Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Blog

Times of “Quiet Desperation”?

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Henry David Thoreau described “the mass of men” as leading lives of quiet desperation. Today, that desperation rarely looks dramatic. It hides behind full calendars, professional competence, and the reassuring phrase “I’m fine” — when you’re not.

Few business people set out to build a life that feels out of order. In fact, high performers crave order and control because chaos threatens everything they’ve built. Instead, many quietly play a public game called sacrifice — telling themselves they’re noble for enduring a private life that no longer works.

You didn’t aim to become overextended, disconnected, or quietly dissatisfied. You aimed for a life of satisfaction, success, and stability, with adventure on your own terms. And you achieved much of it. That’s what makes the unease so perplexing. The very accomplishments you once hoped for become stepping stones to the next level. But eventually a deeper question emerges:

When is enough truly enough?

Outside: The Picture of Success

From the outside, your life likely appears highly successful. People depend on you, and you deliver. You lead teams, provide for a family, and carry responsibilities that few people fully grasp.

Others might describe you as driven, disciplined, steady, accomplished, even admirable. And they’re probably right. The problem isn’t that this picture is false. It’s that it’s incomplete.

External markers of success — income, influence, reputation — measure output, not alignment. They show what you are doing, not who you are. In fact, the more successful you become, the more you risk being reduced to your role. Over time, that role can begin to consume the person behind it.

You may even start believing that the role is you.

Inside: The Real Picture

Inside, the experience is quieter and harder to name.

You may not feel burned out or unhappy. You may not even feel stuck. You just feel … off. Less energized by things that once mattered. Less present with people you love. Less certain about where all this effort is leading.

Joy thins. Curiosity fades. Rest doesn’t fully restore. Moments that should feel meaningful pass by without landing.

You’re not collapsing. You’re continuing. But continuing is not the same as flourishing.

To cope, many high achievers minimize their own experience: “It’s a first-world problem. Who am I to complain?” So they normalize the dis-ease and call it adulthood, responsibility, or simply the price of success.

In reality, it’s often a sign that your private life has not kept pace with your public persona. Your roles have multiplied while reflection has declined. Your responsibilities have grown while your margin has shrunk. Your competence has expanded while your connection to life has quietly contracted.

That’s the quiet part of quiet desperation. It doesn’t shout. It’s a hum in the background of an otherwise productive life.

Next: Picture This …

Once you see the gap between your public and private lives, don’t assume the solution must be drastic. You don’t need to sell the business, blow up your life, or make impulsive decisions. That only creates a new set of problems.

The real shift begins with clarity, not chaos.

Specifically, search for where your life has become reactive instead of intentional. Start small. Reclaim one area of agency:

  • Protect one block of time not ruled by urgency
  • Reconnect with something that restores you
  • Call someone who restores you
  • Act on one postponed decision
  • Say no to something misaligned
  • Say yes to something meaningful

These steps won’t fix everything. They interrupt the drift and remind you that your life is still yours to shape.

In the On-Purpose framework, clarity about Purpose, Vision, Missions, and Values are tools for creating order out of chaos. When those strategic essentials are vague, life fills itself with whatever is loudest. When they’re clear, your choices begin organizing around what truly matters.

Don’t dismantle your life. Reclaim and reorder it.

Quiet desperation is not failure. It’s awareness. It’s the recognition that success alone is not enough and that you want coherence between who you are and what you do. That desire is not weakness. It is wisdom.

Don’t settle for looking successful while feeling like a phony. A life that works on the outside and makes sense on the inside is not just possible — it’s how you make your life make sense. 

Download my 3-Step Guide for Being On-Purpose®. It’s a simple way forward, so you can enjoy your success without selling out.

If You’re “Fine,” You Might Be in Trouble

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“Fine” is one of the most dangerous words in the high-performer vocabulary. This response sounds stable, positive, and mature. It sounds like you’ve got things under control.

But Fine is far too often code for I’m managing the damage. You’re functioning, but you’re not flourishing. You’re holding it together, but you’re losing yourself. And the longer you live in Fine, the more normal dysfunction starts to feel.

High performers rarely fall apart in dramatic ways. They don’t implode. They don’t quit. They don’t blow up their lives.

