The six Cs to reignite your purpose

“I had the privilege of engaging in deep discussions with more than 4,000 people aiming to redefine their future, and I learned from each of their journeys,” wrote Claudio Fernández-Aráoz in Harvard Business Review.

“I’ve discovered that those who use pivot points to progress toward richer, more meaningful lives — full of sustained personal success, excellence, and happiness — did so by paying attention to and aligning six critical dimensions, what I have come to call the six Cs,” he added.

Here are the six Cs of purpose identified by Fernández-Aráoz:

• Capability — These are threshold competencies or “hard” skills needed to play and stay in the game, such knowing accounting for anyone pursuing a business career.
• Credibility — Staying intellectually honest and eliminating all potential conflicts of interest, whether real or perceived.
• Connectivity — Generating new opportunities, spreading your work and learning from the best in relationships which should go deeper than social media messages.
• Contemplation — Taking time to think deeply about your life, career, relationships, and the broader world by listening to your deep inner voice, amid the busy, noisy world around us.
• Compassion — Instead of carefully looking for faults in yourself and others, instead look for the good. Once you are feeling positive about and taking care of yourself, then you will be better equipped to help those around you.
• Companions — Engaging in a deliberate, determined search for those wise individuals who, through their inspiration and advice, can literally make you new.

In closing his column, Fernández-Aráoz encouraged people to follow the advice of Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits in 1521 at the age of 50, and “act as if everything depended on you; trust as if everything depended on God,” “laugh and grow strong,” and “go forth and set the world on fire.”

Fernández-Aráoz full column can be found at Harvard Business Review.