If you have a long-term vision then your short-term failures will feel like learning opportunities and stepping stones towards that vision, instead of feelings of regret and frustration.

You wouldn’t believe how much can change within your life in just a few months’ time when we become deliberate about living our lives with purpose.

1. Purpose

It was in 2018 when I left my job as engineering technical manager for a London train operator, and I moved into a different role as a senior project manager consultant in 2019.

That was when I discovered my why, and when I knew exactly who I was, who I wanted to grow into, who I wanted to help, and how I wanted to help.

When I started my job as engineering technical manager in 2017, I had moved from a role as fleet performance manager working for the biggest engineering company in the world, Siemens.

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I thought I was growing into a new role where I would learn more, and I thought this was the right next step to take me towards engineering director one day. I was loving how things were going for me.

My new role as engineering technical manager started well, I was enjoying the first few months. I was getting along with my boss, his boss and the other bosses. I was getting along with my team and the leaders within the team.

I was also known as the deputy professional head of engineering which sounds like a high-level title, and I must admit at that time it made me feel good. Especially when I shared that job title with my friends who knew nothing about railways or engineering.

My salary had increased, and I had been living in London for about two years in 2017 so all I wanted to do when I wasn’t at work was to have as much fun as possible.

For me, that meant meeting up with friends, going out partying, going to concerts, movies and taking my girlfriend at the time to nice places for food, or weekends away.

That’s how I saw life at the time in 2017. Work hard all week, earn a decent salary and then when I wasn’t working, it was time to have fun and buy the things I wanted with the money I had. That’s how my friends and family seemed to live, so I did my best to live how everybody else was living.

They all seemed to work hard, earn a good living, go on holiday in the summer, go out at the weekends to party and buy nice things for themselves. Basically, have fun when they could and work hard when they had to.

2. Invest In Yourself

Then in 2019 when I started my new consultant role, I decided I could use my money for something better. Instead of spending it on fun things to do, nice things to buy, or partying at weekends, maybe I could invest in myself and my personal growth.

I decided I wanted to write so I invested in a course that taught me how to craft and self-publish my first book.

It’s funny because when I did this, I found it difficult at first to invest the money required in the self-publishing course, whereas I found it so easy to waste my money on partying and buying things I didn’t really need.

When we invest our money in ourselves to help our personal development and personal growth, it forces us to work on ourselves. If we don’t put the work in, then we are wasting our money again.

When we work on ourselves and take action on what we are learning, we will start to see better results in what we are doing. Sometimes the better results come instantly, sometimes they come days later, months later and sometimes they don’t come until years later.

But what we are not doing when we invest is looking for “instant gratification,” that’s what we do when we waste our money.

When I started writing my first book and taking the self-publishing course that I had invested in, I was realising how I wanted to grow and who I wanted to become. I knew that I could make an even bigger difference in people’s lives than I originally thought.

I knew that what I was writing was going to help other people like you because I was helping myself. Basically, I wanted to help people who were just like me, and I knew there were many people like me all around the world.

3. Helping Others

They could use my book and the other materials that I was thinking about creating to help grow themselves into highly effective leaders.

The other materials I was thinking about creating as I was writing my book were, leadership and personal growth online courses because I knew how to create videos with slides that I could talk over as I had done that in previous jobs.

With the content I was writing in my book, I knew I could tailor that into online courses. I had ideas for more books too that I could tailor into online courses. I was already a trained mentor too for engineers, so I knew I could mentor/coach people.

I was also thinking about being a speaker because I was trained in public speaking, and I did public speaking almost every day in my job.

The time was right for me to pursue my why or my purpose in life which is, “To develop current leaders and future leaders into highly effective leaders so that, they can develop current leaders and future leaders into highly effective leaders.”

So, after I had published my first book in January 2021, it was time to work on my next book, but it was also time to start creating my online courses, so that’s what I did. I was also working a full-time job, so I had to fit my new life’s work around that, but it didn’t stop me.

4. Continuous Development

I was and I am still so determined to fulfil my life’s purpose and my life’s work that I started to fit everything else around that instead of the other way around. I want to help people to improve their leadership skills and help them to improve their lives, and the lives of others.

I invested in more development for myself to learn how to become a coach, a year long coaching programme in fact to help me achieve a coaching diploma. This was one of the best investments I ever made, not only for the development it gave me but for the people and the community I became a part of.

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Especially when things aren’t going right in my own coaching programme, I can rely on my coaching community to help me. They can also rely on me to help them too.

When I made the decision that I wanted to grow into a leadership coach, author and speaker, I didn’t realise how much work it would be at the time, but I also didn’t realise how much fulfilment it would give me when I know I have made a difference in somebody’s life.

That to me is the ultimate feeling you can ever achieve in life.

So, how do you want to deliberately grow and who do you want to become, if you’re not there already?

Everybody throughout the world has the ability to influence another person. It is up to you to decide if you want to use your influence for good or for evil. I hope you make the right decision.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

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All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)