Setting My Intentions on Purpose
Nia – Purpose – a commitment to the collective vocation of building and developing and defending our community, its culture and history in order to regain our historical initiative and greatness as a people. The foundation of this principle encourages us to look within ourselves and set personal goals that are beneficial to the community.
The word Purpose is an adverb, defined as: to do something with intention. When we consider the reasons why we do things or why we have things we can usually find the intention. For example, to have money can mean many things. To have money means you can buy food, you can purchase the fancy handbags that are trending, dine at some of your favorite restaurants, even splurge on new cars and it means you can pay your bills. Sure, these things account for us being able to ensure our basic needs are met and, to some degree, may make you feel as if you are living your best life, but money without purpose is simply money spent. For years we have been told that money brings about happiness, money solves all our problems, but if you are like me you have grown enough to know that money only solves the problems that require money. This type of growth allows us to gain a better perspective about the word purpose and begin applying that approach to every aspect of our life, the more that we grow we discover that the more we do with purpose makes a lot more sense.
Finding purpose in our lives brings about direction. Taking the time to think about why we do the things we do can make our lives more meaningful. Imagine using your financial power to help build up your community. Imagine your money helping to build schools that teach Black history all year long, neighborhood community centers that house culturally appropriate services, hospitals that are headed by Black healthcare professionals, and Black owned banks that specialize in underwriting loans for the development of Black business. These are just a few ways to spend your money with intention.
The principal of Nia suggests that it is up to us to think about what matters the most in our communities. It is no one else’s responsibility to build up our communities but ourselves. We must make it our obligation to take a deeper look into the way that we spend our money. By moving with purpose not only to make money to provide for our families, but spend on things that matter the most. We need to invest in our communities in order to create a vision of greatness and success for our children and generations to come.
When thinking about purpose ask yourself:
Where do you see your future?
Where do you see your community in the next 3 years ?
When you describe your community to your grandchildren how would you want to describe it?
What is my purpose and how will it benefit my life now and years to come ?
