How to Find your Life Purpose

How to Find your Life Purpose

1. Eliminate everything unnecessary in your life. This may include gossip, mindless TV or other entertainment, clutter, even junk food and other bad habits. The appeal of these things is that they distract us from doing the hard work we need to do and asking the hard questions that we need to ask ourselves.

Tip: Do this little by little but make small changes that you make stick.

2. Discover Your Authentic Self. Most of us do not realize how many of our choices are made in an effort to please others. Sometimes this may mean we make choices in order to please one particular person and sometimes it may mean pleasing our entire culture as a whole. We may find ourselves doing things that diminish our happiness or sense of fulfillment in life, just in the pursuit of being “normal” or being accepted.

Tip: This doesn’t mean you have to immediately dump your friends or people who are important to you. Certain people may drift away on their own while other relationships will deepen. Deep down no one wants a relationship with someone who has repressed who they really are in order to please. In fact those are the very relationships that often go wrong and cause us intense pain when they do. We all do this in big ways and subtle ways, and the trick is simply realizing when we are doing it so that we can examine it and change.

3. Clear your Mind. Go for a walk, or a run, preferably in nature. Do yoga. Mediate. Or just sit and spend time your dog or cat. Find any activity that really works to clear your mind. Most of them take a little bit of practice so we can go beyond thinking about how to do them, to achieving clear minds through them.

Tip: The discovery you will need to make through this is that thoughts are overrated, and you can never think your way to your life purpose. The thoughts are not who you are, but rather the still space between those thoughts is the true you. You can be told this but it sound silly because it means nothing unless you experience it yourself. Ironically when we realize this and honor it and learn to make space, the answers we seek will come. After we become ok with not knowing, we can finally know.

4. Act. By now if you have gone into steps one through three and have done them thoroughly you will probably feel fulfilled and at peace. You no longer feel the NEED to have a life purpose. This is key because we can never find our calling when we are coming from a place of lack or needing to get somewhere or make something happen. You can even stop here if you like. Maybe your life purpose is to simply do nothing. Would you be ok with that? Or you may act and do wonderful things in this world.

Tip: Many of us have lives that are dynamic and ever changing in ways we could never have predicted. Finding your life purpose is not an end all be all. Continue to be open and have a clear mind and you’ll receive the extra bonus of naturally being able to embrace change as it comes.

Disclaimer: I wish it were as easy and straightforward as I have written out here. Unfortunately it’s usually messy and involves a lot of stalling and relapsing, and wild goose chasing. But that’s just because we are human. It’s ok. :)  

Learning to Live With Chaos

After I became a mom I became really interested in time management techniques out of necessity or maybe desperation. One tip I have heard over and over again is to not let the so called "urgent" things take up all your time so that you never get to what's really important. My son means everything to me and I realize that in order to be a happy person and therefore a good mom I need time for my art.  I was very lucky to be able to hire my parents to babysit so I could make beads since there is no multitasking when it comes to melting glass.

However, a massive chunk of my business and work time is spent on selling, shipping, photographing and all of that has to happen while I'm also watching my son. It's incredibly overwhelming and completely crazy making at times. I've learned to accept the fact that I can be a good mom and a good business owner only if I'm ok with being a TERRIBLE housekeeper. I actually love to clean and organize and I love living in a clean organized space. Tidying up my house seems like it needs to be an URGENT task when I'm overwhelmed but if I focused on it all the time I would never sell any beads. Then of course I would have to stop making them because I wouldn't be able to pay my parents for watching my kid while I make them.

So sometimes I have to just let my dishes pile up in the sink so that I can get my packages shipped with eBay's required shipping time. Sometimes when the art supplies strewn all over the table have already failed to entertain, I have to haul out a box of legos and helplessly watch them get spread out all over the floor to keep my three year old entertained while I answer messages.

Shortly after my son was born I got into paring down my possessions and the whole concept of minimalism and minimalist living fascinated me. I pared down my stuff a lot and though it helped somewhat it didn't keep dirty dishes from piling up in the sink.

Last year I got obsessed with The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. In the book the author says to focus on the things you really love and want to keep and to get rid of everything that does not "spark joy." I got rid of a TON of stuff, in fact it took over three trips to Goodwill with my car packed to get rid of it all. I don't miss any of it and I also learned how to fold and put away clothes without having my dresser be in the same chaotic state within a week. Though I would still really recommend the book I now realize that my obsession with it was due to the fact that I bought into a unrealistic fantasy.

Author Marie Kondo does not run a business from within her home that is currently undergoing renovations. She doesn't live with a pack rat husband and doesn't have a bratty toddler with daily irresistible impulses to the throw the few possessions that "spark joy" for her across the room. My expecting the same kind of perfect home that she so eloquently describes in her book was the same as when I was a little girl and wished I had the same natural blonde hair and proportions as my Barbie doll. My reality is slightly different.

My reality is accepting the possibility of experiencing the excruciating pain of stepping on a lego on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. My reality is having the beautiful things that "spark joy" occasionaly broken or having to pack them away in boxes unused and unloved until the day comes that my kids no longer need to hold my hand, snuggle multiple times a day and are also finally old enough to not break my crap.

Instead of wishing for that day to come sooner I choose to accept my beautiful chaotic mess of a life. I still get overwhelmed. Everyday I get overwhelmed. But I'm learning to take a deep breath and just let the mess and the chaos and all the urgent undone things be.