No, they’re used to a low-grade unease. This form of selling out sneaks up on them over time like a proverbial frog in the pot.

Being stretched and being tired is their new normal — just as putting themself last and, increasingly, disconnecting from their own reality. But deep down, they know living like this isn’t normal.

And when they’re asked “How are you doing?” they say, “Fine.”

Not because it’s true. Because it’s easier. The quiet truth is Fine is often the comfort word of people who are capable enough to keep going but no longer clear enough about why they’re going.

When you live in Fine, three things typically happen:

  • First, your outer life keeps performing. You meet deadlines. You make payroll. You deliver. You show up. You keep the plates spinning. To everyone else, you look steady, reliable, and successful. No one is worried about you because you’ve trained them not to be. You’re a duck calmly swimming across the lake but paddling like hell underneath.
  • Second, your inner life quietly shrinks. You don’t feel broken. But you don’t feel alive either. Joy thins. Curiosity fades. Presence slips. You’re driven. You start treating life like a job you’re good at rather than a calling you’re living into. You’re still impressive on the outside but smaller on the inside. Impostor syndrome has set in.
  • Third, you become increasingly tactical instead of strategic. Your days are spent managing what’s urgent rather than shaping what matters. You react more than you reflect. You address problems faster and faster to get through your checklist. You’re in a quick-fix mindset. You keep busy so you don’t have to slow down and actually reflect on your life. Like a shark, you need to keep moving forward for fear of dying.

That’s why Fine can be so deceptively dangerous. It keeps you just comfortable enough not to change. But not alive enough to thrive. Fine is a detour from being true to you.

Here’s a simple way to check yourself — not as a test, but as a mirror.

Outside: Do you look like you’re handling everything?
Inside: Do you feel like you’re carrying too much alone?

If that’s you, whether a little or a lot, try this. Make one small move this week that brings you back in sync with that small, still voice within you crying out to be heard instead of tamped down yet again.

Your one small move need not be dramatic. Admit that success is starting to cost more than it gives. Notice where your calendar is taking charge over your calling. Listen for when you reply Fine, and pause long enough to recognize your lack of candor with yourself. Figure out the source of Fine.

The point is this: Fine is a secret lie we say to ourselves. It’s a way to deflect the deeper inquiry for fear of the truth being revealed. This isn’t politeness. It’s emotional poison.

The antidote to Fine isn’t more effort. It’s confidence about why you exist, where you’re going, how you’re fulfilling your vision, and what you refuse to compromise. Purpose, Vision, Missions, and Values are the essential elements for leading yourself and everything else in your life.

When your Purpose is clear, Fine relaxes its grip. You start caring less about looking good and more about being aligned. When your Vision is clear, you stop drifting into what’s urgent and start moving toward what’s meaningful. When your Missions are clear, you reclaim your days with intention and meaning instead of being dragged through a packed schedule of obligations. When your Values are written out, you make decisions from conviction instead of pressure.

None of this requires perfection. It requires presence, awareness, and a decision to be on-purpose. It can be overwhelming. So don’t fix your whole life all at once. For now, set a cornerstone as a simple building block for bringing order to your very full, crowded, and capable life.

If you’re feeling stuck living in Fine, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you have insight. It also means you’re finally ready for something deeper. A life that is full and fulfilled. A life that works and makes sense. A life that succeeds without selling out. You’re maturing as an adult.

Get started being on-purpose today by downloading my 3-Step Guide for Being On-Purpose®. It’s a simple way forward, so you can relish in your success without selling out.

Overextended: The Moment Success Starts Turning Against You

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Part 3 of the Success Without Selling Series

There’s a moment most A-list, high performers don’t see coming. You’re still succeeding. Still producing. Still getting results. From the outside, nothing looks broken.

And yet something quietly shifts.

The work that once energized you begins to drain you. The life you built starts demanding more than it gives back. You wake up tired before the day even begins. You move faster, but feel slower inside. You’re doing good work — but you’re no longer certain it’s your work.

Businessman overwhelmed by stress and chaos, symbolizing overextension and burnout.

The work that once energized you begins to drain you. The life you built starts demanding more than it gives back. You wake up tired before the day even begins. You move faster, but feel slower inside. You’re doing good work, but you’re no longer certain it’s your work.

