Your Purpose and Your Why

What is my purpose!? I routinely hear this question when a client comes to see me for a session. Having this question is not unusual nor is it a bad thing; I think we all want to know why we are here on this planet. Unfortunately, we get caught up in the normal societal pathways and end up an old person without any true purpose. Most of have dreams or ideas of grandeur for our life but find ourselves never pursuing those dreams and ideas. There are a lot of reasons why people give up on their dreams, but mostly it is based in the fear of the unknown and the possibility of failure. However, we truly remember those people, in our history, that pave a new path, took a chance, and changed the world as we know it. Very rarely are history books filled with names of people who just followed what society has taught them about success.  I have heard it said that the graveyard is the richest place on earth, because that is where all the dreams go to die, along with us, and this rings very true in my mind.

I was working with a client the other day, and the subject of their purpose was the primary subject of the session. They finally asked me, out of frustration, so what is your purpose then? I replied with, “I am currently serving my purpose”. Of course, I am now living out my purpose, but even that statement did not give me the solidity or conviction that I needed deep in my soul. It finally clicked deep within me when I quoted something from Les Brown; I was homing in on the biggest part of purpose being the WHY for what we want to accomplish. I am sure that others have said the same thing, but Les just has a great way of saying it for me: “Your job is the WHY, the HOW is none of your business”! As soon as that came out of my mouth, I finally figured out my WHY! My WHY seems so simple yet is extremely empowering to me my practice. What brings me the greatest joy is when a client finally sees the light, the light bulbs get turned on, they become entirely enlightened, and their entire life changes. The most interesting part of this client enlightenment is that none of what I do has to be fancy of elaborate. What I realized is that sometimes it simply takes one word, one different way of looking at something, one phrase to change someone’s life! Changing someone’s life and seeing that wonderful and instantaneous change in your client, is worth any of the time or modalities that I engage in for my clients. True to the words of Les Brown, the how is unfolding without me having to put much energy into that. Don’t get me wrong, the work still must be done, and you must be engaged, but your WHY must be the driving force!

So, let me ask you – what is your WHY? What gets you up every day to engage in your life each day? Really put some thought into that and see if you are truly doing what makes you happy. If not, it just might be time to get started — Just like the butterfly that emerges from the cocoon, you must get out of your comfort zone at some point to become that beautiful butterfly!