Your Life Purpose: The Answers ARE In You
I won’t go into ALL the possible reasons that I know of for why people get close but sort of shut down or get blocked near the end when we’re working on finding their life’s purpose. But I do want to address what I know was my own personal challenge. And that’s self-esteem and the self-honoring that it takes to get there.
I’m not a therapist or a licensed counselor or anything like that, but I have gone through my own fair share of… we’ll, let’s just call it the unpleasant side of life. And I know that whenever your self-esteem gets zonked either because of some crappy circumstance that has made you doubt your self-worth – like being fired from a job, being abused, or being deeply hurt in some way – it can create barriers to discovering what you’re meant to do with your life.
Frankly, it’s one thing to desire to know, it’s quite another to actually pull it together and really own it. Honoring your gifts and your uniqueness requires that you love yourself at least a little, right? It means that you have to acknowledge the possibility that there’s something special about you. When your self-esteem has been hammered down, it’s hard to be that nice to yourself.
Because of my own past experiences, I struggled with the process of pulling the covers off my authentic self. I mean it sounded cool that there were possibly some things about me that were worthy of being called “brilliant” or “genius” or whatever. I wanted to BELIEVE that I was special – it was all very logical and my intuition kept telling me that this was true. But for a long period in my life I didn’t feel special at all. Thank goodness I’m a persistent person. And yes, that means I can be stubborn sometimes! But it’s that stubbornness that kept me pushing and nudging at it, and, finally, what was blocking me fell away. And the really great thing about persisting is that not only did I get there, but now I help others to get there too!
Have faith. Your answers ARE in there inside you. I read something about this once in one of my favorite career exploration books, Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Laurence Boldt. He wrote, “You may not think so, but you really do know what you are here to do. Many of you are carrying around a great secret that you have yet to let yourself know.”
I think the key here is to “let yourself.” The secret to getting there is to give yourself permission to know. If you’re stuck, have faith that the answers are in there. Besides, your enthusiasm for wanting to know your life’s purpose in the first place was a sign… the answers really ARE in you.
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Angela Loëb helps people bring who they really are to what they do in life. More at http://angelaloeb.com
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