If you’re an ambitious person, an intrinsically motivated person, someone who seeks out personal growth and transformation opportunities within every nook and cranny – you most likely will have been bombarded with the term ‘Life Purpose’. Even myself, living a happy little life and with a meaningful and enjoyable career in the health industry, felt terrified when I heard the phrase ‘what is your life purpose?’. I would feel like screaming at my book saying ‘I don’t know! I haven’t bloody found it yet!!’. Because, as much as I love my career in speech pathology (and I do), it never really felt like my ‘life purpose’ – this idealistic notion of what you were born to do, the entire reason behind your existence on this little planet. Writing this blog, and studying and sharing what I have learnt through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, makes me so happy and of service – but is it my ‘life purpose’?

I started reflecting on when I feel most alive. What is it that lights me up? As my beautiful friend once asked me, ‘if there were no limitations, how would you spend your days?’. The truth is, and was reflected in my answer, my perfect days involve people. Being surrounded by friends and family, working with people, meeting new people, celebrating life in communion with other little earth dwellers! Add some time in nature, a surf with my love or beach walks with my girls, and I would go to bed with the world’s happiest soul.

So in this incredible post by Kris Carr, she flips the focus on a life of purpose, on it’s head. She writes …

• What if your purpose is to build an everlasting relationship with yourself? To fall deeply in love with precious you? This isn’t self-centered or selfish, it’s self-expansive. Interconnected. Conscious.
• What if your purpose is to forgive yourself and others? And by doing so, to allow warm waves of compassion to wash over the entire planet (yourself included).
• What if your purpose is to gently heal all self-injury? And by doing so, to become a mentor and role model for others to do the same.
• What if your purpose is to release all shame and feelings of unworthiness? Guess what you’ll find behind those feelings? Vulnerability—where your true strength and glory resides.
• Shall we talk about perfection? Yes, I think we must. What if your purpose is to teach yourself that there is no such thing as perfection and that your never ending pursuit of it is destroying your life and your relationships. Let it go.
• What if your purpose is to speak kindly to yourself so that you elevate your energy and the world around you?
• What if your purpose is to develop an everlasting faith in yourself? To remember your holiness and treat yourself accordingly. The deeper your faith gets, the stronger your connection to a higher power.
• What if your purpose is to take impeccable care of yourself so that you have the energy and joy to serve others?

How refreshing is it to have an all encompassing approach to this once ‘scary’ notion of a definitive purpose?! You can honour and live your life purpose, by your values, behaviours, responses, kindness, energy – and can achieve it regardless of what job or title you hold.

My ‘life purpose’ is to support others in expressing themselves. The feeling when a friend says ‘oh I feel so much better now that I’ve spoken to you about it’; or when a client nails their new sound target in the clinic; or when I know that amongst friends and families that I am both loved and loving beyond belief – THAT is my life purpose.

What’s yours? What makes your spirit thrive?

Blessings and a whole lotta epiphanies x