purpose

Why I Wake Up in the Morning: Leadership Lessons from Blue Zones

In mid-July I participated in a conference sponsored by FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention. The gathering kicked off a year-long leadership institute for people working in child abuse prevention around the country. The FRIENDS Leadership Institute’s purpose is to develop a cohort of leaders with the skill to move their organizations toward family-strengthened primary prevention whatever positions they are in. The conference featured national leadership experts and many opportunities for peer learning. It aimed to expose participants to thought provoking systems leadership that participants might adapt to their own contexts.

The institute opened with a presentation describing the work of an organization called Blue Zones.

How to Overpower Procrastination with Purpose

Does this sound like something you can relate to? You’ve got a project you really need to be working on. Maybe it’s filing six months of paperwork. Or learning how to use that new software you downloaded. It’s necessary but boring. Not surprisingly, you manage to find other things to occupy your time.

This next situation is even trickier. The project is important but you’ve got feelings about it. And not happy feelings.

Your Brain on Purpose

Here’s an interesting fact: At least 11 million bits of information enter our brain through our senses each second. Our conscious mind, however, only seems able to process 50 bits of information per second. Most of what enters our brain happens outside our awareness. Rock and Schwartz note that in a world with so many distractions, a big challenge is our ability to focus sufficient attention on any one idea.