Do you ever feel like what you’re doing in your life doesn’t make a difference? Or you wonder what you’re meant to do with your life?
I feel that way regularly. In fact I was feeling that way this morning.
Why am I here?
What am I doing with my life?
Am I making a difference?
What is my purpose?
These questions don’t necessarily come up in everyday conversation. These questions lie dormant, waiting. They wake up when you lose your job, marriage, friend, if you get sick, someone dies or you have a crisis of faith.
The thing is, without those moments, we tend to live on autopilot.
We wake up,
get the kids ready for school,
go to work,
make dinner,
watch some TV,
go to bed and then
do it all over again the next day.
If you don’t wake up, years will go by and you’ll be in the same spot doing the same thing.
Sometimes it’s easier to ignore those questions. The answers are just too painful to look at. It’s painful to admit you are wasting your time, are living your life to make others happy or aren’t taking action towards your calling.
When I first started looking hard at my life and the way I wanted to live, it was because I felt this gnawing in my gut, an aching in my heart and spirit. Something was off. I didn’t have words for it. I just knew I had this feeling of dissatisfaction and an overarching feeling of sadness…
And I embarked on my quest to find and live my soul purpose (I’m not talking about career here peeps. I’m talking about what made my soul sing).
Here’s a mini version of what I did and what I have my clients do to find and live their soul purpose…
Step 1: Tune inward and listen to your intuition
It starts with slowing down.
That might sound a little boring, but it’s necessary. When you slow down you can hear your spirit. In the quiet ask… What do you want? How do you want to feel? What feels yummy to your heart and spirit? What lights you up?
I was living autopilot. I had the career, the partner, the house, the income and I was on a speedy trajectory to move up the management ladder. If anyone had asked me, I would have said I was happy and knew where I was going… that was until I had a miscarriage and lost my first baby. After that, I was lost for months. I felt like I had been taken by the shoulders and shaken so hard I couldn’t fit the pieces of my life back together. I looked at everything differently. Suddenly moving up the management ladder didn’t matter anymore. I wanted more.
I started slowing down, taking time to journal, pray, dance.
I started making decisions from what I felt called towards within instead of making my decisions based outside of myself… on what I thought others wanted.
My intuition made little sense to my mind, but it made sense to my spirit. It became easier to make decisions. When I was uncertain, I started listening.
Magic happened.
Tuning in to my intuition started me on the path of art, teaching and leading women’s circles and retreats. It got my artwork into the world. It helped me make my decision to marry my husband. It was what told me it was time for another baby, when to speak and when to be quiet.
Intuition is my direct access to Spirit.
As you slow down, you’ll get messages from intuition and know you’re supposed to…
Step 2: Take inspired action
Talk to that woman.
Call your Grandma.
Drink water.
Write the blogpost.
There are times you may be undecided, pulled in a couple different directions. You’ll spend your time and energy thinking, What am I supposed to do? You’ll think and think and not take any action because you are afraid you’ll make the wrong decision.
If you aren’t sure about something, you’ll never get clear in your head. You can weight the options all you want, but
True clarity comes from taking action.
When my son was younger I was debating whether to put him in the local school or homeschool him. I wanted to spend quality time together and felt like it would improve our relationship. I’d be able to teach him things he wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn in a class full of children. I homeschooled him the summer before kindergarden.
Those couple months I got clear I didn’t want to homeschool him. We butted heads and had the opposite of the peaceful experience I imagined. I could have sat in indecision between the two ideas weighing the options but I got clear by taking action. Same thing if you are deciding what to do with your life, your business niche or what project to focus on first.
This is really about trust. It isn’t all up to you to make the right decision. God/Spirit/Creator/Source is guiding you. Do you trust you’ll be taken care of? That you’ll be led? Even if you make a wrong decision, it can be morphed into something beautiful.
My mom died when I was 13. It was tragic and awful and I still miss my mom. My Dad remarried when I was 18 and I met my husband through my 2nd Mom. I would never have met Tony had my mom not passed when I was younger. Life morphed.
So you’ve tuned in to your intuition, are taking inspired action and BAM. You hit a wall. You start self sabbotage and come up with the reasons NOT to take action. This is when you need to learn how to…
Step 3: Start thinking differently (aka Mindset)
The truth is nothing stops you from doing what you want except the way you think about it. If you didn’t feel any fear, you’d ask for the sale, say yes to the date, tell investors about your dream, start the women’s circle, sign up for the course.
Imagine if you didn’t have that voice in your head telling you all the reasons NOT to do what you feel called towards.
When I decided I wanted to sell my art, I had a HUGE voice in my head telling me I wasn’t an artist. No one would want my artwork. I wasn’t classically trained. My work was too cartoonish. Galleries wouldn’t be interested…
You get the idea. I was brutal to myself. Luckily I had a mentor who helped me hijack that voice long enough to start taking action again. If I had stayed in that conversation, I wouldn’t have had the courage to go to the local gallery and ask about hanging my work.
Since then I have hung my work in galleries around the islands, been featured in solo shows, exhibits and won numerous awards for my artwork. I could have easily been stopped by not even setting foot in that first gallery.
You have to learn how to think differently. Instead of seeing what doesn’t work, it is about looking at the options. Instead of trying to control, it is about trusting spirit. Instead of seeing the lack, it is about seeing the abundance. I’m not just talking about positive thinking. I am talking about how to change the conversation in your head so you get out of your own way.
Today when I was thinking… what am I doing? Am I making a difference? I started moving through these steps. I tuned inwards and got the message to slow down. I nurtured myself all day. Then I felt my intuition nudge me to take inspired action and write you about my experience… and halfway thought this blog post, I almost decided to go to bed. After all, who would read it? Did it really matter? But instead I listened to the voice in my head that trusts my spirit and that initial intuitive nudge to write the post.
Do you ever feel like this?
That you’re called to something bigger?
That you want to find and live your soul purpose?
Comment below and share what you consider your soul purpose or if you don’t know, share what lights you up.
