Robert Kaplan: Your purpose. Essay based on the book by R. Kaplan “Your purpose is to be the master of your life

Robert Stephen Kaplan, a professor at Harvard University and one of the world's experts on leadership, suggests that anyone who wants to realize their potential should first define it: “What does success mean to you personally?”

In this very timely book, the author talks about how to discover your purpose in the midst of great opportunities, how to understand yourself, manage your career and develop your abilities. Kaplan asks logical questions that are both easy to understand and difficult to answer quickly, valuable for achieving goals and invaluable for realizing a person's potential.

To find your business, or rather your passion, it is important to identify your own strengths and weaknesses. You need to understand what really excites you, what you are willing to work on, what you are good at, what you would like to show results in and benefit other people.

Using numerous examples, the author shows the importance of open dialogues in the development of employees’ careers and their achievement of results. There are always two dialogues: internal and external. Internal is the level of assessing one’s own determination and desire. External is a look at your success from the outside. Receiving feedback from direct managers and discussing specific plans with a coach can have an amazing impact on efficiency.

Finding your purpose is a lifelong journey. This is not an achievement of the final goal, but a process of getting to know yourself, developing your competencies and creating values. This will require a lot of effort, determination and high motivation. It’s just like if you want to stay in good physical shape, you have to constantly work on it.

By choosing our path and our career, we thereby create our life. Agree, it's time to take responsibility for your destiny. At all stages of the journey, you will need a love for the business you are doing, honing your skills, the ability to communicate and experience joy in every moment of life, as well as clearly formulated intentions, of course.

Robert Steven Kaplan concludes his book with the words: “If you follow your own path, I don’t know what status you will achieve, how much money you will earn, how many titles you will win. But by staying true to your principles and beliefs, you will be truly successful. And this feeling determines the quality of life.”

Dedicated to parents,

always inspired me on my journey to pursue my dreams

What does it mean to be successful and how to achieve your dreams? Does success imply having an impressive list of achievements or impressive wealth, position, power? Maybe achieving success means not disappointing the expectations of parents, relatives, and friends?

This is what I reflect on in this book and offer readers a strategy to help them realize their aspirations. By following the proposed strategy, you will follow a certain sequence of steps and give answers to many of the questions that concern you. To do this, you will need to look both inward and outward. My strategy involves mastering new skills and abilities, which can sometimes make the reader feel some discomfort.

Over the past thirty years, I have wrestled with the questions posed here and have come to this conclusion: the key to achieving people's hopes and aspirations is not in achieving success, but rather in efforts to realize the unique internal potential. Having chosen this path, you will have to follow your own And success, and not take other people’s ideas of success for granted.

For many, this is a serious test, since they will have to understand themselves and abstract from many external factors that influence their ideas about their career and life. The key to success will be the acquisition of a certain protective shell, or even a thick skin, designed to protect the reader from condescending assessments (and perhaps active disapproval) of his choice and arrogant misunderstanding on the part of family, friends and colleagues.

This book describes a special path - the one that leads to the greatest satisfaction in your career and life. I based my conclusions on my own experiences as well as the lessons that life has taught me as I have mentored and mentored a wide variety of people to realize their unique potential. What you are asked to do will require courage and hard work. You won't find any easy answers or end goal here. This is a lifelong journey that will require you to develop a different way of thinking and new skills.

I first began to wonder about realizing unique human potential when I was managing financial institutions. For more than two decades, I have led commercial companies in different regions of the world. I was involved in finding solutions to complex issues, leading people and advising them. This experience gave me a deep understanding of the importance of good leadership and personal development, as well as insight into the problem of realizing human potential.

In the fall of 2005, I began teaching at Harvard, where I tried to think through these issues and incorporated many of the concepts presented in this paper into my course. And then he published an article on this topic in the Harvard Business Review dated July-August 2008. Since then, people have constantly called and written to me who have read this article and want to discuss with me the ideas presented in it as applied to their problems.

Years of talking with students and managers lead me to believe that large companies and non-profit organizations strive to provide opportunities for employees to develop their skills and encourage them to realize their potential.

In 2009, I taught a course at Harvard Business School called The Authentic Leader. It was created by former Medtronic CEO Bill George based on his excellent book True North. This course challenged me to think about new aspects of a problem and enriched my work as a leader and consultant.

Robert Steven Kaplan's book relates to a topic that is gaining popularity. The author (American vice-rector and professor at Harvard Business School) has set himself the goal of helping people, first of all, understand themselves and change their lives for the better.

