As a child, I learned that it is important to finish the food on my plate. The way I learned it was simple, I would receive a dessert as a reward at the end.

Whatever my mother had as a focus for her teaching, it was lost in the logic I understood as a child.

Nowadays I rarely eat dessert and find myself regularly struggling in the restaurant wondering why I ate more than I desired eating.

A well-meant teaching is backfiring. It has become a habit based on a belief.

The belief became the objective.

Fulfilling the objective, however, does not create a sense of satisfaction. That’s because the objective takes too much of my energy and doesn’t fulfill the purpose of eating. After a while, continuing to eat feels like too much. That’s when additional bytes become an obligation and a burden.

My body keeps me aware of the purpose of eating, it wants something nourishing but not more, and it will take pleasure in good food and company.

As a consequence of this disconnect between objective and purpose, there is nothing left to celebrate when reaching the objective.

We see this happen every day.

For most of us, a business is a tool to achieve what we believe in. When the belief is focused on scale or profit, the purpose might have got lost.

HT to my thinking pal Jaime. Find him at Jaime Arredondo or Bold and Open