With great power comes great responsibility

We internet entrepreneurs are an incredibly powerful bunch. We’re reshaping how the world works with products like Facebook and Twitter and Google and Zynga and Gilt and Groupon and so many many others. Businesses that touch the lives of millions people on this planet every single day, and that changes how we communicate, socialize, buy stuff, and how we play.

But what do we use that power for?

Why do we even bother doing all of this?

Do we do it for our own personal material gain?

Just because it's fun and we can?

To prove ourselves to someone?

Or do we use our power in the the service of a higher purpose?

Do we use it to create meaning in our lives, to be of service to other people?

Why are you even on this planet at this time? What are you called to do or become?

If you look at most of the tech entrepreneur media, like Techcrunch, it seems like it’s all about the money - the fundings and profits and exits. The purpose of a business is to profit and exit, and the purpose of the entrepreneur is to exit and get filthy rich.

But why?

Just before New Year's, I got an email out of the blue from a very successful entrepreneur in the social gaming space, who told me that his company was very close to being acquired by someone for a large sum of money. And even though this was what he'd strived for his whole life, the thought of it actually made him feel ... nothing. Dead inside. Empty.

Turns out that for most people the money is not what we really want.

In the words of Henry David Thoreau:

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

We believe than once we get or achieve X, then we'll be happy. And THEN we can start looking for meaning and a higher purpose in life.

But what happens instead is that once we attain whatever X we dream of, we discover that it didn't bring us the feeling we hoped it would, and then we get really scared.

Why? Because our life strategy up to now turned out to be wrong, and now we don't have anything else to replace it. The only thing worse than being miserable is to be miserable and not have a strategy to get out of that unhappiness.

I think this whole way of thinking is completely wrong.

I think we need to START with our higher purpose.

Start by asking yourself what is the purpose of your life, why you are here on this earth at this point in time. I know that's a pretty big question. It's not a question where you just rattle off the answer.

But somewhere deep inside, buried under layers of parenting and socialization and schooling and training and media propaganda and all the other toxic crap that we're all exposed to ("other people's thinking"), you already know the answer.

In the words of Steve Jobs:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

I'm launching a movement of Fearless Entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs who want to start with their higher purpose and use their entrepreneurial zeal to pursue something that brings meaning to their lives and serves the greater good. Who operate from a state of presence, a higher level of consciousness. Who trust in their heart and intuition, as much as in their rational mind.

If this speaks to you, head on over to fearlessentrepreneurs.com and sign up to the mailing list there, as well as following on Twitter and liking on Facebook.