Marcia Griffin has triumphed over a number of challenges including divorce and financial difficulties. Her business skills were recognised when she became the first Telstra Business Woman of the Year in her home state of Victoria, in Australia. She achieved this award by starting a business from zero and growing it into a business with multi-million dollar turnover and nearly 5000 sales consultants throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Her first book High Heeled Success documented this part of her life journey. Prior to growing this successful start-up business, Marcia had been a secondary school teacher in English, History and French. Following that, she was a Research Economist with the Australian Wool Corporation. In this role she travelled the world and also acquired further university degrees! Marcia’s qualifications are Bachelor of Arts, Diploma of Education, Bachelor of Commerce and MBA (preliminary).

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I was so inspired when I read Viktor Frankl’s book Mans Search for Meaning that I went on a mission to find a Franklian psychologist in Australia.

After a prolonged search I found 1 and only 1 in the whole country!

I was totally amazed by this, as we are a country, like most in the western world, plagued by anxiety, stress and depression with 1 in 5 people reportedly on some sort of anti-depressants.

How can this be in the lucky country?—and for anyone who has travelled the world it is easy to see how Australia has this title—amazing and free beaches,snow in the mountains,deserts that turn into wildflower parks at certain times,a welfare safety net,work opportunities for all those who want to and the list goes on.

Not only that, we seem to have no shortage of psychologists and psychiatrists to offer support.

Before I read this book I had been asking myself -what has gone wrong?

As a young traveller I had crossed overland from India to London,I travelled through countries and regions where people were incredibly poor-and I had also noticed how generous they were to us as travellers and how many had smiles on their faces.

Frankl’s book gave me so many deep insights into the really important drivers that enable us as human beings to live with joy and happiness.This has gone some way to explaining the depression epidemic that exists in many wealthy countries.

I was inspired to learn more and decided to do a short course in Logotherapy the therapy that Frankl based his psychiatry on.

I undertook a short course with Dr Paul Mc Quillan and as they say the rest is history!

However the challenge of getting the empowering message of Frankl has just begun for me.

I want to share these learnings and my life experiences to inspire others to lead lives that are more purposeful and joyful.

This blog is a starting point, as is our book-Finding New Meaning in Life,which is a contemporary version of Frankl’s thinking,a collaboration between a psychologist and a business person.

I noticed an interesting article in July Boss magazine suggesting that the corporate buzzword in Australia this year is around purpose.

The article proposed the idea that everyone has a sense of purpose, a reason for being, that motivates and informs them and that brands should have one also.

I like the idea of a company being on, and having a clear purpose-I do not believe that everyone has a sense of purpose.

I think if that was the case we would have less drug addiction,fewer crimes and greater mental fitness in the community.

In our book we talk about the keys to mental fitness and our belief,evidenced by Viktor Frankl, the renowned psychiatrist and my co-author, psychologist, Dr Mc Quillan, that having purpose and finding meaning in life is a key driver for all people.We agree with Viktor Frankl  that  finding meaning is the great desire of human kind.

We can see this in all sorts of ways-the people who find real meaning in the work they do,in the activities they take on-whether it is climbing mountains,playing bridge,painting or in bringing up their families.

We can see people on purpose and we can see how energised they are by that purpose.

I could see this very clearly when I was CEO of a direct selling company.The bigger the purpose of each sales person,the more fulfilled and successful they became.Their purpose was their real driver and it was different for every individual.No amount of external motivation was as effective as their own deep purpose/reason for working.

Think about the power of a company that has a clear purpose and whose people are aligned with that.

There is a commonly held idea that millennials want to associate with companies that have a purpose,previous generations have been focussed on more basic drivers such as doing a job,so they buy a house!

So companies today need to find those people who are aligned with their purpose,are driven, are mentally strong and have the integrity that enables sustainability in achieving that purpose.