How to Find Your Purpose

Terra RamachandranBlogLeave a Comment

As a Life Coach, I love helping women in mid-life find and live their purpose.

šŸ˜ž Probably because I know how painful it is to live without one.

A true purpose, that is.

šŸ¤© That thing that lights you upā€¦gives you directionā€¦and makes your life feel meaningful and fulfilling.

How do you know youā€™re living your true purpose? I had to learn that one the hard way.

A true purpose gives you energy and passion; a false purpose, or lack of purpose, takes your energy and sucks you dry.

šŸ”„ Thatā€™s because your true purpose reflects your true self, so living it and doing the activities involved in bringing it to life makes you feel alive!

Even when youā€™re doing something that requires a lot of effort, thereā€™s an underlying sense of ease in it because your effort is aligned with your natural giftsā€¦your valuesā€¦and the way your soul wants to make a difference in the world.

šŸŠā€ā™€ļø Living without a purpose, or spending years on the wrong path, feels hard. Like youā€™re always swimming against the current instead of floating along with it.

Itā€™s the opposite of ease. Itā€™s exhausting, soul-sucking, and ultimately self-destroying if you let it go on long enough.

ā“ So how do you find your true purpose if youā€™ve lost your way?

As with most destinations, I think thereā€™s a few ways to get there, but I hope my story will give you a place to start.

You seeā€¦5 years ago, I was in a bad place.

I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, dealing with crippling panic and anxiety, and had no idea if Iā€™d ever come out of it. It was the darkest, most terrifying time of my life.

Today I can see that there were a few things that contributed to my rendezvous with rock bottom, but a big one was that I had spent my entire adult life either living without a clear purpose, or trying to shoehorn myself into one.

šŸ¤·ā€ā™€ļø I didnā€™t even know who I was anymore.

Today, thankfully, Iā€™m in a completely different place.

Months of working with 4 different healers (2 doctors, a therapist, and a coach), along with many of my own practices, eventually helped me recover.

1ļøāƒ£ But thereā€™s one thing on my journey that led me from just being ā€œhealedā€ to actually thriving and it started with a single question my counselor asked me:

šŸ‘‰ ā€œWhat do you like to do?ā€

Simple, right? No big deal.

Except I didnā€™t have an answer. I was completely blank.

I was so disconnected from the voice of my soul – the voice of my true self – that I couldnā€™t come up with a single thing I liked to do!

Can you relate?

šŸ˜® I mean, holy crap! Answering the question, ā€œwhat do you like to doā€, should be one of the easiest things in the world. But I had nothing.

Fortunately for me, my counselor thought of something. She reminded me that in a previous session I mentioned that I enjoy taking baths because I find them relaxing.

I know! Baths, right?!

But it was seriously the only thing we could come up with for something I liked to do.

So that was my assignment.

šŸ›€ I was supposed to take a bath whenever the notion hit me, instead of doing that thing we all do where we tell ourselves we canā€™t do the thing we want, because of all the things we have to do.

You know how it goesā€¦

ā€¦the dishwasher needs emptying, the dog needs to be walked, that one last email needs to be sent.

And hereā€™s the amazing thing:

Once I started saying yes to baths, other things started popping up that sounded good to my soul.

I started taking walksā€¦I let myself swing on the swings at the park even though Iā€™m an adult and I was sure I looked ridiculousā€¦I took napsā€¦wrote in my journalā€¦read silly booksā€¦and did some light exercise when it sounded good.

ā˜€ļø Any hit I got for something that would light me up, even a little bit!

And once I started saying yes to those things, I started getting bigger and better answers about what I should do.

Eventually, those breadcrumbs led me to a book by Dr. Martha Beck. And that led me to her Life Coach Certification program…which led to my businessā€¦which led me here, writing to you today.

None of this happened over night – itā€™s been 4 years since I first picked up that book – and Iā€™m still in the beginning stages of my business.

šŸ˜ But I have finally found something I love. Something that lights my soul on fire and makes me feel like Iā€™m doing exactly what Iā€™m meant to do in this world.

šŸ‘‰ I know my purpose: to help other women bring their bold dream to life.

If you read my post last week, you know I learned the hard way how easy it is to settle for less and how truly dangerous that is to your soul. So Iā€™m taking the lessons I learned to make sure other women donā€™t fall into the same trap.

ā­ļø My purpose is to help them get the claritycourageā€¦confidenceā€¦and structure they need to take their dream from something that lives in their heart to a reality that lives in the world.

Now hereā€™s the key point:

I couldnā€™t have gotten here without saying yes to those small things first.

šŸ”„ In my experience, your soul wonā€™t give you the big answers youā€™re looking for until it trusts that youā€™re going to say yes.

So you have to start saying yes to the small flashes of joy. Those things that hit you and make you think, ā€œoh, that sounds good!ā€

Most of us shut them down and think itā€™s no big deal. We minimize their importance.

šŸ‘‚ But your subconscious is listening. Your soul is listening.

Saying yes to the small things, is a yes to yourself! Itā€™s a yes to your voice and your worthiness and your desires.

Each yes takes you a little bit closer to the center of your soul where your purpose lives.

šŸŽ„And when you keep saying yes to the small things, and then the big things, eventually youā€™ll land on that *one thing* that makes your whole body light up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

Itā€™s the greatest feeling in the world and I believe everyone deserves to have it.

ā¤ļø We all want to feel like weā€™re doing something meaningfulā€¦like weā€™re living our lives on purposeā€¦and like weā€™re making a difference by using the best of who we are – our unique gifts, talents, and skills – to serve others.

If youā€™re still searching for that, I hope this map Iā€™ve laid out works as well for you as it did for me. But if it doesnā€™t, donā€™t get discouraged. There are many roads to that destination and keep faith that, as the Sufi poet, Rumi, saidā€¦

šŸ‘‰ ā€¦ā€œwhat youā€™re seeking is also seeking youā€.

If youā€™d like my personal help in finding and living your purpose, Iā€™d love to chat with you! Set up a free Meet & Greet call with me here ===> https://soulfireshift.com/coaching and letā€™s see if weā€™re a fit!

šŸ‘©ā€ā¤ļøā€šŸ‘© And if you want to be surrounded by other courageous, mission-driven women bringing their bold dream to life, then stay tuned for my new group, Bolder Women.

In this group, weā€™ll support each other by digging into the two sides of making a dream a reality:

1ļøāƒ£ The qualities that push a dream forward – like creativity, alignment, courage, and tenacity.

Andā€¦

2ļøāƒ£ The qualities that hold dreams back – like fear, self-doubt, over-thinking, and feelings of inadequacy.

If you dig the kind of introspectionā€¦conversationā€¦and ah-ha! moments sparked by authors and speakers like Brene Brown, Martha Beck, Liz Gilbert, and Glennon Doyle, this group will be right in your wheelhouse!

ā­ļø Follow my website and/or my Facebook posts @soulfireshift for more details and a launch date!

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