Shut Up or Get Lost! — Reflections on Purpose

I have lost my way a little recently. Not in an earth-shattering, catastrophic way. Not even in a way that most people would notice. Nothing has happened. Certainly nothing bad.

But life has felt a little on the relentless side and with that, I have noticed in myself an increasing flatness of mood and an ever-nagging question ringing in my ears: “Is this enough?”

Even as I write that, I wince. God, I am so lucky! I really am. When the world is going to shit (sorry but let’s call a spade a spade), when wars rage and more threaten, when Covid continues to lay out large swathes of the population with Monkeypox fast on its heels, when economies flounder and the cost of living skyrockets, when politicians defy even the most farcically awful boundaries, when heatwaves warn of the crisis some continue to deny (and even that list is no-where near exhaustive)….I am sitting pretty in a lovely flat in a beautiful part of town, with decent health and a loving community, disposable income, significant freedom and a business in its tenth year that continues to flourish, with varied clients that are receptive to and appreciative of the work I do and that pay me to do things I love. Where’s the catch?

Well, first up, there’s the old comparator voice blathering on inside me. I hear about old colleagues from my consulting days retiring with lifestyles I cannot really imagine and think ‘I could have had that’. I hear of people being QCs and hearing important human rights cases involving challenging the deportation of refugees to Rwanda and I think ‘I should have been a lawyer’. I see accolades and awards being celebrated on LinkedIn and I think ‘How come I haven’t done that?’. I see Instagram pictures of old travelling buddies taking off to far-away places and I think ‘I used to do that’. My inner critic, now stimulated into action, starts scavenging for scraps and soon finds some to feast upon; choices made, avenues pursued, others not, missed opportunities, a good amount of self-flagellation and then — boom! — there I am at the bottom of some self-dug ditch.

I know myself well enough now to recognise the signs. There goes that critical inner voice. There fly the wings of self-doubt that swoop over the valley of my personal and professional decisions and choices, casting an unsettling shadow of dissatisfaction over them all. It’s familiar territory. And yet it’s still unsettling. At least now there is the awareness of a pattern, some of which I believe to be personal and some of it societal (how to separate the two is anyone’s guess). The personal bit is my own tendency towards gruelling standards by which I (and others, of course) must live and persistent disappointment in my ability to attain them. The societal bit is the achievement-obsessed paradigm in which we live, that can so often leave us feeling ‘less than’. It’s everywhere. The combination of the two still sometimes eat away at my sense of wellbeing and fulfilment.

Maybe the truth is that my expectations remain too high. Maybe I have too grandiose a view of the contribution I can realistically make in the world. Maybe I have too inflated a sense of my own potential. Maybe I am still — despite thinking I had stepped away from it — running on that performance paradigm that tells me I am nothing if I am not changing the world, or my writing is not being published, my music not recorded or my impact being felt around the globe. So I go round the internal houses doing a check-in. How do I define success? What has led me to make the decisions I have made? What really matters to me? My answers to these questions are clear:

1. Loving and being loved is super important to me (in its many forms and manifestations)

2. Making a difference is super important to me (though how and to what degree is another matter….)

3. Status (money, position, power) does not really matter to me (though it still gets its grubby claws into my head sometimes)

4. Finding my own way and thinking for myself is super important to me (BE YOU, for Christ’s sake!)

5. Living life as fully as possible is super important to me

Despite this clarity, times like now still arise when my nerve weakens and I doubt the value of the path I am on. It is as though a smoke signal goes up from that part of me that so desperately wants to live life fully and make an impact, bringing with it that same question: “Is this enough?”.

As usual, I have put myself through the mill of challenge and judgment (will I ever learn?!). There have been moments when I have convinced myself that I need to change direction, or embark on some global adventure, or sign up to some soul saving life purpose programme. Not that there is anything inherently flawed with any of these options. But I have also taken the time to notice something much more basic about myself. And that is simply my levels of energy and resourcefulness. When I did that, I realised that I was incredibly tired and out of ‘juice’. Having got out of the habit of taking holidays thanks to the pandemic, I hadn’t taken enough time off — time out of the routine of work and day to day life — to re-energise and restimulate myself. I realised that before I signed up for any new development programme or bought a ticket to a far-away place or indeed decided that Neon’s tenth year would be her last, I needed simply to pause and put fuel on my own fire in ways that I couldn’t necessarily even articulate clearly. In essence, I needed to take some time out to wander a little in the ‘space in between’, supported by some of the practices that I know resource me, namely writing, creativity, exercise and healthy eating, time by the ocean or in the hills, and some delicate balance between time alone and time with loved ones.

In summary, I needed to shut up and get a little lost.

So, that’s what I did. I put my Out-of-Office on a week or so ago, indicating that I was stepping away from work for most of the rest of the summer and embarked on some of the practices above. How many of those things will I do? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Maybe I will just wander out of my front door with no purpose other than to see what unfolds and to allow the streets of London to surprise me.

I am only a couple of weeks in and funnily enough, it is not as easy as it sounds! I am so trained in that ‘doing’ habit and find it surprisingly hard to strike a healthy balance between doing and being. I also notice that my tendency is still to plan in an attempt to create certainty in my days and that ‘getting lost’ is a real challenge to me. Another thing, however, that I am definitely noticing is a softening around that question “Is this enough?”. Has it gone away? No! Have I found an answer that satisfies me? No! But is it as loud and unsettling as it was before? No! My sense is that with a little more distance and space, my perspective may already have shifted a little. And for now, this feels enough! Who knows how it will feel by September 8th when I return to work in a more ‘business as usual’ type way? It may turn out that some kind of change is needed. It could be a tweak; it could be more fundamental. But I am not going to second guess it. Perhaps I will update you on my experience.

For now, my conclusion is to approach crises of purpose (big or small) with some caution. It reminds me of some light-hearted yet, IMHO, wise advice I once heard which went something like “Before you decide that you are depressed, check first that you are not surrounded by arse holes!!”. I have now formed my own equivalent advice relating to the topic of life purpose: “Before you decide that you have lost your purpose, check first that you are not lacking rest and rejuvenation”. It might just save you time, money and a whole lot of soul searching.