My 2 cents on purpose today - based on lessons
learned from
years of cultivating, evolving and living my purposeful
work...
and working with others to do the same.
Purpose and Synchronicity
When we first start living into our purpose, we
notice more "synchronicities" in our every day life - those seemingly
unrelated happenings that come together in an unplanned, yet meaningfully and
uniquely relateable way for us. They often seem like an uncanny answer to
something we have been thinking about. Beyond pure coincidence, they have
USEFUL meaning...and seem perfectly timely in supporting our path.
It can show up in all kinds of ways...like you might have been wondering how to do x and then suddenly you seemingly
randomly sit next to the expert of x in the plane. Most of us have experienced
that type of thing in different areas of our lives. As we experience living
into our purpose over time, those seeming serendipitous happenings become more
of a natural flow. Meaning is always there...and it feels as if we are being led to
the right people and right events and the right time. Happenings, then, along a purposeful path eventually
become more odd when they are not "synchronistic" than when they are. Separate synchronicities just blend into daily living.
I believe this is because inspired purpose acts as a
beacon around which purposeful people, events, and situations emerge - like a homing device. That's been the experience in my
own work over the past 17 years, and what I have observed, without exception,
with other purpose-centered folks. On the outside looking in, others may interpret it
as a lucky coincidence. But it is more than luck...it's staying present to your
path, open to possibilities, and doing what is yours to do - no more, no less which can change a lot. It is not about resting on laurels, or what worked at any given time in the past, but being present to the influences and invitations of the moment.
Purpose + creativity + serving a
greater good breeds aligned
purposefulness, which is holistically generative - for your
self, for others and for the whole. "Magic" synchronicities become more of the
norm and unfold purposefully. We still need to do the work, but there is a
strong intentionality underlying it. Overtime, as we become more seasoned in
"listening in" to what is ours to do, we can more quickly choose the
who, what and why of our daily work choices.
Sometime we hear what is ours to do loud and clear, but we
resist doing it. (I've had that happen a lot). Moving through that resistance is another story...and a post for
another time.
Finding, Cultivating and Living Your Creatively
Unique Purpose
Below are just a few of many components. The discovery process always work
best with whole-brain engagement, playfulness, body-centered practices, reflection, and other juicy stuff which I have written about a lot, but is
not the focus on this post. This is a much larger - and longer - process than a blog post can
begin to cover.
Here are 4 Reflection Points for now:
1. Discovering your aliveness. What gives you
juice, energy, engagement and meaning. Aliveness has many expressions: What's
fun for you? What energize you? What do you like to play at? Tinker with? Explore? What engages your heart? Your mind? Your body? Your
soul? What do you do because it's "so you"? How do you shine (or want
to shine)? What captivates your whole self, not because it is interesting
or cool to others, but because it is compelling to YOU? What triggers your
curiosity? What did you love doing, being, feeling at any point of your life or
now? What did you love doing, being, feeling at any point of your life or
now? What does "Alive" feel like for you? How do you get that
experience?
Included in purposeful aliveness is meaning. What
is meaningful for you? What moves you? What stirs you? What inspires you? What challenges in
the world call to you? How do you like to contribute? What is a vision you have for a better world? What roles would you like to play? (no need to limit to just one...old paradogm was being boxed into one role - in the emerging paradigm, you can play many roles). What are the needs you see out there that speak most loudly to you? How could the world use your help? Who are you most drawn to work with? For? How could that look? Dont limit it to existing channels or structures...play with creating your own. :-)
This is an ongoing process, not an event. It is not about sitting down one time
and listing it all just once. It is a deeper day-to-day reflection, and it changes
over time. Start with where you are and what you know...and see what emerges as you engage it on and ingoing basis.
2. Cultivating your aliveness and embodying it
over time. There are so many
way to embody it, more than we can imagine. One aspect of living into it
includes being conscious of to what you say YES to and to what you say NO. Once
you start engaging your aliveness, and extracting meaning in it, you further cultivate your purpose by saying YES and stepping up to ALL of that which it requires...and, as
significantly, saying NO to - and NOT doing - everything that is no longer
serving it. With every healthy, live-giving YES, there come a series of healthy
NOs.
Sometime the NOs are is the hardest part - to people, events, ideas, and
most often, old habits and ways of being. Committing can take a moment...but
living into it, embodying it, and choosing from it moment, by moment, day by
day is an ongoing process. It requires presence, consciousness, self awareness and breaking
old patterns...and cultivating new ones.
