How Purpose Feels

There is so much written and spoken about on the subject of purpose, especially in the field of leadership development. I have been talking about it with groups and individuals for years now, with an ever open enquiry in myself about my own sense of purpose. I have seen many puzzled looks in management cohorts along the way, as people have been invited by me to explore and express their “why”. Simon Sinek speaks of it eloquently and rationally; Michael Junior more emotively. And still it feels elusive to so many folk.

As someone who has so often succumbed to the dark embrace of the existential crisis, I have found comedy in the fact of my playing such a part in others’ quest for a why in this world. And yet at the same time, I have noticed a gradual unfolding in my own sense of purpose. It started 6 years ago when, as a participant in a leadership programme, I visualised myself soaking the world with an exploding hose of colour; an image that was to prove the beginning of Neon, my own brand and business.

But now, on completion of a year’s training in Integral coaching, I can honestly say that I have a physical sense of what purpose feels like. I have little idea of how this has come about. I certainly did not enter into the programme imagining that this is what I would get out of it. But through the year it has crept up on me, like the purest, water of the deepest blue, quietly filling up the space around me until I find myself bathing it, held in it, luxuriating in it.

So what does purpose feel like? To me, it feels as though there is complete alignment in everything I am, as though all parts of me are completely in service, completely needed and completely of value. I have an almost physical sense of completion and wholeness. I was at a wonderful gig last night with an extraordinary performer (Davina, of Davina and the Vagabonds — go see her if you get the chance) who talked with such sincerity of her gratitude to her audience for allowing her to do what she knows herself to be here to do. And I sat, deeply moved for her and myself, as I connected again in that moment, to my own version of that. I knew exactly what she meant. How remarkable to feel such a “rightness” of place, such an ease and flow, such a sense of activation, peace and fulfilment all at the same time. To me it feels like a miracle.

I always believed my place was in big groups. And to some extent it is. I love the energy that comes from a group dynamic, from a crowd, from a team and the edginess of the connection between many. But there is something magical for me in the intimacy of the 1–1 coaching relationship where permission exists to dive deep into the messiness of being human, in service of someone’s desire and longing for something different in their relationship with themselves, with others and with the world. Corporate or private makes no difference to me. It is the same work.

I am so deeply grateful to Third Space and my community of friends with whom I have shared the experience of the last year, for what it has given me. I have learned so much. But more than anything, I am grateful for the newfound sense of calling that I have. Previously I was coaching. Today I know myself to be a coach. I can feel it in my bones, in my core. And each day I feel myself to be holding a clarity of purpose that grounds me and that I know will help me navigate my own sense of human messiness.

So does all that make me professionally certified? Or simply certifiable?