SevenSenses

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Finding your purpose is all the rage now.  Ikigai Venn diagrams pop up on my social media feed at least two to three times per month, sometimes more. 

While I get it and in fact align to this search for purpose, it is most definitely mainstream pop culture to be focused on purposeful living.  I attended a retreat weekend recently and a Venn diagram with “sweet spot” at the center rather than ikigai was used.  The retreat was great and I gleaned a bit more insight into my own purpose which I will reflect on and turn into action.  But the fact that it’s such a popularized topic makes it hard for me to post this.  Nevertheless – here I go!

 When I was launching my life, the concept of purpose never even entered my mind.  Today as I am entering an undeniably different phase of my life, I do reflect on purpose – quite frequently.  My children are now starting their own independent lives and I watch them with both an academic and a deeply personal interest. They are decidedly focused on their choices and it is such a contrast to how little I intentionally chose much of anything in my younger years. 

For starters, I did not launch from a stable launchpad.  By the time I was four my parents slept in separate bedrooms, though there wasn’t constant fighting or anything – they simply coexisted.  By the time I was twelve the façade of stability in the family was faded and thin. Arguments were more open and the false stability of home was wobbly.  By the time I was fourteen my homelife was insanity, my parents consistently had irrational arguments, like children, with restraining orders and cops coming to the house on more than one occasion. I was largely alone too because, although I am from a family of five children, I was the youngest and all my syblings had already flown the cuckoo’s nest leaving me there alone at the height of crazy-town.  I wasn’t thinking about purpose back then at all. 

I met my husband when I was still twenty.  I turned twenty-one a month later and we were married a month after my twenty-third birthday.  When I write that down it sounds sooooo young, and it was.  While I wasn’t searching for purpose per se, in hindsight, I believe I was guided to it. And for that I am forever grateful.  I continue to believe that the meeting of my husband and me was guided by a higher power.  My purpose at that time, I suppose, was to create the stable home that I didn’t have – both for myself and for my children. 

Our children are all grown (or at least are legal adults) now and, while it is markedly different than my adult-life genesis, they are all beginning the creation of their separate lives.  And they, in their twenties are seeking  … purpose … WHAT?!  I will say that my initial reaction was purpose-schmurpose – Go get a job! Figure it out along the way! But they pushed back and as I see the directions each one is taking, I am intensely proud of them.  Their journeys will be filled with just as much joy and strife as a less purpose-driven path would provide, but the thing with pursuing purpose is that when the path gets shitty at least you can look at the reason you are doing what you’re  doing and find inspiration in that. 

Inspiration – inspirata – filled with breath – filled with spirit. 

Do not underestimate the healing, nurturing and creative properties of inspiration! I wrote a blog in June about living in inspiration rather than fear.  That blog was focused on pushing yourself to just do good things powered by inspiration rather than not doing good things out of fear.  It was about not limiting yourself.  I think this is one step further – this is do the crap to serve your purpose. A slight nuance but the former speaks to not missing something that you already know is right and good, the latter is more about becoming what you don’t even yet know is possible.  It’s about having faith that if you follow your purpose, you will be ready and open to more.  It’s about trusting that even if you haven’t architected the plan, that opportunities bigger or different than you even had the capacity to plan for will present to you. 

I know when I am serving my purpose because of the emotion it generates.  It’s a feeling of satisfaction that is also comforting – It’s love.  I am not unique, we all have this tool to tell us when we are on or off the track of our purpose.  If I were to take a stab at describing what my purpose is today, it would be something about helping people become empowered to live their lives fully; to see what’s possible.  Doing this is what generates those good, satisfying feelings in me; whether it is someone who I talk to and coach consistently, like my children, or simply someone who I happen to have the opportunity to encourage or praise or help them to see for themselves what they are capable of. Helping others to see how much they can be brings me real satisfaction.  But I didn’t think it could ever be a vocation for me because … what the heck do ya DO with that? It’s quite intangible. 

Today, I am, in fact, serving an organization that matches my purpose perfectly. I am doing the same things I did for other companies throughout my career, but those things are truly serving a purpose.  It has been so eye-opening to me what a difference that makes.  I do pretty much the same stuff and they come with the same challenges today as they did before.  But the motivation to charge through the challenges could not be more different.  Rather than becoming drained and sometimes despondent, I look at the purpose and new energy emerges.  Inspiration is fuel, it is a limitless supply of energy. Now, there is a true reason to push through to success, and it’s not just for fear of losing my job if I don’t. 

I am fortunate to now be earning money to support my family while serving my purpose.  One might think that this would be sufficient.  But the funny thing is that the more life that is breathed into me through this work, the more capacity I have for even more.  Living my purpose is actually creating more space. The other day my daughter was suggesting I do some activity that she thought would be good to reduce my stress levels when she paused and said – “but you don’t seem to be too stressed now”. 

She was right.