I SPENT A LONG TIME CONFUSED ABOUT MY PURPOSE. I assumed it was supposed to be something very clear and defined, very mainstream, widely recognized and most importantly, with predefined steps to follow. I was hunting for a guidebook hidden somewhere mysterious, authored by the unknown universe especially for me.
I realize now how I had a huge limiting belief wrapped around my idea of why I was alive. The boundary walls acted like a sheet over my head and whilst I was walking around like Casper the Ghost, I was scaring myself into thinking I was being left behind.
Over time I started to look elsewhere, beyond the ideas and concepts I had grown up with and the ideologies that had shaped my world, mainly from school and the idiot box. Over the course of a few years (okay, maybe more like 15 years), I began to put my feelers out and I unconsciously hunted people that operated outside of the normal sphere of everyday occupations and pathways.
“The chaos of disconnecting skills and hobbies that I had collected over many years began to look more like a list of prerequisites to a life mission.”
What had felt like dismay and hopelessness began to turn into hope and a new understanding of what “purpose” actually meant to me. The chaos of disconnecting skills and hobbies that I had collected over many years began to look more like a list of prerequisites to a life mission. The multiple jobs I held, random skills I had picked up and people I had crossed paths with began to fit together like a puzzle creates a picture. My preconceived chaos was taking order!
From the time since I was a fresh faced high school graduate until this very moment, I had been working towards something very clearly defined just for me. I just didn’t know it. The biggest bummer is that I wasted years of anxiety, torment and hopeless feelings thinking that I had no purpose. My life mission was always there, and I had been trying to put it into a predefined cookie cut-out. My gingerbread man was actually a three-armed alien with ten toes, but extremely tasty. My life mission was well underway a very long time ago when I started breathing! I realize now of course, that I was only operating the best way I knew how with the resources I had been given.
If I could jump into a time machine and visit my 14-year-old self I would tell her: that your destiny is already set. That there is no other option other than for you to live your perfect life mission. That you are already walking the path and following the steps. Most importantly, you do not need to worry yourself with all the details or the predefined labels that so many people get lost in. Your time is precious and it must be spent living, loving and discovering those things that make your heart sing. I would tell my younger self that all I have to focus on is doing the things I love, meeting the people I am drawn to, living only ever in the present moment and walking in gratitude and love. The rest will fall into place.
