Discovering Your Purpose Is A Process

It would be nice if you could just snap your fingers and your purpose, your real true purpose in life, would instantly pop in your mind and resonate with your heart. However, discovering your purpose is a process. Why? For most people, they have never really taken the time to contemplate on it.

Another reason is because our society worldwide is totally focused on the superiority of the human intellect/mind instead of the authentic true feelings of our hearts. This causes human beings to pursue and become things they think they should become, instead of following the burning desires of their hearts. When a person starts to contemplate on and realize their true purpose, a lot of obstacles, false mental constructs, and limiting beliefs get in the way of spotting our true purpose immediately. It’s like peeling the layers of an onion. You must peel way the excess garbage to get to the core of what’s really important.

Discovering your purpose for most people means learning to use something they have never really spent a lot of time exercising. What is that? Your heart, your feelings, your intuition and your curiosity. The late great billionaire, tech hero, innovator, game changer and genius Steve Jobs, in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech stated that the only way we can become great at something, is if we love it. He also stated that you must follow your heart, curiosity and intuition because they somehow already know what you want to become.

Only your heart knows your true passion. Only your feelings can be trusted to reveal your truth. You must be who you are, what you should be… is not important. The key to feeling truly alive and passionate is to spend your day doing as many things that you love and spending as much time with those who you love as you can. The more a human being does things they love, the happier, more successful and fulfilled they will become. It sometimes can be very unpleasant when we wake up to the reality of how much of our time is spent doing things we don’t enjoy, with people we don’t enjoy being with. It’s hard to let go of the certainty of what you know, to embrace the uncertainty of what could be someday with a lot of hard work and dedication.

It’s very unpleasant at times when you are in the middle of striving for a goal, and you have no idea how many more days, weeks, months and years it will be until you realize your dreams. Sometimes the success you seek is so far off into the future, that it seems unrealistic and like it will never happen for you. On the journey towards realizing your grandest goals and dreams, it will be filled with thousands upon thousands of moments, hours, days, weeks, months and years of self doubt, feeling like it is hopeless, feeling like it will never work out, feeling like you are wasting your time, feeling like you are wasting your money, etc. However, in those moments of doubt and despair, only your true purpose will burn brightly in your heart. Your passion, your true passion that is, will compel you to take action even when it seems hopeless. Why? Because there will be nothing else that will feel better than taking action doing something you love. Every one of us has proven to ourselves and others that we can be perfectly miserable, but successful at getting paid to do things we hate. If you’re doing something you truly love, you will do it for free. Being willing to do what you love for free is something every entrepreneur/success seeker must do in order to one day realize the giant payday. Human beings WILL NOT do something they hate for very long without getting paid for it. That’s something to think about.

As I discussed in my article, “Women Make Men… Better!“, when a man is in love with a woman who is in love with him, he notices the other areas of his life that do not have the same level of passion and love that his relationship does. Over time he will be compelled to do something about this to make a change for the better. His woman if she is a good one, will gently and lovingly push him in the direction of his passion. Women instinctively know that men who are doing something they love are much happier and fun to be with than guys who hate what they do for living. After all, girls just want to have fun! The following is an e-mail from a phone coaching client of mine who has woken up to the fact that he is done building weapons that kill people, and instead wants to do something that benefits humanity in a constructive way. His e-mail is his first attempt at writing down what he thinks is true purpose is. However, as you will read, he has written down a method or an aspect of his true purpose, but not his true core mission in life. He is going through the process of peeling his “own onion” so to speak. My comments are (in bold brackets like this) in the body of his e-mail:

Hey Coach,

I hope everything is well.  I have received the bombardment of video newsletters and I am enjoying them all thoroughly!  Please keep them coming!

We have had a handful of sessions where you have asked me to go off and do some homework and I have been falling short, so I spent some time this morning writing down thoughts, objectives and questions.  The objectives are related to my career change.  The questions are random and they were generated as a response to several of your articles.  I have been pondering these thoughts over the past month.  I did not just come up with these last minute.

I want to be a farmer.  Your instructions were to understand the reasons why first.  Then, model the success of existing organic farmers to leverage from their mistakes to avoid reinventing the wheel, but put my own creative spin on the idea to make the idea better and more efficient.  Since we are going to have a coaching session, I will make this brief, but I find that I forget certain things during the coaching calls, so let me get some ideas written as a reference.

Here are some thoughts and convictions that I have developed over the past month regarding the decision to pursue agriculture:

I want to be an expert at growing fruits and vegetables.

I want a comprehensive, hands-on education on how to grow plants.

I want to eventually sell crops as a business.  There are farmers who are paid in advance of distributing crops to their customers.  I forget what the organization is called at the moment.  Also, there is potential to sell fruits and vegetables to local restaurants.  Customers like fresh, organic, tasty produce that wasn’t shipped thousands of miles from it’s origin.  A famous chef said that 80 percent of the meal’s quality rests upon the ingredients.

I want to build my own water reservoir to supply crops with water at all times.

I want to be an expert at sustainable farming techniques and composting.  I want to make my own soil.

I want to understand preservation and storage of seeds so I can use them to grow next year’s crop.

I want a greenhouse for producing fruits and vegetables all year round if I decide to stay in the Southeast.

No pesticides, straight up organic.

I want to understand soil, minerals, soil pH

I want to be an expert at companion planting, knowing what plants to plant next to other plants.  I want to understand insects that eat insects that want to eat my crops.

