Imagine a hammer.
A solid, shiny, shimmering hammer.
Expensive. Made of high-grade steel and first-class polished wood.
Now imagine a primitive tribesman from the mountains who has never seen a hammer in his life. He picks up the hammer, likes it immediately, and brings it home. And for the next 50 years, he uses it as a wonderful back scratcher.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
That’s all it did for 50 years.
Friends, many people are like that hammer. Because they’re not fulfilling their life purpose, their greatness doesn’t come out.
I believe there are four kinds of people on planet earth…
A. Extremely Unhappy people don’t know their life purpose.
B. Unhappy people who know their life purpose but don’t work on it.
C. Happy people who know their life purpose, work at it, but not daily.
D. Extremely Happy people who know their purpose and work on it daily!
Question: Who are you among these four people?
The 2 Simple Questions
That Will Make You Discover Your Life Purpose
How do you know your purpose in life?
So many people think it’s complicated. No it’s not. In fact, all you have to do is ask 2 very simple questions.
Here they are:
Question #1: What do you love to do?
Question #2: Where do you excel?
I’ve talked about this in my other books, so I won’t dwell on it too much. I’ve discussed this fully in my Free Ebook, How To Know If Your Dreams Are God’s Dreams. (Grab it at www.BoSanchez.ph) But let me cover the main points here.
First Question: What do you love to do?
What’s the one thing that you do, that when you do it, you feel fire in your belly? What’s your passion? For example, as I write this book to you, I feel whole. Complete. In the zone. I believe I was born to write!
However, this first question is only 80% accurate.
Proof: Watch the auditions of American Idol. There are some people who love singing, who sing with passion, who sing like there was no more tomorrow—but whose voices can be used to torture terrorists to divulge where Osama Bin Ladin is hiding. As John Maxwell says, you’d wonder if they have any real friends. Why has no one told them that their singing voice can cause seizures?
But more often than not, we excel in what we love to do, because we do it often and with passion.
That’s why the Second Question is 100% accurate in discovering your Life Purpose: Where do you excel?
God has given you a special gift that’s indelibly connected to your life purpose[1]. This is what I call God’s anointing in your life.
Make An Inventory Of Your Gifts
To help you discern your Life Purpose, list down your gifts and rate them from 1 to 10, with 10 being excellent.
Here’s my own inventory of talents:
o Cooking: 1
I’d rather starve or eat raw, then cook. When I heat water, it disappears. Need I say more?
o Fashion: 1
The only reason why I look presentable when I preach is because of my friend and top couturier, Adrian Panganiban, who dresses me up. Otherwise, I will wear teeshirts and sandals everywhere I go.
o Mechanical: 1
When my wife asks me to fix things, I obliterate their existence from the face of the earth. Today, I’ve learned to fix anything with just one tool: The Telephone.
o Dancing: -10
I tried. We had a concert where I had to take a few dance steps with the singers. But when I danced on stage, I was like a wooden stick suffering from epilepsy.
o Athletics: 3
Do you know what PE I chose in High School? Chess. Do you know what PE I chose in College? Health Lectures. I remember that class so well. We were required to wear rubber shoes and do some stretching at the start of each class—and all we did was sit down and listen to lectures.
o Spelling: 3
In a Spelling Exam, I once got 2 out of 20 items. As a kid, I think I was semi-dyslexic but it was never diagnosed. Today, there are so many labels for kids who have a difficult time in school. “He’s got a learning disability” or “The boy has ADHD” or “She has dyslexia”. But back in my time, there were no such thing. I was simply called stupid.
o Singing: 5
Yep, I have three music albums of all my original compositions. In total, I sold 6000 copies. But don’t be impressed. My mother bought half of them to give away to her friends.
o Drawing: 5
I love to draw. At least my kids love my drawings.
o Business: 5
I’m a late bloomer here. So far, my businesses are doing very well. But I know I’ve got a long way to grow.
o Leadership: 7
I love leading people because leadership is all about loving relationships. But I’m a 7 because I need to learn so much more.
o Writing and Preaching: 9
As you can see, this is my anointing. But I’m not a 10 because that would mean I have nothing to learn anymore. Would you believe that even if I’ve been preaching for 30 years, I’m still honing my craft, watching how other great preachers preach?
Be a Genius!
Do you know why people are unsuccessful?
Two reasons:
1. They don’t know their anointing.
2. Or they know their anointing, but don’t work on it.
I learned that there are two kinds of geniuses in this world.
First are the geniuses that win Trivia Game Shows, like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” That’s not want you want to be. This type of genius is good only for, well, Trivia Game Shows.
You want to be the second type of genius: These are people who focus their attention, time, and energy on one thing.
What’s your one thing?
In my own life, my “one thing” is communicating God’s love to others.
Today, I’m probably the highest paid corporate speaker in the country. When companies invite me to speak, I charge then an arm and a leg. I do this in part to raise money for our ministries. Just between you and me, these companies don’t know that if they only send their employees to our weekly prayer meetings called The Feast, they can hear me preach for free. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone I told you this.)
But the reason I can charge an arm and leg is because I’ve been speaking to crowds for the past 30 years.
Starting at age 13, I was preaching everywhere. All for free. I’d preach in schools, prisons, old folks homes, barrios, hospitals, and the slums. Even while I was studying in school, I’d preach nightly. Caloocan on Sundays, Alabang on Mondays, Cubao on Tuesdays, etc… On weekends, I’d preach in Laguna, La Union, Ilocos Sur…
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talked about how successful people clocked in an average of 10,000 hours to their craft before they hit it big.
That’s me.
And that can be you too—if you focus your life on your anointing.
Follow Your Anointing
In the Bible, anointing was done for kings and prophets. They would pour a large amount of oil on the person’s head, indicating that he is totally set-aside for a specific purpose.
Today, we associate anointing for religious professions only: For priests or pastors or preachers only.
I don’t believe in that.
I believe God has anointed people to be entrepreneurs, to be bakers, to be chefs, to be beauticians, to be accountants, to be administrators, to be stock brokers, to be engineers, to be doctors, to be mothers, to be farmers…
This is how you are to serve others.
This is how you are to bless the world.
Anointed For Business?
Ed Silvoso, author of Anointed For Business, wrote how he was running three businesses and impacting the marketplace with God’s love. Many times, he would be an informal pastor to his business associates, bringing God’s Presence in smoke-filled rooms and parties.
But church people looked down on his profession. They kept badgering him to become a pastor. They said, “When are you going to go into the ministry? You don’t live by faith but by sight. At work you hang around sinners, people who drink and smoke. You have a calling on your life. Don’t be rebellious. Leave everything and go into the ministry.”
Yet every time the church needed money, they would go to him!
Years later, he left his businesses and became a pastor. In the process, he decreased his income by 30 times. But he was doing it out of obedience to God.
Yet after a few years, a powerful revelation came to him. He realized that beneath all the shame was an authentic anointing from God to be a businessman.
Here’s what he learned: That the anointing of a businessman wasn’t lower than the anointing of a pastor. Both are necessary in the Kingdom of God.
I love that.
A Formula For Mediocrity & Success
Let me tell you why many people live mediocre lives.
Because they put 80% of their attention, time, and energy on their weakness, and put 20% of their attention, time, and energy on developing their strengths.
If I take this approach, then I’ll enroll in Dancing lessons and Culinary Arts.
This is insane. Because no matter how much I study, I’ll never become a fantastic dancer or a world-class chef.
The formula for success is this:
First, forget your weakness. Delegate them. Outsource them.
And then focus 80% of your attention, time, and energy on developing your strengths. Be the very best in this one thing.
And put the last 20% in developing new strengths. (For me, it’s running business and creating passive income.)
Today, I focus almost all my time in writing and preaching.
And I’ve tasted great success because of this sharp focus.
A flashlight and a laser are both made of the same element: Light. But a laser is a thousand times more powerful than a flashlight because it’s focused light. A flashlight is pretty harmless, but a laser can cut through the thickest steel.
When a person is focused on one thing, he becomes powerful too.
I’m A Preacher For The Marketplace
After 30 years of preaching, I’ve become even more focused.
And you should be too!
Today, I just don’t just have an anointing to preach. That’s too general.
I’ve discovered that I have an anointing to preach to the Unchurched.
In other words, I have an anointing to communicate God’s love to outsiders. To people who aren’t religious. To people who don’t feel comfortable in church. To people who feel distant from God. To people who won’t go to prayer meetings.
One day, a woman came up to me and asked, “Bo, why don’t you preach more about doctrines? Why don’t you talk about the deeper spiritual truths?”
I smiled and said, “I love doctrines. There are wonderful priests who can explain them better than I do. Personally, I don’t think it’s my gift. I’m a layman, so I preach about the practical things of life. Like how to build a family, or how to handle money, or how to grow in your relationship with God as a lay person immersed in the world.
If you check my blog at www.BoSanchez.ph, you’ll read thousands of comments from my readers. Some of them say something like this: “I’m not a religious person, but I really like your articles.” Wow. When I read that, I know I’m hitting my gold. This is my anointing: To talk to those who aren’t religious.
I’m anointed to preach not in Church—in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, I’m anointed to preach in the Marketplace. (By the way, I consider our prayer meeting, The Feast, a part of the Marketplace. Because The Feast is totally focused on outsiders, not insiders. We welcome everyone. We welcome all seekers. We welcome unbelievers, non-Christians, addicts, adulterers, alcoholics, prostitutes, and believe it or not, even corrupt government officials. We welcome all those who feel they are far from God.)
This focusing on my life purpose has blessed me so much.
My prayer for you: May you find your anointing and give your whole life to your anointing. And be very happy.
May your dreams come true,
Bo Sanchez
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