Theo Fer­gu­son

To­day, I want to share with you some thoughts on my life as I seek greater un­der­stand­ing about the rea­son for my ex­is­tence. Why am I here in this world? At some point in the life of most peo­ple we are forced by in­ter­nal forces to ask our­selves ques­tions about the mean­ing of life. Why am I liv­ing? What is the pur­pose of my life? What is my mis­sion? ?Some ten years ago, Au­gust 2002, while on my South African so­journ and dur­ing a pe­ri­od of deep in­tro­spec­tion af­ter hav­ing con­cep­tu­alised the phi­los­o­phy of Lead­ing From Above The Line, I sought to an­swer what had be­come a re­cur­ring ques­tion in my life and wrote the fol­low­ing: My mis­sion in life is, first­ly, to tru­ly dis­cov­er my­self and to ex­press my hu­man po­ten­tial and, sec­ond­ly, to bet­ter help oth­ers to dis­cov­er them­selves and to ex­press their hu­man po­ten­tial.

First­ly, to tru­ly dis­cov­er my­self and my hu­man po­ten­tial and this means:

1. To be able to look in and lis­ten to my in­ner-self:

To make more time to look in.

To cul­ti­vate the abil­i­ty to hear my in­ner-self.

To be con­stant­ly in touch with whom I re­al­ly am.

To de­vel­op dai­ly prac­tices that will fa­cil­i­tate the process.

2. To have the courage to al­low the in­ner-self to ex­press it­self.

3. To live in keep­ing with my con­scious­ness and my pow­er of rea­son.

4. To be fear­less and to trust God.

5. To be able to act with pow­er and with­out ex­ter­nal re­straints.

6. To mas­ter my emo­tions:

To de­lib­er­ate­ly con­trol all bod­i­ly de­sires and re­spons­es.

To elim­i­nate greed and self­ish­ness.

To eat what is best for my spir­i­tu­al well­be­ing and not what my body de­sires.

To de­vel­op hu­mil­i­ty and com­pas­sion.

To love oth­ers un­con­di­tion­al­ly.

To elim­i­nate anger.

To elim­i­nate anx­i­ety.

To be con­tent­ed at the sur­vival lev­el.

To ac­cept oth­ers with­out judg­ment.

To be tru­ly open.

To trust oth­ers more.

To sim­pli­fy my life-less of every­thing.

To al­low my pos­i­tive emo­tions to pre­vail.

7. To search con­tin­u­ous­ly for my greater pur­pose in life:

To con­tin­u­ous­ly fine-tune.

To ex­press my pur­pose open­ly and with­out fear.

To trust self and to have an in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship with God.

To turn back when nec­es­sary.

To work stead­fast­ly at ex­press­ing my full hu­man po­ten­tial.

8. To be op­ti­mistic and hope­ful, to be­lieve that bet­ter is al­ways pos­si­ble, to have a pos­si­bil­i­ty con­scious­ness and to al­ways be­lieve in the good­ness and great­ness of hu­mankind.

9. To un­der­stand the place of man with­in the phys­i­cal and bi­o­log­i­cal world; to un­der­stand the on­go­ing in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the key vari­ables of the Earth's en­vi­ron­ment and be­tween Earth and the so­lar sys­tem and the uni­verse; to un­der­stand the uni­ty of the uni­verse; to un­der­stand uni­ver­sal in­ter­de­pen­dence.

10. To let go; to cul­ti­vate a be­gin­ners mind.

11. To con­tin­u­ous­ly seek knowl­edge and to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of knowl­edge and how it fits in­to the busi­ness of hu­man­i­ty and the de­vel­op­ment of civil­i­sa­tion.

12. To con­tin­u­ous­ly strive to be bet­ter and to aim for per­fec­tion.

Sec­ond­ly, to help oth­ers to dis­cov­er them­selves and to ex­press their hu­man po­ten­tial and this means:

1. To share my own per­son­al jour­ney with oth­ers-mis­takes and all.

2. To con­tin­ue to cul­ti­vate and clar­i­fy my thoughts and un­der­stand­ing about life.

3. To share open­ly and hon­est­ly with oth­ers.

4. To en­cour­age/pro­mote self-in­tro­spec­tion.

5. To ex­plore, iden­ti­fy or de­vel­op sim­ple meth­ods of self-in­tro­spec­tion-no gim­micks, low cost, com­mon sense ap­proach­es and doa­bil­i­ty al­ways.

6. To re­search, test and con­tin­u­ous­ly de­vel­op ideas:

Ex­pand the lead­er­ship lab­o­ra­to­ry-move from once a week to an in­ter­na­tion­al and res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty.

Build a com­mu­ni­ty of builders, do­ers and teach­ers.

7. To build an in­sti­tu­tion-train oth­ers to train the world.

8. To avoid be­ing car­ried away with suc­cess-to re­main peo­ple-fo­cused, hum­ble and with clar­i­ty of in­ten­tion; to fear rep­u­ta­tion.

9. To have a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme-to ex­plore mul­ti-me­dia tech­nolo­gies and host a Web site, and to al­ways re­mem­ber that ac­tion al­ways speaks loud­er than words.

10. To avoid com­pro­mis­ing the in­tegri­ty of the Lead­ing From Above The Line pro­gramme by be­ing pulled in­to giv­ing peo­ple "what they think they want;" no need to be op­por­tunis­tic

11. To hold the light; to be the light-the bea­con of hope for oth­ers, to show oth­ers the way, to demon­strate by ac­tion that it can be done, to walk the talk and to be op­ti­mistic, pos­i­tive and hope­ful

12. To seek sim­ple and ef­fec­tive means to spread the mes­sage

13. To re­or­gan­ise my life

14. Most im­por­tant­ly, to en­joy life through the com­mu­ni­ty of oth­ers

15. To avoid court­ing adu­la­tion and to keep my ego in check.

Have I ac­com­plished my mis­sion in its en­tire­ty, as I per­ceived it ten years ago? The an­swer is clear­ly, no. But, I have cer­tain­ly ac­com­plished some of what I per­ceive my life's mis­sion to be. And of course, I am still alive. So I live in the hope that I can ac­com­plish more.

One of the things that I have dis­cov­ered is that life is nev­er a straight line in that it nev­er plays out as planned and that one has to learn to make the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments along the way as the var­i­ous twists and turns are en­coun­tered. I see my mis­sion as still evolv­ing as I get greater clar­i­ty and un­der­stand­ing about my own life. Hence, I must re­main open to my in­ner call­ing. Al­so, I have learnt that when­ev­er our sense of mis­sion wanes, we be­come rud­der­less and can eas­i­ly be blown astray by the many neg­a­tive forces of life. We of­ten end up strand­ed and be­wil­dered in a vast ocean of un­cer­tain­ty and ques­tion­ing the pur­pose of life. Fur­ther, I have learnt that our life's mis­sion is nev­er about choice. It is not some­thing that you can ra­tio­nalise and se­lect. Your mis­sion is some­thing that you dis­cov­er when you lis­ten to your in­ner self. It is your di­vine gift. And when you dis­cov­er your mis­sion it be­comes a ma­jor en­er­gis­ing force in your life as it has be­come in my life.