At first, you tell yourself this is just a season. Another sprint. Another quarter. Another push. But seasons come and go. Your overextension stays and grows increasingly more demanding.

When will your breaking point happen?

Here’s the paradox: you’re NOT overextended because you’re doing the wrong things. You’re overextended because you’ve been doing too many right things for too long — without a clear personal strategy for renewal, recovery, or recalibration. You’re selling out your self to your work, cause, or ministry.

That’s the subtle trap of success.

Early in your career, hustle served you well. Hard work built credibility. Responsiveness created opportunity. Reliability opened doors. You learned to say “yes,” to deliver, to perform, to show up.

And it worked.

But the habits that helped you rise can eventually become the habits that wear you down.

You become efficient.
Then efficient becomes relentless.
Then relentless becomes exhausting.

Before you realize it, your life is driven more by momentum and profit than by meaning and purpose.

This is where high performers get stuck — not in failure, but in success without order.

You’re not lost. You’re overloaded.
You’re not drifting. You’re stretched too thin.
You’re not lacking discipline. You’re lacking direction.

Even Jesus knew how to take a break. Most overextended people don’t need more effort. They think they need more rest. What they need is whole life strategy. Think of it as way to discharge in order to recharge.

In the On-Purpose way of thinking, overextension is usually a symptom of misalignment between four things:

Your Purpose — why you exist.
Your Vision — where you’re going.
Your Missions — how you spend your time.
Your Values — what truly matters.

When these are clear, your energy naturally flows in a meaningful direction. When they’re vague or crowded out by urgency, expediency and your calendar start running your life.

Here’s how overextension typically unfolds.

First, your outer life expands.
More responsibility. More influence. More opportunity. More expectations. More people depending on you. More doors opening because you’re capable. Success! You’ve arrived.

Then, your inner life contracts.
Less margin. Less silence. Less reflection. Less joy. Less presence. Less sense of who you are beyond your roles.

You’re still impressive on the outside — but smaller on the inside.

You begin to live tactically rather than strategically. Your days become a series of reactions: meetings, emails, fires, requests, decisions, deadlines. You move from task to task, but rarely step back to ask the deeper question:

Is this life I’m building actually the life I want to live?

Overextension isn’t cured by time management. It’s cured by knowing who you are deep down.

You don’t need a better calendar.
You need a more solid cornerstone to your existence.

In my work with the highly successful, I often see three quiet warning signs that success is starting to turn against them. Test yourself:

  1. Your energy is thinning.
    You’re not burned out yet — but you’re no longer lit up either.
  2. Your relationships are getting leftovers.
    You show up physically, but not fully.
  3. Your decisions are reactive.
    You’re solving today’s problems with quick fixes with less regard to shaping your tomorrows.

None of this means you’ve failed. It means you’ve outgrown your current way of living.

Overextension is not your enemy. It is your signal. It’s your life inviting you back to purpose. Back to order. Back to intention.

The way forward is not to do less randomly. It is to do more of the right things more intentionally. Start by clarifying your 2-word purpose — the simple statement of why you exist. When your purpose is clear, your decisions get simpler. You say “yes” with conviction and “no” with peace.

Then be strategic instead using hacks. Articulate your Vision, your Missions, and your Values so your time serves your life, not the other way around. Invest your remaining years instead of spending them.

Finally, make your declaration to live on-purpose rather than overextended or some other off-purpose detour.

You don’t need to quit your job.
You don’t need to dismantle your life.
You need to reorder it around who you truly are and want to become.

Overextension is not your destiny. It’s a chapter, not the story. You get to write the next chapter and the next chapter after that. Or, you can bookmark your life today and close the book on your life.

Download A 3-Step Guide for Being On-Purpose®. It’s a simple way forward so you can enjoy your success without selling out.

Success without Selling Out: The Hidden Cost of Being the Reliable One

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Summary: Being the Reliable One can quietly devolve into a selling-out condition called bitterness. Beware of thin-skinned, testy, tough-hearted people. They’re often former Reliable Ones who lost their way. The On-Purpose Approach shows Reliable Ones how to do their heart work and become tender-hearted and thick-skinned while being authentic to their high character traits of service and dependability. Download A 3-Step Guide for Being On-Purpose®: Success without Selling Out.