Quality produce, not quantity.

Then, when I become an expert, I want to create a consulting business.  I will teach others how to grow their own food efficiently in their back yard.  I will visit their homes and teach hands-on.  Everyone should be a farmer.  It is their birthright.  John Adams was a farmer when he wasn’t writing the constitution.  I’m betting all the founding fathers were (They believed in self-reliance).

I believe sincerely in holistic medicine. I think you do to.  You cannot have holistic medicine without organic, food that is rich in minerals.  This kind of food is actually scarce.  There are 2 Whole Foods markets in my entire state!  wtf?  Sure, there are farmers markets, but even those appear scarce.  Either that or farmers suck at advertising.  I am not certain.  (The market is probably not big enough for Whole Foods to put a financially viable store in your state. Its business. It doesn’t mean there is not a need for local produce. Maybe its ripe for mom and pop type of operations like our country used to be made of.) What I know is that we are raping the Earth for a profit right now (“Nothing personal, its just business.” is their motto. Everyone should treat the land as sacred, and use proper rotation of growing fields so the soil does not become depleted of minerals.)

It is safe to say I am tired of building weapons.  The money is good, but the passion is not there (You said the key word, “passion”. As the late great Steve Jobs stated, “You must follow your heart, curiosity and intuition. They somehow already know what you want to become. You must do what you love. The only way to be great at something is to love it.” If you don’t love it. Keep searching until you find something that you do. Everything you have listed above is a great start! However, after our phone coaching session you realized that you did not have a burning desire to be a farmer. When I asked you about the type of things, articles, magazines, websites, etc. that you read about in your free time, you told me you had an almost insatiable appetite for learning about holistic health. You also really love soccer. So what that tells me and after talking to you is that your true purpose is related to holistic healing, health, sports and that organic farming methods and practices are part of the method or system of holistic health. That is why it is so important to learn everything you can about the subject. Maybe you form some kind of consulting business involving professional athletes, holistic health, healthy eating and maybe some form of coaching and teaching people how to personally implement it in their own lives. Your purpose is revealed in your burning desires for something. The type of thing that brings tears to your eyes when you think about becoming it or creating it. It’s like peeling the layers of an onion. It’s a process. Follow your heart. Not your mind. You must let your feelings be your guide. Similar to the love that you feel for your girlfriend, you will love and be proud of your true mission and purpose in life when you discover it. Find/follow your passion. Your passion is something you feel really good about.)

Here are some random questions for you:

1. Should men be reading romance books and novels to get more in tune? (Absolutely. Especially the ones she likes. Ask her about the parts she really likes. Why? So you can create similar kinds of passionate circumstances in your own relationship that can help cause her to feel the same type of emotions the book causes her to feel.)  For example, my girl mentioned the book, Wednesday Letters, which is a book about some dude that wrote his wife a letter every Wednesday. (Hint alert! Translation… “Honey, will you please read the book Wednesday letters? Because I would love for you to do something similar for me in our relationship. If you picked up on that, you would win a lot of brownie points with her!)  You could tell she was really into that.  After all, she read the entire book.  It’s interesting, some of your articles mention Hollywood and the nonsense it teaches men and women about how to behave an interact and how it is as backwards.  However, you mention romance novels actually hitting home about that stuff.  The formula they use, etc. (These false archetypes that are presented on TV, in movies and the media, emotionally anchor children to false, inaccurate and dysfunctional ways of showing up in their interactions/relationships with other human beings. When human beings watch 6 to 8 hours of television almost every day of the week, they slowly over time and without realizing it are conditioning themselves to act, think and behave in ways that are portrayed in their entertainment.)

2. What are those things that male girlfriends do?  Taking women to dinner and not fucking them later and then taking them to lunch the next day and not fucking them later?  Giving them advice about other men and still not fucking them? (All of those things. They become a butler and a pleaser. A guy who goes along with whatever she wants without ever standing up for himself and what he wants. He lets her walk all over him because he is just happy to be in her presence. He acts like a follower, not a leader. Women are attracted to men who display male strength characteristics. The male girlfriend displays none. When a man becomes submissive and goes along with whatever a woman wants, he acts like another girl and therefore is treated like one. Male girlfriends like to do the same things she does, or should I say whatever she does, because he is seeking her approval.)

3. What kind of juicer do you use? (I use the super angel juicer. It’s a twin gear juicer that’s 100% stainless steel. It costs about a grand. A cheaper one is the green power juicer. It’s about $500. But if you are going to juice vegetables daily, spend the extra money for the super angel. It self feeds most everything which makes the juicing process very fast.)  Why are 2-step juicers so expensive?  They cost around $2000.00.  Charlotte Gerson, daughter of the late Max Gerson, recommends the Norwalk, which was designed decades ago I believe by Norman Walker.  Not sure if this is a conspiracy or if this really is the best juicer out there. (I know that juicer, and I am sure it works great, but the super angel is half the price and a hell of a lot easier to use. The pulp comes out bone dry, so no juice/vegetables/fruit is wasted.)

I will be on Skype at 4.  Please take time out of the session to read this if necessary as I know there is a handful of stuff here.

Thanks again for all the wisdom you share every day my bha.

William Wallace

“If you are going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relative’s, jobs, and maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could be derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you’ll do it. Despite rejection and the worst odds, and it will be better than anything else you could imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”-Matt Dillon’s character in the movie “Factotum”