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Three Questions Only

Have you found your identity?

Do you know your purpose?

Are you ready for your adventure?

Identity: Who am I?

Purpose: Why am I here?

Adventure: What must I overcome?

Identity is your self-image; a composite of your beliefs, your preferences, and your relationships. Bits and pieces of your identity will evolve with your experiences, but other bits are carved into your bones, unseeable and unchangeable.

Advertising moves you when it connects with your identity.

Purpose is like a strobe light, revealing an ever-changing series of tableaus that demand your attention. But that intermittent, guiding light comes from a single place. And that place is your identity.

Who are the people inside your circle of light?

In one instance, your purpose is to lend a listening ear, to make sure a person knows they have been heard. In another instance, your purpose is to defend someone who is unable to defend themselves. In a third instance, your purpose is to give guidance to someone who needs it.

If you don’t know why you are here – or if you have no clue what to do – it’s because you don’t know who you are.

“Finding your passion” is you focused on you.

“Finding your purpose” is you focused on others.

Quit looking for your passion. Step up to your purpose and let your passion find you. All it takes is commitment.

When we’re having an adventure, we wish we were safe at home. But when we’re safe at home, we wish we were having an adventure.

Adventure is just a fancy word for trouble.

Dewey Jenkins told me that trouble presents itself as a problem to be solved and our adventure lies in finding a way to overcome it. If you ignore the problem, hide from it, rage against it, or cower in fear before it, it will just return again and again until you have finally learned how to defeat it.

Mr. Jenkins told me that’s when it’s time to celebrate, celebrate, celebrate! Now that you’ve learned how to defeat it, you’ll never have that problem again. But don’t worry, a new and different problem is coming up the trail to meet you and it’s wearing an evil grin.

The defeated person sees life as a series of difficulties, disappointments, and dilemmas. The victorious person sees life as an adventure consisting of puzzles to be solved, battles to be fought, and problems to be overcome.

Do you think this is all just a mind game; that all we’re really doing is giving our problems a new name and looking at them from a new perspective?

How very perceptive of you! That’s exactly what we’re doing.

But which of those two people do you think is happiest?

Roy H. Williams

About the Podcast

Show artwork for Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo
Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo
Weekly marketing advice by the world's highest paid ad writer, Roy H Williams.