Getting Started

You have an idea of what you want to do with your life but you can’t quit your job. You still have to take care of your family and responsibilities. So how do you get started on something new? How do you find the time?

First you are going to have to find the fire in your soul to help motivate you during the process, because it might not be that easy. An interesting idea is not the same as a deep desire to do something that inspires you and those around you. I recommend you keep things as simple as possible. Don’t try to do too many things at once.

When you feel true inspiration, then you have to map out some smaller steps to get to where you want to go. ‘I want to become a screenplay writer’ is too complicated. Sure you use that vision to motivate you, but a screenplay writer writes. So you need a screenplay idea and you need a computer. Then you look realistically at your day and find a time when you can carve out an hour. At first you might just want to write down thoughts and ideas. Eventually these will take form. Characters can emerge and inspire you. Personally, I find my best time early in the morning before anyone else is up. The hour is quiet and all mine to do what I want. But yours might be late at night after your family is asleep.

As you are writing your ideas down and mapping out your plan, you will find distractions. Don’t let them take over your dream. This process will take a deep commitment to see it through. Commit for the long haul; a year to five years to make something happen. If you have an urgent personality, this seems like a lifetime, but you’re going to enjoy the process, so don’t be too afraid of a long commitment.

Sometimes it helps when you are overwhelmed with the thoughts of launching into some new project or Purpose in Life to pretend you are helping someone else. If you were your best friend and she was in this confused place, what would you tell her about how to begin? Go to school? Read a book? Learn a new skill. Map it out. What would it take her to get started? How would you help her?

Don’t put it off. Sometimes we put caveats in our own way. When I finish this or that I will begin to Live on Purpose. I know my Purpose is such and such, but I can’t go there until this or that is complete. When I have my bills paid off, when I have my life organized, when my kids are grown up or in school. This is fear. Acknowledge that this thing you are about to embark on is scary to you. That is absolutely okay. Don’t think you have to deal with every fear you have in this moment of getting started. It’s not too scary to write down and idea or two. It’s not too scary to read a book to learn a new skill. It’s not too scary to sit at the computer and write a paragraph or two.

Getting started is only difficult when we do not break it down into small enough chunks. If you have broken it into chunks and it is still too scary, break it down even further. Pick up a pencil and paper, move the pen across the paper to create a letter, than a word, then a sentence. This might seem too basic, but the fact of the matter is, when you are in fear and can’t get started, you are not in the moment. You are in the future or the past. To create you must stay present.

Set the big goal. Write it down. Map out the steps one by one as if you are helping your best friend prepare for her life. Commit. Then take the steps and break it down into smaller, mindful chunks and do them one by one, in each moment you can find to do them.

Do not overlap too many goals, you’ll spin out. Do one in the morning and one in the evening and one on weekends. Or do one this month and one next month. Multi-tasking means doing too many things at once and not doing any of them well. Stay present with each task. When you see and feel the connectedness of this task with another task or goal, acknowledge it, make a quick note of it, and then return to the task at hand.

Don’t forget to enjoy the process! This is very important. If you allow this to become drudgery, another thing you must do; you are missing the point. Stop. Regroup. Remember this is your inspiration. This is your Purpose. Be grateful, be mindful and have fun!

Step by step, moment by moment, you will find yourself creating a Life on Purpose.

Life of Discipline

Practice and patience are required to master anything, even your Purpose.

So you find the thing you were meant to do. You find your Purpose; your true vocation, your dharma – the work of your soul. You are excited and motivated. But over time, you slack off, you procrastinate, you do not do the thing you love and want to do.

This happens to most of us, because even our Purpose in life requires discipline. We must practice our purpose. We must exercise and train our minds and actions to create habits that are in alignment with what we know we want in life. Just because we find our purpose, does not mean it will be easy. We still must rise early, work hard and extend ourselves. But it is so worth our effort.

Often what gets in our way is doubt and fear. Will this work? Will it pay off? Will it help others? Am I good enough? Can I succeed? What if I cannot?

Discipline comes in when our doubts and fears become too loud in our minds. Discipline of mind, allows us to push the doubts on through our minds and return to the feelings and thoughts of Purpose. “I must do my souls work and do it like I mean it.”

Without discipline of mind, we spend too much time wrestling with fear and doubt. With discipline of mind, we learn to let the doubts and fears move through, not fighting them, but releasing them to leave our being. If we fight them, we have invited them to stay for the struggle. Discipline is required to release them and return to task at hand, the task of Living on Purpose.

