I want to find my purpose. The problem is I don’t want to have to set out on this long journey to do it. Sound familiar?….. Be honest. We have had this conversation in our minds many times I am sure. When you really think about, discovering and living your Soul’s Purpose is easy when you think of your life devoid of purpose.
2 scenarios come to mind. The first is living a life where you are doing the things that you are passionate about and you do very well. In creating this kind of value, this makes life more fulfilling and more than likely allows you to experience life to the fullest. Less time at work, more time with family and friends doing fun things like hanging out and traveling. Sounds nice right?
Now let’s look at scenario 2. This is a life where you just try and do what’s expected. Work at the job you hate because it provides security. Don’t ever spend time with people you care about because your busy beating your head against the wall working at your secure job. All the while wondering what you are doing and why you are doing it. I just got the chills for a second because I just described my life 5 years ago. Brutal.
This is a concept that we call hard/easy. This concept discusses things that we can do now that are hard but later in life make things much easier on ourselves. A great example of this is working out and taking care of your body. Hard to go the gym today but makes life much easier later. The opposite of this is a situation that I have experienced as a father when you let your child slide on doing something that really you wished they wouldn’t. The problem is once you set the behavior, it is much harder to get your child to stop after you have given them the impression that the behavior was OK.
“When you identify your authentic desires and intentions, your soul purpose will be revealed. Dormant qualities will come to light, creativity will flourish, inspiration will illuminate your path, and a deep sense of well being will permeate your life.” http://turnupside.com/blog/?p=90
Loved the above quote. Who doesn’t get excited about bringing their best qualities out in the light? This is both scary and exciting. But isn’t the joy of touching lives worth it. What are you waiting for?
I’m curious about what you let your kid do. đŸ˜‰
I’m gonna be honest. It sounds great to be living your ideal life–believe me, it really does. I’m bombarded by the sentiment 20+ times a day at work. But getting my butt to the gym is NOT any easier. That quote really is great, but how do I train my mind to wake up at the alarm instead of snoozing my way out of a productive morning?!
I have the desire…so how do I act on it? I’m looking forward to your advice in future posts. ^_^
Jilly,
Let’s not worry about my kids at this point. đŸ™‚
Living your ideal life is doing it. Action, action, action.
If you have written down goals and then you don’t do anything about them, the question I would ask is, what are your specific action steps that you are taking to achieve each goal? What time frame are you giving yourself to accomplish each? Are you setting the right goals?
You mentioned desire and I believe that desire is a key ingredient for sure but it’s just the first step. Maybe we should look at your goals and see where the breakdown may be.
Honestly, I think the breakdown lies in the loftiness of the goals. I get excited about living my ideal life–being who I really want to be. And then I wake up and realize life is still the same and that it’s going to BE the same for a while.
I can set more reasonable goals, but they don’t have the same passion backing them as the more lofty ones do. So how do you keep that passion without loosing a realistic perspective? That’s actually something I’d really be interested to hear about–how to take this fantastic idea of Soul Purpose and make it practical.
Jill. Great points and you are certainly not the only one to experience this. I liken this to the person who decides that they are going to work out after not working out for years and then they go and run for an hour. When they are done they are so sore they think, if this is what it takes forget it.
My point is that it is critical to drill your lofty goals down into manageable segments that occur daily. That way you don’t have to feel like you are changing the world in one day. Also, the practice of non attachment is very helpful in this as well so that if you do have goals that later become obsolete you don’t get discouraged. I will be talking about goals in later posts for sure.