described her children as her clear top priority, she constantly felt torn between working late hours (supposedly to be able to earn more and thereof better take care of her children) and spending time with the children. She also expressed feeling a significant lack of fulfillment in her life. While I am simplifying these situations to bring out a point, I hope you can begin to see the contradictions.

Edmund Hillary, when asked about how he felt about conquering Mount Everest, responded, “It’s not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves”.

And, that’s where I am going with these dilemmas. I believe we need to begin working with ourselves first, before we can see true meaning in parenting, relationships, work, or community activities. We need to accept and learn to love ourselves before we can deeply love others; we need to have clarity about our own personal purpose in life, before we can start helping children be more effective in their lives…and so on. I see this as a journey that begins with ourselves and then slowly radiates out. I have attempted to capture these thoughts through the below visual of concentric ovals, each depicting different and important aspects of our life.

At the centre is the gray oval representing the self. The next one is the light green oval, representing the family, red one for friends, orange for community …and so on. As I mentioned earlier, I believe, one has to begin with relating to and mastering the self…that then allows us to be effective at deeper love and care for the immediate family. As those roots take ground, one is better equipped to build meaningful relationships with friends and neighbors, followed by feeling a genuine responsibility for the broader society. As this journey of living inside out carries on, we can look towards contributing towards a better nation, a better world and eventually the universe. Many a times, individual upbringing or circumstances dictate the area that a person maybe more inclined towards or skilled at – be it relationships, community work, entrepreneurship etc. However, unless the journey begins with, or at least at some stage captures, the pursuit of self-mastery, it is bound to leave certain vacuum in the person’s life; manifested in multiple possible ways – for example emotions of insecurity, fear, worry, jealousy, anger – which in turn may have impact on different aspects of the person’s life. So often, we tend to skip the building blocks of such a foundation and hurriedly hop across to other ovals (roles) in our lives. The leader of the voluntary organization in the above example realized that it was important to include a step around loving, accepting, and taking care of oneself, even if only to dedicate one’s life for others. He also felt that unless he focused on his own well-being, his dream of making a difference to the needy could be short-lived. Similarly, for the executive I mentioned earlier, the lack of clarity of personal purpose led her to continue on a certain treadmill of familiar patterns at work and at home. As she built clarity of her own values and purpose, she was comfortable in making the necessary adjustments in her life to feel fulfilled and be more effective in being a wonderful parent.

To me, personal mastery is the journey of self-discovery leading to consistently living the purpose of one’s life. It requires a high emphasis on self-knowledge, clarity of one’s personal vision and its interconnectedness with the people and the world around. I reckon it is self-evident as to why I see the idea of personal mastery so closely intertwined in the notion of focusing life’s journey inside out.