When doubts and fears come uninvited through the front door of your mind, do not engage with them. Do not ask them why they have come. Do not berate yourself for allowing them to enter, for not barring the door, for unexpectantly finding them in your mind. Do not worry that they have come back again and again. Just calmly and firmly walk them though to the back door and send them on their way.

In order to maintain your focus and a Life on Purpose you must use discipline of mind. Discipline of mind comes with mindful practice. 

Join in service

Our true Purpose in Life will always include an aspect of service to others, to the planet and to the life that we share. When we feel the desire to be and do something, we must look deeply into our motivation. Acquiring things will never satisfy us, but deeds that give back can. When we look into what actions, tasks and jobs we chose to perform in life, we should look for places where we can help others.

Many will say, ‘my job doesn’t help anyone, including me. It is just a paycheck.’ But I believe even in the most mundane of tasks, even in a job we may hate, we can find a way to serve others or the planet. We so often want to change the circumstances or leave the situation entirely. But when we do this, we can set ourselves on a path of continual change without peace. We must be willing to do the thing we do not want to do.

If we can accept the present for what it is, we can find not only the best way to change it, but we can also see how we can serve here and now. When we see and serve in the present, we change the whole dynamic of the situation; which will naturally change our experience and that of those around us.

We must also recognize and accept our connection to each other, and how much we need each other to flourish. As we commit to serve each other, we see our Purpose come into focus. ‘How can I help my family, my neighborhood, and my community?’ ‘Will this thing I want to pursue serve others too?’ ‘Will my actions this day, this moment, offer kindness or self-righteousness?’ Remember, it is better to be kind than to be right.

We can not change the past, and the future is yet to be, but in this moment we can change ourselves. If each of us will chose in this moment, to be of service to each other and to the planet, we can find flashes of happiness and we can see our personal experiences begin to shift. Over time our whole world can transform before our very eyes.

Indecision

Which job should I take? Which career path should I follow? Which life choice should I make?

We often get stuck in indecision. There are two things about decisions, even big life decisions:

1. There are no wrong decisions. There isn’t some grand and detailed plan, that if we take the wrong path, we will screw up our whole life. There isn’t a place where it is all written down for us to find and follow. There is only what we feel and what we learn along the way. If our intentions are honest, compassionate, and open to learning more, we cannot go wrong. This does not mean that we will not feel pain, or suffer loss. Life flows in and out of pain and loss, bliss and suffering. But nothing is permanent. We must accept that, whichever path we take, life will give us portions of each. Proceed mindfully. If we are present in each moment, we are better able to make course corrections along the way.

2. Though there are no wrong decisions, there are those that may optimize our experience in this life. In order to make a good decision for me now, I have to be present in the moment to recognize any clues that my inner being might be telling me about which path to take. We must not blindly walk through our life as if on auto-pilot, but come to the present and take the power back into ourselves.
If we are present, and feel no clear direction, we should stay with it for a little while. But we must not allow indecision to take root in our life. Make a choice – a mindful, thoughtful choice forward. Pick. We set our intentions to be honest, compassionate and open to learning and growing more each day. Then we step forward into life.

The Crooked Path

When we are young we ask ourselves what will I be when I grow up. When we are in high school, we fret over which college to attend, which courses to take, which degree to pursue. When we graduate from college, we search for which job we should accept or can get. As we age, we wonder if we made the right choices, if a different choice wouldn’t have led to a happier, more successful or more satisfied life. We change jobs. Sometimes we go back to school and learn new skills and change the course of our lives. Sometimes we stay put, resigned. This is our fate.

But we can see it differently. We can stop and engage now.

There are those who find their heart’s work when they are young and pursue the path that feeds their soul all their life. Occasionally we meet these people and are amazed at how right their lives fit with who they are. But most of our paths have more starts and stops, more curves in the road, more detours to navigate, more challenges to overcome. This does not mean that we have not Lived on Purpose. For us, we simply have to look deeper inside, and distill the complexity of our path to a simpler formula.

When have I felt peace? When have I understood bliss? At what moment in my life have I encountered passion for a task or for an idea? When have I felt the joy of offering something of myself and been proud of the result? Look for these clues in your life. You may find that you have had many of them.

As a mother, I can find more than a thousand moments of a Life on Purpose. As a friend, partner, worker, daughter, community member, I can find many more. As a student of life, happiness and peace, I have found countless more moments. If I string them all together, I see the purpose in my life more clearly.

Sometimes we can only see how what we do for a living is or is not on Purpose. When we look deeper into who we are, and to whom we belong we can find another story. If we give of ourselves and be present with our families, our friends, our co-workers, and our communities, we will find that a Live of Purpose is ours every moment of every day.