The first thing that catches your eye is the general direction of the book and the idea that is embedded in it and which is pursued from the first to the last page. Kaplan is convinced that success is an abstract concept. The vulgar attributes that are imposed by modern society (money, family, status, power, etc.) do not at all mean achieving success. Everyone has their own “true path,” so before you start your journey, you need to decide on the route. Conduct a careful and thorough self-analysis, find your strengths and weaknesses, understand your value system - and only then get to work. Otherwise, you can simply “get lost”: achieve the popular signs of success, but still not feel happy.

“Your Purpose” combines interesting and gender

Smart reasoning, but if you compare your psychological development with renovation, you need to clearly understand that the book will not turn your apartment into an elite mansion and will not even give you the materials with which you can carry out construction work. You have to do all this yourself. But the book will serve you the most important thing - a tool. Is it possible to carry out high-quality repairs without it, even if you have a plan and all the necessary materials?..

Here you will not find advice from the category “this is right, this is wrong,” but you will find a lot of reflections that will allow you to independently determine what is right and what is wrong specifically for you. In addition to all kinds of logical chains and reasoning, the book is also filled with life stories and visual examples that help to better understand the author and his views.

Robert Steven Kaplan is convinced that every person has inner potential and can become the next Bill Gate and Steve Jobs. All that is needed for this is hard work on yourself, the formation of the right worldview and constant progress. This is another key idea embedded in the book and long ago sung by philosophers. On the path to a certain goal, not only the result is important, but also the process of achieving it. It should bring you pleasure, otherwise with each new step it will be more and more difficult to find the motivation for the next step upward.

To summarize, we can say with confidence: if you want to become a successful person (in your own image and likeness, and not in someone else’s), but don’t know which direction to move in, this book is just for you. However, in order to fully understand it and implement the author’s advice, you will need to overcome a number of complexes and stereotypes in yourself - dependence on the opinion of society, fear of superiors, fear of making mistakes and disgracing yourself in front of others, etc.

Kaplan gives you a great tool, but whether you can use it to create the home of your dreams depends entirely on you. The main thing is to be careful with load-bearing walls...

I like:

Book Robert Stephen Kaplan "Your Purpose" was written as a practical guide for those who want to realize their potential. This book will help you understand who you want to be, what you want to do, what skills you have, what your purpose is. You will also find practical exercises to develop your potential.

In order to be realized in life, you need to understand and find your favorite thing, your path. At the same time, you do not need to follow the beaten path imposed by society. Outstanding people of our time, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, have proven this with their examples.

Your life is your responsibility!

There are no time limits - start whenever you want... Change or stay as you are... There are no rules... Only we can make the best or the worst out of it...

Success usually comes at the very end, after a lot of hard work!

Passion comes much more from the heart than from the mind. Having passion is critical because realizing your full potential and realizing your purpose involves both your mind and your heart.

Intellectual abilities

As experience suggests, intellectual abilities in themselves don't allow you to move forward a certain level.

• As you advance in your career, communication and interpersonal skills come to the forefront!
• Managing your life and career is 100% your responsibility.
• For many of us, ideas of success based on standards, achievements and step-by-step career advancement were imposed from the outside. At the same time, we were instilled with fear of the shame that would cover us if we failed to achieve the standards set by someone else.

Be the master of your life

Many of us rush through our youth from one achievement to another, “succeeding” but without thinking about it. what they really want, what is their purpose.

• Act as the master of your life- means taking on the task of understanding your strengths, weaknesses and passions.
• You need to convey your desires to the people who will make their implementation possible. In other words, you need to become the master of your destiny. This means that your choice should be meaningful. It is you who must think about and weigh all the available possibilities. You can't passively wait for someone else to evaluate your prospects or tell you what you should want. Your life is your responsibility.
• A person is capable of develop a concept of success and a methodology for realizing your own potential!

Have you read Robert Kaplan's book "Your Purpose"?

Your purpose. A practical guide for those who want to realize their potential Robert Kaplan

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Title: Your purpose. A practical guide for those who want to realize their potential
Author: Robert Kaplan
Year: 2013
Genre: Job search, career, Foreign business literature, Personal growth, Foreign psychology

About the book “Your Purpose. A practical guide for those who want to realize their potential" Robert Kaplan

To realize your potential, you need to find your passion, your passion, your own path. Just like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and many other outstanding people did, abandoning the beaten path to pursue their life's work. This book will help you understand who you really are, what skills you have, and what you really want to achieve. You can turn your passion into a productive and successful career doing what you truly love.

Published in Russian for the first time.

