Living Life on Purpose

How do you know when you are fulfilling your life purpose? I was challenged by Monique MacDonald of Sacred Gifts fame, to answer that question but she wouldn’t let me reason my way through it. I had to “feel” my way to it. So for the last three weeks I’ve been concentrating on when I “feel” like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Here’s how it feels for me when I know I am “on purpose”:

• Relaxed
• Centered
• Engaged
• Curious
• Entertained
• Balanced
• Serene

When I’m on purpose the noise in my head settles down. I’m not distracted. I often amaze myself at what I can get done in a day or even an hour. My communication with my family, friends and co-workers is positive and healthily. I’m good-humoured and good-natured. The small sniggly things that often bother me don’t seem to matter anymore. It’s a nice place to be. I plan to get there more often. In fact I’m there right now ;-)

So now that I know what feeling on purpose is like, I have to begin to pay attention to the things I’m doing when I feel that way. Since most of my time is spent at work it seemed like the natural place to start observing myself. I work for a non-profit organization and the Christmas season is busy. Endless details to track, presentations to create, constant changes in plans and a whole host of other things out of my control. But, now that I’ve started to connect with myself I’m oddly calm and effective. When I pay attention to my role – using my skills and talents to promote this cause – stop judging people or predicting how things will turn out, I can turn to reflecting on my gifts and life becomes surprising easy. I then get to see the gifts in myself and others.

Most of the actual activities that help evoke these feelings of purpose are centered around transforming ideas, gathering information and working to include everyone’s point of view. Since my job is to be the communications officer I feel like I have the right job, although I don’t always feel like I’m in the right place. So to combat those negative aspects I’ve decided to lower my expectations. Rather than trying to decide if this is the perfect place, the only thing that is important is that I’m engaging in my purpose. I’m trying to let go of what I think I should be doing and just do. Just be. After all it’s really all up to me. Why torment myself with the idea of making mistakes, being unhappy and not satisfied? Isn’t it much better to show up, look for confirmation of my gifts and raise the energy to attract what I want?

And that’s exactly what is happening. I learned that three of my gifts are wisdom (see all the wisdom in this email), encouragement (hoping this email encourages you) and facilitation (showing you all that it really works). So I guess I’m getting it. Living life as I should and looking forward to it getting better.