Being known as The Reliable One is a noble character quality and often a mark of success. That is, until it crosses into a mental pit called bitterness.

When you’re the one who always comes through, people don’t just appreciate you… they lean on you. They assume you can handle it. They turn to you more often, engage you more frequently, and ask you to get even more done. You relish the responsibility and recognition of your capability and contribution.

You’ve likely heard the expression, “If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.” Here’s a twist for the Reliable Ones: If you want to get something done right, ask the Reliable One.

A Problematic Pattern of the Reliable One

The Reliable One label is complimentary, uplifting, and affirming. But left unchecked a quiet and problematic pattern of selling out emerges.

You know the game. People turn to you to “just do one more thing.” And before long, you’re carrying what was never yours to carry. The danger isn’t that you’re weak. Your kryptonite is that you’re good-hearted, able, and strong.

Now you’re carrying the lion’s share of the load. Others have offloaded their work and responsibilities on you. They go home to their pleasures while you stay late, toiling. The more you step up, the more they step back.

This pattern regularly occurs:

  • Between siblings
  • Between business partners
  • Between spouses
  • Between co-workers
  • Between consultants and clients

Despite all the external accolades, on the inside you increasingly feel the weight. You brain never shuts off. Responsibility follows you everywhere. Your to-do list grows faster than you can check it off. Rest feels like a guilty luxury. Saying “no” feels like letting someone down. As the flood of needs keeps rising, you frantically patch the dam to keep everything from breaking.

Why You’re Susceptible

You are the Reliable One because of your deep desire to serve and deliver results without fanfare. This combination of humble productivity and predictability opens the door to being gradually used, even abused, by others.

It sneaks up on you until one day you ask the sell-out question: “How did I get here?”

You finally recognize that what brought you success is also what’s bringing you down. You feel foolish for being so naïve, for letting others take advantage of you. You’re exhausted, out of order, and fed up with others dumping their work on you while they merrily carry on with their lives while reaping the rewards of your diligence and effort.

And then the resentment begins.

They took advantage of you.
They rode on your back.
They took credit for your work.
They got the promotion.

Welcome to bitterness.

Bad News. Good News.

The bad news: you’re officially bitter.

Your need to feed your “success identity” as the one who gets stuff done right drained your well-being. Unbridled reliability may have built your “successful” career, business, or relationship—but it came at the price of actually enjoying your accomplishments.

Or worse, you hate that you’ve become a doormat for deadbeats.

There it is—the hidden cost of being a successful person with the superpower of reliability.

The good news: you can regain your dignity and your spark for life.

Having recognized this symptom of selling out, it’s time to own it. Don’t wallow in the blame game of what they did to you.

You did this to you. Swallow the bitter pill and let it pass through your system for what it is—psychological waste.

The Hidden Secret to Reclaiming Joy

Intellectually, you know your strength has become a weakness. But efforts to change your habits, environments, or relationships haven’t lasted.

In other words, you can change careers, spouses, bosses, and co-workers—but as a Reliable One, you’ll fall into the same selling-out pattern.

Take heart. Recovery isn’t about becoming less reliable, service-minded, or kind-hearted. Nor is it about doubling down—becoming an even more Reliable One to expose others’ deficiencies.

No. Don’t go there.

To turn bitter into better, focus on who you are—and who you are becoming. Learn to be the Reliable One for yourself. Put your remarkable superpower to work on making your own life make sense.

Help for Your Heart

Your outer work is merely a reflection of your inner work. When something is off in your outer life, the source of the problem is within.

Dig into who you are, where you want to go, how you’ll get there, and what truly matters. In deep-strategy terms, that’s your purpose, vision, missions, and values.

By discerning what matters most—and being strong enough to protect it—you are living On-Purpose.

Here’s help for your heart.

Download A 3-Step Guide for Being On-Purpose®: Success without Selling Out.
It’s a proven, simple way forward to reclaim your authentic self while still being the Reliable One who is happy and whole.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

When Success Starts to Feel Like Selling Out

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Man sitting at a cafe window overlooking a bustling city street with taxis and pedestrians.

What happens when from the outside, your life looks good; your work and you are highly respected; your calendar is full, your income is solid; you’re productive, reliable, and admired; and by most measures, you’re succeeding.