The Journey

Living on Purpose is a journey not a destination. We don’t find our “thing” and then do it happily for the rest of our lives. Well, most don’t, especially today. We change, life changes, everything changes. We can’t fight it, not happily. We can only recognize it and roll with it. Jobs come and go, vocations change, and we change our minds and our hearts regarding those jobs and vocations. To Live on Purpose is to accept, embrace and enjoy the changes. To Live on Purpose is to be present enough in each step of life to see, feel and appreciate where you are now. If we are present and following our right path, we will have moments of blissful purpose, times when our inner being flows out effortlessly creating something beautiful. We will also have moments of wandering or searching. In these moments, we must let go. If we stay present, avoid going into the past or predicting the future, our discomfort will ease. If we stay mindful and relaxed, we can remember that things change and a Life of Purpose is a journey not a destination.

Mindful Living

Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that “being on the “right path” has to do with the very concrete ways in which you live your life in every moment.” To Live on Purpose is to live in the moment and to intentionally walk each step mindfully. We must be awake, aware and deliberate; not a sleep walker, blindly going through the motions.

If there are areas in my life that I am not pleased with, things I want to change, I cannot ignore them and hope they will change or go away. I have to embrace them and accept myself. In each moment I can deliberately make a different choice. Unaware motion leads to more of the same. Deliberate choices give me the power to change my life.

If we chose to Live on Purpose, we chose to live mindfully and powerfully in each moment.

* The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh, HarperOne 2007

Reset to Purpose

I ask myself each morning, “What does living on purpose mean to me?” And each morning I find another facet to a life on purpose.

I often feel that my week takes on an intensity of work, responsibility and busyness that needs to be reset on weekends. There is a reset that nature gives that is unlike any other. Being outdoors and moving your body through elements in nature – air, earth, and water, can reset your cells in a way nothing else can. In my part of the world it is cold and windy this January, so I have to bundle up to be outdoors with any comfort. But even bundled, the reset occurs. For me, I have found that any type of outdoor labor that connects me to nature - such as stacking wood for the fire, hauling water for the animals, digging dirt or moving mulch to protect the spring bulbs, trimming tress, shoveling snow, all reset my body in mysterious and powerful ways. If you have children, encourage them to bundle up and go outside to breathe and to play. Take a walk or run or go sledding. Just be outdoors.

When you reset your body and connect to nature in these ways, you can find yourself rejuvenated, your mind cleared and your sense of purpose renewed. You live on planet Earth. Connect to her. When you do, your Life and Purpose can come into focus.

Your Handprint, Your Life

The Live on Purpose key is symbolized by a handprint – your handprint, my handprint. My handprint is my unique mark on the world. We must ask ourselves: What is my mark?’ How am I touching the world? How am I touching others?

Handprints are uniquely individual; this lends authenticity to the symbol. Am I being myself? Am I coming from my authentic self? Am I interacting from my soul?

In order to know the answers to these questions, we must be able to go inside of ourselves and listen. Only when we are willing to face and be with our inner self, can we know and present to the world our real purpose.

This is not a once-and-done exercise, but a daily mediation, a daily practice of connecting inside and connecting outside of ourselves. I love how Amit Goswami described it: “do, be, do, be, do.”

Connect inside to know and better connect outside, with others and with life. As we get better at this process, as we learn to Live on Purpose, we shift our consciousness; we shift our lives.

It's Hard to Live on Purpose

It takes time.
Living on purpose means finding and doing what you love to do. If you can do this for a living, you are blessed. But it may take time before you can support yourself and your family while doing what you love. This means you may have to continue in a job that is less than fulfilling while doing what you love on the side. Depending on what your purpose is, it may never be able to support you.

It’s hard.
Just because you found what living on purpose means, doesn’t suggest its going to be easy. No matter the task, job or mission, sometimes things are difficult, or impossible. Even if you live on purpose, you must still have strength of character and perseverance to see it through.

It’s not you.
Finding and living your purpose is still not you. Your identity is so much more than what you came here to do. You are not your mission on earth, you are not the creation. You are the creator. Keep your perspective.

Still, it is worth it.
Even if it takes a long time, even if it is extremely hard and even if you struggle with your ego to keep perspective, living on Purpose is worth it. If you have ever had the amazing high and sense of rightness that living on purpose gives you, you will know just how much it is worth it.

Countdown 2012 - Living on Purpose 1

Living on Purpose for me today means:

1. live in the moment, be present with family, friends and coworkers
2. move my body - fit, mobile, active and healthy
3. write - communicate what I am learning as I am learning it
4. read - keep learning
5. speak out, speak up, encourage transformation all around
6. keep it simple
7. ship (read Seth Godin)