Nov 18 2023 16 mins
Books mentioned: Deb Shapiro "Your body speaks your mind"
Website: https://positivelyrebellious.com/
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How will you know, and measure that you live your purpose? Sometimes we work hard towards something and it seems it's a moving target. Maybe you feel like living aligned with your purpose is lightyears away from you. Or maybe you are on your way, pushing yourself hard, because you feel the goal is still far away from you.
What if it is not? What if you can invite purpose into your life today?
I want to share several lenses thru which we can look at our life and our purpose. I hope that this perspective will help you reconnect with it and realize you can access more of the fulfillment today.
#1. Feelings:
If you are disconnected from your purpose, you will likely feel: empty, unfulfilled, disenchanted, anxious, depressed, demoralized, ungrounded, and without direction.
When you live your purpose, you more often experience feeling: devoted, fulfilled, purposeful, elevated, elated, excited, accomplished, at peace, and energized.
Yes you still experience negative emotions but overall, the scale goes towards the positive.
A note on anxiety... this feeling is a sign. You know the midnight anxiety? The anxiety that descends on you in meditation or in silence when you can't run away from your truth... it comes to you to redirect you. To wake you up.
Once you start moving towards more purposeful life you can still have anxiety but a different kind. Let's say you wanted to make art, beautiful things. Initially this midnight anxiety made you buy paints, and canvases and organize your time. Then another anxiety shows up: when you stand in front of the blank canvas wondering, can you pour the vision into the tangible thing? But that's a matter of skills and ... a story for another time.
#2 WASTED vs utilized.. time or potential. it's in the category of feelings but I wanted to mention it separately because it is big. So sad to have this feeling. Marianne Williamson said once: if you have a feeling that you are wasting your life it's because you are.
We can say that about jobs we stayed in too long that underutilized our potential. But what about relationships? Yes, multiple times I had a feeling I am wasting my time with this person. That person might be the best for someone else, but not for you. Maybe you are not going to create the magic together that is your destiny with someone else.
#3 Values. Living purposefully means you live aligned with your values not against them. if you are at a job that is asking you to violate your values - you lose inner peace.
Values mismatch in your marriage may end it. If your church disapproves your values, you will feel judged or you will leave. When I worked in an architect studio she had different aesthetic values than me and that partnership did not feel purposeful.
You know that you live connected to your purpose when you live aligned with your values and because of that you have inner peace.
#4 Energy
Do you spend yrou days on activities that drain your energy? Do you need to reenergize yourself with coffee, sugar, carbs, or other pleasures?
Do you feel like yrou body says no? Yet you push it? I don't want to sound like you can do energizing activities all day long, after all even when we connect to our purpose there are always those things that nobody likes. But the total balance of things.. does it leave you drained or energized?
The opposite of drain is the state of flow, total immersion in what you love. Experience of Timelessness.
Think about this: where do you want to
invest your energy? How do you want to be renewing your energy? How are you wasting it and how can you stop it?
When we choose to do things that energize us, we give our body a reason to live.
#5 Peak state vs today. Are you waiting for the sense of purpose when you reach the pinnacle of your achievement? Without seeing that as you are working towards it you already act on purpose? It happens when we suffer from self imposed negativity, pressure, stress, seeing the goal in the distance but never acknowledging when you have done today. The "never enough" attitude and huger for more is blinding you, while all the work you do day in and day out counts and is meaningful. You are already doing it. You are already connected to it.
Purpose can be build on 1 hour a day. If your day is filled with activities or jobs that are bridge jobs, if you find an hour a day to do something meaningful - it is going to fuel your energy and a sense of meaning.
#6 Personal growth . No matter what is the external goal or a dream, or how you imagine living your purpose, underneath all of that is our spiritual journey. Our goals, and purpose requires that we also develop ourselves, our power, our voice, our self love. Nobody can avoid it and that's why we say that the Soul is here to "learn the lessons". Even when yu look at the gates in the Human Design each of them comes with shadow and a potential to access the gift and light in that shadow. When you are an artist you make art but the process of making art also makes you , develops you.
Which of these lenses resonates with you? Is one of them more meaningful that the other?