But something is off. “Selling out,” in this context, isn’t a matter of greed, moral failure, or succumbing to bribery. We’re not talking sinister motives. You’re a good, upstanding person.

Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing was suddenly broken. It’s just this persistent unsettling sense that something feels out of order in your approach to life. 

Selling out is something subtler and all too common. It is more like “How did I end up here?”

What “Selling Out” Really Means

Selling out isn’t about making money or achieving success. It’s about small compromises over time that eventually led to being in a place never intended. Accompanying this can be a forlorn sense of a lost dream or an out-of-character fear of rocking the boat. 

Selling out involves quietly exchanging something (or someone) that truly matters, such as your values, your standards, or your sense of self for external rewards like approval, status, or security. What’s fleeting is chosen over the enduring. 

It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in small, seemingly logical decisions over time with the compound effect catching up with you. It happens when you are:

•       Saying yes when your gut says no
•       Staying busy to avoid pondering deeper questions
•       Accepting work that pays your bills but drains your soul  
•       Engaging in entertainment while neglecting responsibilities
•       Convincing yourself “This is just how it is right now” 

From the outside, it plays as progress.
From the inside, it lands as distress.

What Selling Out Is Not

You can be successful, busy, and well compensated without selling out. Selling out is not lack of ambition or responsibility. It’s not forgoing your family or failing to get the job done.

Selling out only occurs when success comes at the expense of your identity and purpose. It happens when what you’re doing no longer reflects who you are or who you’re becoming. And it eats away at your spirit and you start disliking who you are becoming. 

The Quiet Warning Sign

The most reliable signal that you’re selling out isn’t guilt or stress. It’s numbness, a secret apathy that’s set in. You care, but you really don’t care. The emotional disconnect is real. You’ve fallen out of love.
You stop asking Is this still worth it? And you start asking Is this how I want to live the rest of my life?

You discount those questions with But I don’t really have a choice.
That’s when settling and accepting has become your unsettled way of life. 

Why High Performers Are So Vulnerable

The problem is that your success keeps rewarding the very behaviors that created your disorientating condition. Your outer, public persona demands growth and expansion, while your inner life can’t keep up and quietly shrinks for fear of exposure.

It isn’t failure. It is success at something that no longer fits. It is climbing the proverbial ladder of success, peering over the wall, and questioning, Is this what I’ve been working so hard to achieve all these years? In other words, the reality didn’t meet the anticipation. 

Reframing Success without Selling Out

Success is no longer what you can accumulate. It’s become not betraying who you are. In a word: authenticity. No more faking it, impostor syndrome, or playing an ill-fitted role. You’re stepping up to be the leader of your life. 

Here’s six authenticity anchors:
1.     Integrity over optics  
2.     Sustainability over expediency  
3.     Stewardship over indifference  
4.     Meaning over materialism
5.     Strategy over trial and error
6.     Simplicity over complexity

Why On-Purpose

Being On-Purpose happens when success is defined internally and expressed externally with intentionality. Selling out happens when success is predominantly defined externally.

Don’t step back. Don’t abandon ambition, making money, or career advancement. Far from it. Roar into the marketplace. However, step up. Broaden your definition of success so your inner life can comfortably sustain your outer life. Grow up by getting your life in order, on-purpose. 

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Download for Free:
A 3-Step Guide to Being On-Purpose: Success without Selling Out

2026: Year of Breakout

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Guest post by Dr. Jim Harris, Founder of The Kingdom Institute

“Breakthroughs are gradual innovations, while breakouts are explosive growth.”

Lately I’ve been reflecting on a very sad story… 

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to lunch with one of our best friends and a financial partner to TKI. His name is also Jim. 

As we often do, we joyfully talked about how Holy Spirit is so alive in us and around us. We shared uplifting and fun stories on how He guides and directs us into God’s supernatural grace and provision.

Then Jim shared this story. 

He had been attending a conservative denominational church with one of his daughters and his grandson so they could be well rooted in the fundamentals of faith. Jim had joined an adult’s men Bible study (“Sunday School”) class where most of the discussion was service level and not compelling or Spirit-led.

