Tag: Impact on Personal Purpose

Living our Dream Purposefully – Purpose of Living – Part 30

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Business, Communications, Conference learnings, Health Care, Life-Insurance, Marketing, Personal Excellence, purpose, Relationships, Sales, Spiritual, Sri LankaLeave a comment

NAFLIA 2019 Presentation (Click here to Download Powerpoint)

NAFLIA 2019 Presentation (Click here to download PDF)

Click on the above link for the presentation related to the keynote speech to be given by me at NAFLIA 2019. Conference participants are invited to download the presentation and use it to follow the keynote speech. 

This blog is written in service of life-Insurance Advisors in Sri Lanka, specifically the members attending NAFLIA 2019, the National Forum for Life Insurance Advisors scheduled for the 2ndof September. My attempt is to articulate the key messages of the keynote speech that will be delivered by me.  

As I was reflecting on the topic for the annual conference, ‘Assuring Tomorrow Dream Today’. The questions that come up are, what is the action we need to take today to assure our dream of tomorrow? How do we know the action we choose to take today will assure our dream tomorrow? I realised this is a very complex question and that there is no standard answer to this as the action to be taken depends of the world each person lives in. What I mean by the ‘world’ is the immediate world of each person starting with him/herself, family, friends, organisations they belong to, organisations and people they interact with etc. The answer is personal.

Continue reading “Living our Dream Purposefully – Purpose of Living – Part 30” →

Is Selling a Purposeful Profession – Purpose of Living – Part 29

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Business, Communications, Knowing, Leadership, learning, Marketing, Personal Excellence, purpose, Relationships, Sales, Spiritual1 Comment

purposeful sales person 2
Image credits: businessknowhow.com

I was at a cocktail party listening to an interesting conversation between two other guests who were in the same huddle as me.

Person A: What do you do?

Person B: I sell financial services.

Person A: What do you really want to do?

Person B: I want to be banker.

I asked A why he asked that question, and B why he responded that way. A said, “isn’t selling a profession that is not respected?” B said “yes”, it is so difficult to sell because customers look at him with suspicion. In my three decades of being in business and playing the roles of seller, buyer, leader, trainer, consultant and coach of sales professionals, I have encountered this attitude towards sales on many occasions.

However, my personal attitude towards sales is the opposite. As I reflect on the questions – how is it that people have developed this attitude towards sales, and what would be the best way to help people to look differently at sales? – the notion of purposefulness continues to come to my mind. Perhaps if I can find out if ‘sales’ is a purposeful profession, then it might help me to engage with people who have diverse viewpoints regarding this question.

Answering the above question requires understanding what is a purposeful profession. While I have attempted to answer this question in the earlier blog posts regarding purposefulness, there is no definite answer due to the complexity of this question. I believe that a purposeful profession needs to be of service to the flourishing of life and supported by noble values. Let’s examine these two aspects in relation to the sales profession. Continue reading “Is Selling a Purposeful Profession – Purpose of Living – Part 29” →

The Purpose of the Mens Cricket World Cup – Purpose of Living – Part 28

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Knowing, Leadership, learning, Personal Excellence, purpose, Sports, Sri Lanka, Team Excellence, World affairsLeave a comment

CWC-2019-Captains
Image Credits: http://www.cricketworldcup.com

Over a billion people have been engaged with the ongoing Men’s Cricket World Cup over the last month. It all started with everyone hoping the cricket teams of their respective countries will become the world champions. The fact remains that only one team will be the eventual world champions. This blog is not about trying to predict the eventual champs, it is to discuss the impact of such sports extravaganza has on the lives of people.

The International Cricket Council organizes the Men’s Cricket World Cup as well as other global competitions related to Cricket to propagate cricket as well as raise funds. I am not sure which comes first. Is it to raise funds to propagate cricket or propagate cricket to raises funds. Well it doesn’t matter, perhaps both ends feed each other. There could be other reasons, for example to raise the standards of the sport and of those who are involved in it such as the players, coaching staff, umpires, referees, cricket boards and administrators. These aims could have a higher purpose that impacts the lives of people and I would like to address such issues in this blog post. 

My blog post of the last two months addressed the impact of violence, religion and politics on the lives of people in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, one of the former world champions who are now at the bottom of the table, struggling for form. Yet the entire nation was hoping that they will become the champs again. Teams from other countries besieged by violence such as Pakistan and Afghanistan are also in contention. The founders of cricket, England, is amid perhaps their worst political crisis related to Brexit. They entered the tourney as one of the favourites. Countries such as South Africa, Bangladesh and the West Indies are besieged with their own political and economic crises.  Continue reading “The Purpose of the Mens Cricket World Cup – Purpose of Living – Part 28” →

Impact of religion and politics on personal purpose? – Purpose of Living – Part 27

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Knowing, learning, Personal Excellence, psychology, purpose, Relationships, Spiritual, Sri Lanka, World affairs4 Comments

Impact of religion and politics of people 2

My blog post of last month addressed the notion of purpose of violence in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in Sri Lanka. We saw the involvement of religion and politics in the aftermath of the incident, over the past month. The intention of this blog post is to help us to understand how religion and politics positively and negatively impacted the lives of people.

Since I am not an intelligence, theological or political science expert to make judgements about what happened, and who was responsible for what happened, I request you not to take the assumptions I make in this post as truth. I am far away from the inner circles to know the truth and I am basing this blog post on what I have heard from trusted personalities such as the Cardinal of Sri Lanka, the Commander of the Army, and a retired intelligence experts known to me personally.

Continue reading “Impact of religion and politics on personal purpose? – Purpose of Living – Part 27” →