Sometimes it means embarking on trainings or events that have no seeming
direct relationship to your work (even though they eventually inform it). For example, I spent 5 years is a psycho-physical
healing, movement and bodywork training, CoreSomatics, and became a Master
Practitioner. I took it becuase I was deelpy curious about the wisdom of the body after a bodywork experience I had, and the training had a lot of energy for me - not knowing if or how I would even apply it. I don't have a hands-on healing practice, but what I learned
about the somatic intelligence in that training - and the ways I related it to creative process - deeply informed my work and
the design of all of my public and corporate workshops.
I bring movement and the body into everything I do, even when not a
body-centered program.
3. Creating from it.
Purpose always aligns self, others and the whole. I have
worked with hundreds of passionate entrepreneurs who have created their own
work in the world...and without exception, when each connected with his or her
purpose and sense of "calling", it was always generative, aligned
with serving some greater good. Serving something larger than just ourselves is
NATURALLY embedded in our purpose...in some way or other - often requiring us to expand our mental
framework to see that. Sharing something alive in ourselves seems to be an
inherent part of purpose.
People who create their own path
centered around their purpose discover it already has service built in.
It many, sometimes, require us to expand our belief systems of what service
means, and how it looks, not limited to conventional ideas about who serves and
contributes. It is not just about carrying what you know in
service, but also creating something that serves something larger than just you - and it does include you. (It is not about sacrficing who you are in service of others - that's not generative for the whole. It is about structuring your aliveness into an accessible purpose.
It can be anything - a service, product, a new
idea, a framework, a computer program, a business, a work of art, a way of
doing something, a design, a blog post... anything that is uniquely yours. There is a
sense of inner empowerment that comes from accessing your “creative
source” and creating from it, no matter how you do it. EVERYONE is creative and
everyone can access it.
4. Claiming your Inner Authority.
Noticing patterns
you have discovered as a result of
"working it"
gives you inner authority and ownership that's not
dependent on what others think. When we leave our socialized beliefs and enter
the juicy, messy territory of our inner resourcefulness, it can be scary. It
can be challenging to discover our true voice, the one that contains our
creatively unique purpose and expression, and weed out all of the other voices
with which we've been socialized.
There is no short cut to this.
It requires going under layers of accepted assumptions, and creating time to
listen to a voice inside of us we may not even know is there. Sometimes that
voice is loud and we get a clear vision or "aha" moment where we know
what we want to do and how, but often that voice starts out softly, and we have
to nurture it out. But it is always in there...waiting for us to engage with
it.
Once we learn how to hear it, we become
aware it's always communicating. Once we have engaged our work
for a while, we pay more attention, we can begin to notice patterns, honor our
own observances, see larger patterns at work that connect to our work, and
formulate "wisdom" form integrating knowledge, experience, creativity
and intuition in our unique ways. That is when we are less dependent on others
for evaluation, and become more centered in our own inner authority. We can
hear information from the inside out, and discern what resonates and what does
not. We question everything. We run things through our OWN "resonance
meter" to see how it feels. Does this feel right? Does it feel like it is
mine to do? It can take time to hear the subtleties of the language of
our “creative source” but once we learn its language, we begin to trust our
inner voice.
There is a type of freedom that
comes with engaging your own inner authority and crafting your
path...and it's not always easy. In fact, it usually comes with messiness,
seeming setbacks, resistances, fears and doubts....your own, and sometimes others around you. Cultivating your creatively
unique purposeful work often brings up the "shadow" as well as the
light. But being with it all, as it emerges, and making generative choices
along the way is that’s how that life-giving voice inside of us gets stronger.
Mistakes within purpose are simply iterations in the
emergence process. There is no
way around making mistakes, probably lots of them...and purpose allows you to
learn from them, to use them. They become awareness lessons, they strengthen
knowledge and resolve, and they become innovations to create something new and
different.
These are just a few reflections around purpose as
they came to me to share today, based on my own experiences and from coaching others who are engaging their purposeful work. Not everything may
resonate with you. You may even might disagree with some of it. My hope is not
to persuade you on an idea, but simply offer some food for thought or inspiration. As with everything, take
what resonates and leave the rest. :-)
Michelle James ©2013