One Sunday as the class was discussing Holy Spirit in salvation, Jim carefully injected that the power of Holy Spirit is more than the beauty of salvation; that He is more than our “Get out of hell free card.” He gently stated that the gifts of Holy Spirit are indeed for today and are available to all. 

Then it happened. The men froze. Long silence. He could tell a “sacred denominational cow” had been kicked. After a few gentle pushbacks, the leader looked at one man in the class with his arms crossed and frowning. The leader asked, “What wrong?” 

The man loudly shouted, “I AM SO ANGRY, I CAN HARDLY STAND IT!”  

This poor man was so consumed with the doctrine that the gifts of Holy Spirit are not for today, that he was exceedingly upset. 

Frankly, I believed the same thing into my early 50’s, so I am NOT putting down this man at all. I feel sorry for him actually.  

If he only knew the grace and power and majesty of learning about, practicing and experiencing the true power of God already living inside his body, soul, and spirit, his earthly life and his eternal rewards would radically change! 

So I encourage you – If you doubt that the gifts of Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12) are not for today, or if you have a relative, friend or coworkers who are not sure, download a free copy of “Our Unfair Advantage” from our website and let it guide them in how to activate the 6 keys to being led by the Spirit of God. 

Once they learn how to better #BeLed, the Holy Spirit will then take over and walk them into more of the fullness of His presence. 

Want to learn more, watch Jim’s Kingdom Institute Podcast: 2026: Your Breakout Year

Dr. Jim and I have been colleagues and mutual cheerleaders for one another going back to the early 1990s when we met as members of the National Speakers Association. He’s one of the good guys.

Part 2: Preparing to Cast Your Vote in the US Presidential Election?

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Trump and Harris Presidential Election 2024. The meaning of life

My post last week provoked a number of readers, particularly this observation: “Therefore, when it comes to casting your vote for president, look beyond the rhetorical barbs, attack ads, and commercial sound bites designed to appeal to our secular selves. Harris unabashedly leans into a culture of death. Trump awkwardly leans into a culture of life.”

Readers were particularly curious about the terms “culture of death” and “culture of life.” I borrowed these phrases from watching The 1916 Project documentary. Gain context by watching the film for free on the X social media platform. I highly recommend it.

What is a culture of death?
This is a societal moral state whereby human life is deemed to be expendable, meaningless, and without innate purpose. This phenomenon challenges traditional values regarding life and morality and is exercised through abortion, euthanasia, and certain ideologies linked to eugenics and materialistic views. Therefore, putting others to death essentially without due process is justifiable in the situational eyes of the beholder and carries no legal, ethical, or personal consequence. The Holocaust is the ultimate example of this notion carried to its logical conclusion.

The Project 1916 documentary traces our current culture of death as rooted in a 1700s population control philosophy. Like frogs in the proverbial kettle, this once creeping ideology is accelerating into acceptance as a present-day societal norm and practice. Therefore, the convenient removal of an inconvenient tissue mass with a heartbeat from within a woman’s womb is of no consequences to the mind, body, or spirit.

On February 3, 1994, at the National Prayer Breakfast, Mother Teresa  addressed the societal and personal impact of abortion (13-minute mark): “But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because Jesus said, ‘If you receive a little child, you receive me.’ So, every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus — is the neglect of receiving Jesus. It is really a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”

According to a report on National Public Radio, in 2023, the number of abortions performed in the US was 1,026,690 — that’s an average of 2,813 terminations of life per day. This represents an increase in abortions since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. The world was horrified on 9/11 as 2,996 souls died in the terrorist attacks, as seen on television. Ending an inconvenient pregnancy in the privacy of a healthcare clinic receives little outcry except perhaps for the one soul being legally executed as the final solution.

What is a culture of life?
This is a moral state where all life is celebrated as sacred, and each person has innate worth, meaning, and purpose, often in spite of our limited ability to see or understand it. These traditional value are rooted in the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”

In 1776, the US Declaration of Independence put forth the following: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The concept of Life as a right is codified in the US Constitution, including the presumption of innocence — all are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, an abortion like any death sentence demands thoughtful adjudication and rare use as an exception versus the rule.

Yet, like the aforementioned frogs being slowly boiled in a pot, our national and international norms continue a slide into a culture of death, i.e., abortion on demand without due process of the unborn — the most innocent of all and most worthy of our protection — is murderously wrong.

