A sound Ultimate Purpose – not an option!

By Yameenuddin Ahmed, 04 August 2010

Few years back, I was visiting UAE in connection to one of our workshops in Dubai. During my stay, my plan was to call our old Timelenders family members and invite them to refresh the workshop or to send someone from their family or friends. During this process, I called a lady who attended our workshop couple of years back… “Mr. Yameen! How are you? How is Mr. Suleman?” She immediately asked with voice full of warmth when I introduced myself. After greeting each other, I gave her the invitation to join us in our upcoming Strategic Time Management workshop. “Oh! Thank you Yameen Saheb for your invitation and I would love to attend but my circumstances will not allow me to do so”, I felt her voice was shuddering with pain and grief.

Upon feeling that pain in her voice, I started enquiring as to what happened to her that she cannot even come as a guest in our workshop and here comes another story. She said that her husband 60,  (suppose his name was Mr. Ahmed) is going through some post-traumatic stress disorder¹ (it can occur after a severe trauma like an assault, a life-threatening incident, an unexpected death of a loved one, war, or a natural disaster. Symptoms include difficulty concentrating, nightmares, emotional numbness, and/or flashbacks.) doubled with obsessive-compulsive disorder² (a person may experience repeated, recurring, unwanted thoughts that reflect unrealistic fears. These thoughts may lead people to perform compulsive behaviors or rituals like constantly washing their hands, turning light switches on and off or yelling and shouting at others as a way to try to relieve their anxiety or fear.)

Upon further enquiring, Mrs. Ahmed said that her husband was the CEO or MD of a multi-national company in UAE and he has served this company for around 14 years. She herself was an educationist and had a decent job in ministry of education in UAE, while as far as I remember, couple of their sons were settled somewhere in USA or Canada and couple of their children were at the last stages of formal education. So, the family was pretty established and there was no point of worry at that time; financially they were quite settled, children were doing fine, belong to a noble family, pretty good standing in the society and their own community, nice home in UAE, property in the home country – everything that a common man has in his wish list; the question remains! Then what went wrong that the person is going through this severe traumatic conditions?

She further exclaimed that few months back, one fine morning her husband prepared himself and went to his office as a few of the board members from headquarters of the company have arrived a night before for a very important meeting with Mr. Ahmed. During the meeting, the board members announced to my husband that the board has decided last month to replace him with a new CEO from Europe and since he served this company for more than a decade, they would respectfully would like to say good bye to him and wished him best of luck for his future endeavors. They handed over a beautifully written letter from the President of the group and took charge from my husband.

This incident was a shock of Mr. Ahmed’s life and from that day to date, he was never able to re-capture his intellectual capabilities. Upon further discussion with Mrs. Ahmed, I realized that Mr. Ahmed was infatuated with his job and position to an extent that he made his job one of the main purposes of life (actually to the level of ultimate purpose) and when a small adversity came his way, it completely shattered him.

According to Mrs. Ahmed, his trauma was now at the level where someone always has to be with him to keep an eye on his movements because he can do anything to harm himself or others. “Sometimes, we need to tie his hands with the bed so that he cannot move independently.” She further explained. “ Mr. Yameen! This is the reason why I cannot come to your workshop as I have left my job from ministry and now working as a teacher in a local school and in next couple of months, we’ll be moving back to our home country.

What I realized from this story is that having a clear ultimate purpose is not an option for us, but it is a must because your purpose is tested in two situations:

a. If somebody asks; an intellectual challenge

b. If faced by some adversity in life

Those who have attended our Strategic Visions workshop knows what ultimate purpose means, but for those who have not yet attended such a critical workshop, ultimate purpose means “why do I exist?” The Ultimate Purpose is the answer of this fundamental question.

So, from the whole story, I realized that if this question was asked to Mr. Ahmed, his answer most probably was “to serve this multinational company with hard work” or “to establish myself as the CEO of this multinational company”. Since he has developed his ultimate purpose from reality, he got himself into deep trouble as soon as reality changed. This is the most critical part of the whole visioning framework because if your answer is not coming from the right foundation, you are at a severe risk!

I hope and pray that we all should live our lives by giving it its true meaning and apart from being part of Timelenders, I would like everyone to taste the flavor of Timelenders visioning framework, which makes it easy to think in a sequence and build life on strong foundation.

I’ll be looking forward to your feedback on this article.

To your success