Why Your Life Purpose Is Killing Your Vibe…
The more you search, the less you really live.
Have you ever had one of those moments when you really wish you could stop being so adult-like and just be a kid? Yeah, that’s the story of my life.
Growing up, I was always the good kid. You know, the one everybody compared their kids to in hopes they would be positively influenced. For so long I battled between being the identity of the “overly conservative, afraid of getting in trouble” angel vs the craving of “man, I wish I could just do something bad and not get caught” devil.
Every step of the way, I was torn between some inner guidance to self-preserve, basically avoid anything that would get me even close to the deep-end, and a passionate desire to destroy everything.
My saving grace
For my sake, I’m thankful that I waited until college, AFTER I turned 21, to let my wild child out…mainly because by then I had a pretty solid foundation of right from wrong, a cool sense of balance, and level-headed discernment to prevent me from getting lost in my adventures.
Let’s face it, my life purpose was calling from a VERY early age but my “vibe” well, that too was calling and I thought the two were opposing forces keeping me from sanity. I bought into some random, societal belief that my purpose and what felt like my vices were not to be mixed, as if one had to die in order for the other to live.
What most people fail to realize about their life purpose is this: it’s not something you “find” or “uncover” as you are IT already.
That means, making mistakes, falling flat on your face, making a fool of yourself, and even failing hard are ALL part of the process of figuring out what you really want in life.
You don’t have to be perfect to be fulfilled, but you DO need to live with excellence to feel satisfied…which, once you find your true self, the feeling of satisfaction will begin to dwindle as you will never be satisfied enough to become complacent. THANKFULLY! Your life will be fueled by a desire to create (not collect) more of everything.
That’s how you KNOW you have “found” your purpose.
The reality of this tends to piss people off. Actually, I have potential clients say to me, “but Alida, it’s GOT to be more complicated than that! If my purpose is just about ME as I am, then what?! What do I do with that? What are my first steps? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!”
Your brain, specifically your limited beliefs (aka your ego), wants to cage you in some false idea that life has to be too complex to make sense of. But YOU are the one creating your reality so it will be as simple or complex as you make it.
The key to your sanity though, THAT’S where it gets complicated.
If you spend more time SEARCHING for your life purpose than you do LIVING it, you will run into more random bouts of adversity, challenges that catch you off-guard, and struggles that you can’t seem to get out of. This is due to your lack of self-awareness, a detached sense of self defined by the views and opinions of others rather than being self-created.
This life is what Abraham calls “living by default.” You are the ball in everyone else’s pinball machine, bouncing from creation to creation, never really choosing which direction YOU want to go.
You believe life is happening TO you.
When you decide to simply LIVE and trust that purpose is IN the presence of each act, you begin to realize that your challenges can be created BY you FOR you. Your desire to create your own reality fuels your reason to act and purpose looks more like greatness in whatever you CHOOSE to be, do, and have.
In my split emotional state, I’d made up the story in my head that my feelings of rebelion were preventing me from ever finding my life purpose, as if seeking NON-perfection would condemn me from a life shunned by God himself.
As my 98 year old adopoted Gramma would say, “PFFSST!”
I drove myself crazy, literally. Three doctors telling me that anti-depressants were my only hope was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.
Truth is, life for me has always been like a 3 year old boy with a tower of legos… “Let’s see what happens if I smash it!” After years of internally battling perfection, I eventually became really good at tearing everything down in my life simply to build it back up again. A bit sadistic, I know. But I crave BIG challenges and if I am not purposefully creating them, my internal dialogue, EGO, and default beliefs will do it for me.
THIS is the struggle ALL humans go through and THIS is why your life purpose seems to be so illusive. If you aren’t CREATING it, you’re dragged along in the pursuit of everyone else’s…imagine being stuck in a car with your friends who are catching Pokemon and driving off a cliff when you have nothing to say about it. Heck, you don’t even like the game.
Make sense?
The point of all of this? Your vibe, basically what you THINK is your identity, is a destructive belief you hold about yourself, masked in fear, that keeps you from seeing that your life IS your purpose.
You’re afraid people will hurt you, walk all over you, or take your kindness as weakness. And, as such, you overcompenstate in your actions toward others to impress your perceptions upon them hoping they will see you for who you think you are. To make matters worse, you are chasing some ideal life mission as if you can’t start doing anything until you find IT.
With this stickiness in the human awareness, I’m constantly challenged to step up my game as a coach. While the foundation of beliefs may be similar in everyone who seeks my help, the path to escape their own matrix looks and feels different every time…
My advice: stop searching and start BEING. Simplify where others create chaos. If you can’t find your own purpose, create one. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, “You’re gonna die.” Why not just focus on living while you have the chance?