On our website about books lifeinbooks.net you can download for free without registration or read online the book “Your Purpose. A practical guide for those who want to realize their potential" by Robert Kaplan in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Robert Kaplan

Your purpose

A practical guide for those who want to realize their potential

Dedicated to parents,

always inspired me on my journey to pursue my dreams

Preface from the partner of the publication “How to Live Your Own Life?”

Robert Stephen Kaplan, a professor at Harvard University and one of the world's experts on leadership, suggests that anyone who wants to realize their potential should first define it: “What does success mean to you personally?”

In this very timely book, the author talks about how to discover your purpose in the midst of great opportunities, how to understand yourself, manage your career and develop your abilities. Kaplan asks logical questions that are both easy to understand and difficult to answer quickly, valuable for achieving goals and invaluable for realizing a person's potential.

To find your business, or rather your passion, it is important to identify your own strengths and weaknesses. You need to understand what really excites you, what you are willing to work on, what you are good at, what you would like to show results in and benefit other people.

Using numerous examples, the author shows the importance of open dialogues in the development of employees’ careers and their achievement of results. There are always two dialogues: internal and external. Internal is the level of assessing one’s own determination and desire. External is a look at your success from the outside. Receiving feedback from direct managers and discussing specific plans with a coach can have an amazing impact on efficiency.

Finding your purpose is a lifelong journey. This is not an achievement of the final goal, but a process of getting to know yourself, developing your competencies and creating values. This will require a lot of effort, determination and high motivation. It’s just like if you want to stay in good physical shape, you have to constantly work on it.

By choosing our path and our career, we thereby create our life. Agree, it's time to take responsibility for your destiny. At all stages of the journey, you will need a love for the business you are doing, honing your skills, the ability to communicate and experience joy in every moment of life, as well as clearly formulated intentions, of course.

Robert Steven Kaplan concludes his book with the words: “If you follow your own path, I don’t know what status you will achieve, how much money you will earn, how many titles you will win. But by staying true to your principles and beliefs, you will be truly successful. And this feeling determines the quality of life.”

Tatiana Busargina, General Director of StudyLab. Study abroad www.studylab.ru

Introduction

Realize your unique potential

But most importantly: be true to yourself.

William Shakespeare. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

What does it mean to be successful and how to achieve your dreams? Does success imply having an impressive list of achievements or impressive wealth, position, power? Maybe achieving success means not disappointing the expectations of parents, relatives, and friends?

This is what I reflect on in this book and offer readers a strategy to help them realize their aspirations. By following the proposed strategy, you will follow a certain sequence of steps and give answers to many of the questions that concern you. To do this, you will need to look both inward and outward. My strategy involves mastering new skills and abilities, which can sometimes make the reader feel some discomfort.

Another way

Over the past thirty years, I have wrestled with the questions posed here and have come to this conclusion: the key to achieving people's hopes and aspirations is not in achieving success, but rather in efforts to realize unique internal potential. Having chosen this path, you will have to follow your own And success, and not take other people’s ideas of success for granted.

For many, this is a serious test, since they will have to understand themselves and abstract from many external factors that influence their ideas about their career and life. The key to success will be the acquisition of a certain protective shell, or even a thick skin, designed to protect the reader from condescending assessments (and perhaps active disapproval) of his choice and arrogant misunderstanding on the part of family, friends and colleagues.

This book describes a special path - the one that leads to the greatest satisfaction in your career and life. I based my conclusions on my own experiences as well as the lessons that life has taught me as I have mentored and mentored a wide variety of people to realize their unique potential. What you are asked to do will require courage and hard work. You won't find any easy answers or end goal here. This is a lifelong journey that will require you to develop a different way of thinking and new skills.

I first began to wonder about realizing unique human potential when I was managing financial institutions. For more than two decades, I have led commercial companies in different regions of the world. I was involved in finding solutions to complex issues, leading people and advising them. This experience gave me a deep understanding of the importance of good leadership and personal development, as well as insight into the problem of realizing human potential.

In the fall of 2005, I began teaching at Harvard, where I tried to think through these issues and incorporated many of the concepts presented in this paper into my course. And then he published an article on this topic in the Harvard Business Review dated July-August 2008. Since then, people have constantly called and written to me who have read this article and want to discuss with me the ideas presented in it as applied to their problems.

Years of talking with students and managers lead me to believe that large companies and non-profit organizations strive to provide opportunities for employees to develop their skills and encourage them to realize their potential.

In 2009, I taught a course at Harvard Business School called The Authentic Leader. It was created by former Medtronic CEO Bill George based on his excellent book True North. This course challenged me to think about new aspects of a problem and enriched my work as a leader and consultant.