A life-cause is something that seizes your interest, focuses your talents, and reinforces your spirit of living. I’ve come up with this phrase in the course of working with a client in my Creative Conversation service, my 1to1 work where I use a person’s River from history to illuminate key points about a client’s River. My term “life-cause” comes from the client and I having examined the life and River of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan’s life-cause combined personal freedom and anti-totalinarianism. The combination emerges in his life during the 1940s and endures to his retirement from public life in the 1990s. Regardless of your political loyalties, an objective reading of Ronald Reagan River will leave you with a deep impression about his life-cause.

For me, the telling point about a life-cause is its rootedness in the phrases “on behalf of”, “in defense of,” and “in pursuit of.” Reagan devoted enormous energy and skill on behalf of, in defense of, and in pursuit of personal freedom and anti-totalinarianism.

These are the phrases of the life-cause. You know what mine is. Now, what’s yours?