On Purpose With Purpose

Discovering How to Live Your Best Life

John Ramstead

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781631952579
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Réussite personnelle

In these turbulent and uncertain times, On Purpose With Purpose is the step-by-step guide leaders need to unlock their true potential and adapt for the future, so that they can lead themselves and their team to incredible breakthroughs of their own.

On Purpose With Purpose is not the typical leadership book. With exciting combat and training stories from his F-14 to heart-wrenching examples from his near-fatal accident and recovery, John Ramstead equips readers with invaluable life tools that don't feel like lessons. Most books in this genre focus on the "what" and the "how" of leadership; but John's experiences as a Fortune 500 manager, serial entrepreneur, and executive coach taught him that the critical missing component in achieving everything leaders dream of is WHO they are at their core…then the rest will fall into place.

TRUE NORTH

If you could go anywhere, where would you like to go? Not in terms of vacations, but in your life. You see, we’re all on a journey, whether we know it or not. We are traveling inevitably toward the ends of our lives. So, the real question for us is whether we’re going to select a destination and steer a course for it or allow ourselves to be swept along with the tide, letting others determine where we’ll end up. Th e choice is entirely up to us.

—John C. Maxwell

As I mentioned earlier, the three things a pilot must know at all times during any flight are True North, Destination, and Present Position. As a pilot, being clear about the direction in which you are going is a life-or-death situation. In the cockpit, and in life, knowing True North is fundamental to successful navigation.

My RIO and I had a harrowing experience of losing our True North. Our combat mission in Iraq was complete. I climbed out southward toward Mother, which was our affectionate name for the aircraft carrier USS Independence. She was floating far away. I had to climb to 43,000 feet, where the engines were most fuel efficient, in order to have enough fuel to make it. Once I reached that altitude, the adrenalin subsided, and I turned off my cockpit lights to enjoy the view. Not one light was visible on the ground, but above us, the sight was unbelievable. The stars and galaxies were so bright that I did not need cockpit lights to read my instruments. I was sure only God could have created something like this. I was having an amazing moment, lost in the splendor of the heavens.

My RIO ruined the moment, his voice piercing the beauty. “Rammer, our INS is down, and I can’t get a lock on our recovery coordinates.”

That meant we didn’t know exactly where the aircraft carrier was. That night we were operating EMCON, which stands for emission control. Due to threats in the area, the aircraft carrier wasn’t transmitting anything—zip, nada. No radar, radio, or navigational signals. It was my least favorite recovery, especially since it was at night. It was our responsibility to self-navigate back to the boat for night recovery operations. The coordinates of the boat had been shared during our mission brief, but now we were out over the Persian Gulf with no compass to tell us True North. F-14 instrument panels do not have a traditional compass. Everything is shown on our navigation displays. The steering vectors are driven by the INS. Since the system didn’t know where we were, the directions to the next waypoint were meaningless. We had been briefed on EMCON recovery, which, to be effective, requires complete radio silence by all aircraft.

As a last resort, my RIO could have radioed, “Redcrown, this is Oak 27 transmitting in the blind. We are squawking 1137 and need a vector to Mother, how copy?” We would have endangered many lives and failed our mission.

Honestly, I was more worried about failing in our mission and the negative consequences for my RIO and me than about anything else at that moment. If we had made that radio call, the carrier would have been at risk, and the consequences to us professionally could have been severe. If we had guessed wrong and run out of gas, we would have had to eject over the Persian Gulf. Not only would we have been in a dangerous open-water survival situation, but the Gulf is filled with fifty-seven varieties of deadly sea snakes. If we had been bitten by one, the only way for the flight surgeons to administer the correct antivenin would have been to catch and identify the snake that had bitten us…Right.

Somehow, we made a couple of educated guesses and found Mother. We saw other aircraft lights as they landed on the USS Independence. Then, we could navigate safely to Mother. How we managed to figure out where we were and how to get home is truly a miracle.

In life and business, your True North is your guiding light—a way to keep you on track with your vision, your purpose, your why. Knowing your personal True North is the first step in creating an extraordinary life. Your True North will always give you a gauge for course correction in your life. It’s easy to veer slowly off track. If you don’t know what your True North is, how will you know how to course-correct?

My faith houses my True North. Thinking about what God would do in a situation guides what I do. What He has modeled for me is to trust Him through all of life’s ups and downs. Each of us has a unique purpose we are perfectly prepared for. A core value for me is to love others unconditionally, which means I strive to see the best in others, not judge people who make mistakes, and help them move in the right direction. We all have flaws and make mistakes every day, but what a world this would be if we all helped each other up instead of kicking those who are down.

True North will keep you on track in spite of ambiguity and change in your life. Sometimes, what you are actually doing may shift from season to season in your life, but your True North will keep you in check.

The second critical factor in a successful flight is knowing your Destination. This requires clear, specific long-term, short-term, and mid-range goals, written down, including daily steps to accomplish them. Next, you launch toward that Destination with no guarantee of success. You must be willing to move out of your comfort zone and take risks, even though you know most of what you attempt will not succeed, at least not in the beginning.

The third part is the real secret of success. Prepare to make continual Course Corrections. Just as an aircraft faces headwinds, downdrafts, storm fronts, wind shear, lightning, and unexpected turbulence, you will experience challenges in the pursuit of any worthwhile goal.

To achieve success and significance, keep your mind fixed clearly on your Destination, yet remain flexible about how you achieve your goals. Be open to new input and ideas. Learn from every experience. Look for the lesson in every setback or difficulty.

And here is the most important secret to success of all: You must resolve in advance that you will never give up. Your ability to persist in the direction of your goal in the face of all adversity is what will ultimately guarantee your success.

And here is the most important secret to success of all: You must resolve in advance that you will never give up.

You make your own “luck” through your own hard work and determination. Decide upon your Destination, take off, and be open to making continual Course Corrections until you reach your goal.

So, how can you determine your own True North?

True North in your life is based on three things:

• Identity
• Values
• Mindset

Sometimes getting back to True North will take some intuition, in the way that my RIO and I found our way back to the aircraft carrier. Instruments in the cockpit are key to navigation, but in the example of when we were over the Persian Gulf, the instruments were of little help. When you don’t have external instruments to show you the way, it’s time to determine your internal navigational instruments that show you True North and guide you home.

Time and time again, Identity is the part of leadership development that is often missing for those who struggle to find their True North. As difficult as it was to endure, my accident actually brought me to a deeper sense of my own identity.

Your values are the underpinning of your identity, and they drive your actions. They represent your unique and individual essence. You must have a clear picture of what your values are and their importance in your life.

Last but not least, you have to master your mindset. Your mindset is the lens through which you see the world and process what is happening in your world. Do you see yourself as a victor or a victim? Do you tend to react from a place of judgment or do you seek to learn and understand?

Our lives are dynamic. When something happens in our world, our mindset informs how we feel and how we act. Repeated actions over time become habits. Ask yourself, does your mindset and the actions you choose to take in a given situation move you toward or away from a life fully alive? If you feel like the results you are currently getting in life could be better, then mastering and changing your mindset is the first step.

In the chapters that follow, we dive into these three areas in greater detail and discuss how to incorporate them into your life.

Identity

No matter how hard you try, you cannot consistently behave in a way that is inconsisten...