From carrying a baby to carrying guilt
If you are a woman who terminated a pregnancy or a man who pushed a woman for one and you are suffering because of your decision, you have a paradoxical choice. Just because you made a decision for a “culture of death” once doesn’t mean your soul is forever committed to it. You can make a tough shift switch toward a culture of life where healing and wholeness await you.

By definition, restoration is not possible in the culture of death. Philosophically, your abortion carries “no consequences.” “So what’s the problem? Move on with your life,” which was the point of the termination of the inconvenient pregnancy in the first place.

In contrast, only within a culture of life is your complex imprisonment of emotions compassionately recognized as carrying hauntingly adverse consequences. As a result of grace, forgiveness, and acceptance, your deep hurt can be redeemed and your wellbeing restored.

“Elections have consequences.”
In January 2009, shortly after winning the presidency, former President Barack Obama uttered these three words that have become a political truism. The 2024 election will have consequences.

Because of the two-party system, US elections are largely binary events: VP Harris or former President Trump. “Either-or” choices create stark contrasts in what can otherwise be a complex web of competing thoughts. Hopefully, this death or life contrast of cultures offers guidance if you’re feeling lost in the moral trees, having lost sight of the forest fire burning around us.

On-Purpose, for example, uses an “on” light switch as a reminder we are either off- or on-purpose — in the dark or in the light. It’s a subtle nod to another binary choice: Life is either meaningful or meaningless. Naturally, with on-purpose, I unreservedly advocate the “life is meaningful” choice. And I uphold your free speech right to respectfully disagree by voting your conscience.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Preparing to Cast Your Vote in the US Presidential Election?

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Regardless of which side of the aisle you stand, the upcoming US presidential election carries profound economic, geopolitical, and cultural implications into the future. The contrast in candidates and their respective parties is stark because each advances not just policies but philosophical underpinnings. Sadly, presidential campaigns have degenerated into sophomoric personality and popularity contests in which juvenile staffs trade barbs repeated by unserious “journalists.” Rare is the reporting and debate of the respective contenders’ credos and strategies that comprise the person and how they will govern.

The Body, Mind, and Spirit Model of defining a human is widely accepted. The Body represents our physical composition. The Mind represents our mental and intellectual faculty. The Spirit represents our state of peace. If left alone, the Mind and Body function as secular realities. The Spirit uniquely contributes reverence into the framework. 

If only the Spirit had it that easy. Star Wars portrays an endless and epic battle between the dark and the light sides of “The Force.” Some might call the conflict one of evil versus good. In church terms, it is Satan rebelling against God. Regardless of your terminology, there is an underlying admission of some higher powers at work that defy our understanding or control. 

The interplay of the three elements largely determines our wellbeing as a person and a society. All three are constantly subject to decline and decay. Maintaining a healthy state of being takes constant vigilance and daily effort.

In TOUGH SHIFT, this clash is captured in Question 1 of 7, “Is life meaningful?” The answer is “Yes” or “No.” Each answer has practical implications:

  • No: In an absolutely meaningless world there is no reason to exist or even a whiff of purpose. Without a reason for being there is no cause and effect and no consequences for one’s actions. Here is a hopeless existence.
  • Yes: In an absolutely meaningful world there is reason, purpose, cause, hope, and actions have consequences.

The On-Purpose® Approach is based in the belief that life is meaningful. Your 2-word purpose puts words on the otherwise intangible Spirit. The Mind and Body are better equipped with a heightened and more holistic moral awareness for making decisions and taking actions.

Recently, my wife and I saw a new documentary, The 1916 Project.  Portrayed was the long arc of a Mind and Body secular philosophy from the 1700s alive today. As a result, our Spirit is compromised, clouded, and crowded out by situational ethics with a devastatingly polluting effect on our social, moral, and political perspectives. This normalization of the minimization of the Spirit has effectively led us into what the filmmakers call “a culture of death.”

Therefore, when it comes to casting your vote for president, look beyond the rhetorical barbs, attack ads, and commercial sound bites designed to appeal to our secular selves. Harris unabashedly leans into a culture of death. Trump awkwardly leans into a culture of life. 

Cast your ballot as your Spirit convicts and has prepared you to vote.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin