Understanding and Defining the purpose of our life is the very first step to improve our effectiveness as a professional and a human being. But, often it is difficult for us to define the purpose and mission of our life. Would you like to have a tool which will help you to define it quite easily?

I have developed a tool called “VEDA Matrix” for this purpose. This tool is available in my book “If I were a Successful Organisation”.

I am sure you would love it…..

Reproducing the portion of the book talking about the VEDA Matrix…Happy Reading

………I call the technique as “VEDA Matrix”.

The term “VEDA” is a Sanskrit word meaning “Knowledge”.

I personally feel that the self-knowledge is the pre-requisite for any individual or organisation to define their mission of life. Without having a thorough self-assessment, it is difficult to generate sufficient knowledge about self. Wikipedia defines knowledge as “Familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something such as facts, information, descriptions or skills which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering or learning”. Going by the definition, if I want to have knowledge of myself, I need to have familiarity about myself, I need to be aware about me and I need to understand myself. To have these, I need to have a right perception about myself, I need to rediscover myself.

While I developed the VEDA matrix for defining the mission of an individual or an organisation, I stressed on the true knowledge about the individual or organisation. Once the knowledge about self is created or validated, we move forward to define VEDA in a different perspective to understand our mission.

I defined VEDA as an acronym for the following;

Value Creation through the individual/ organisation

Establishing the value for problem solving

Dependency for survival of the value

Aspiration of living in the value proposition

The sole reason for the existence of an individual or organisation in this world is to create a “VALUE”. If I cannot create a value for others, I would not be required in this world. Since I am an integral part of the whole creation, by default, I am endowed with a value. The problem is that we are unable to see or realise what value we carry. To see that value clearly, we need to have sufficient knowledge about ourselves.

If you are thinking bigger qualities like scientific discovery, profit earning for the organisation etc. as the value, you are mistaking to some extent. Even small attributes like smiling at others, listening to others with compassion, appreciating people for their contribution etc. are the bigger value components. We would discuss the concept of value in details in our subsequent chapters. But defining and understanding the value we create would be a significant exercise for understanding our mission.

Once I understand my value, I need to “ESTABLISH” them appropriately. I can establish my values by identifying the issues or problems that the human being or society is suffering. Establishing our value is just like “Right key to right lock”. Our values are like keys. I simply cannot open any lock by the key I have. If I try to open any lock by using my key, I would end up with frustration. I have to identify the right lock to use my key to open it.

Once we understand our values and establishing them appropriately, we need to look out for the “DEPENDANCY” for sustaining and delivering the value. There is always a belief system based on which the value is created and established.

I still remember my grandmother always saying, “Try to always help others. God will help you”.

She also taught me “rule of five” when I was a 7 years’ kid. She said, “there is always a five times return what you do”.

She continued explaining to me further, “If you do good to others, the good will be multiplied by five and given to you. On the other hand, if you do bad to others, it will be multiplied by five and you are liable to suffer the stronger bad things in life”.

This very small belief system has become a detrimental effect on each value I try to create. The moral and the belief system has to be protected and further strengthened in order to make the value delivery further stronger.

Apart from the moral and belief system as the background of your value creation, it is also equally important to understand the level of dependency on others while the value is delivered to others. There is always a dependency for any value to deliver after the creation of the value. The dependency can be on other value proposition or it can be on the medium of delivering the value. To be precise, we need to understand the dependency areas and work accordingly to ensure that the dependencies are managed effectively.

After understanding and putting all the plans for managing my dependencies, I need to ensure that I have sufficient “ASPIRATION” to live in the value proposition for rest of my life.

As deliberated earlier, we are existed in this world with certain value proposition. We, as human being need to convert that value proposition into a deliverable product or service for the benefit of the mankind. Therefore, our values are meant for a positive change in the community. When a positive change happens in a given community, we feel happy and aspire to do more and more. Therefore, aspiration is critical in marinating the same vigour to march further with holding the same value proposition.

If we put together the above four aspects of VEDA matrix, we would easily derive our mission.

Let’s do this exercise and understand the mission of our life…….

…To know more about the book, you may have it from Amazon, Flipkart or other stores…

or you may write me at biranchijena@hotmail.com

Awaiting your thoughts on this………