Knowing with confidence that you are where you are supposed to be and that you are on the right path can be challenging. Personally, I have struggled with it off and on for the last fifteen years—quite possibly, for most of my life.
I spell Purpose with a capital P when I am using the word in the Spiritual sense (think Universal, if you are not a God-person). Spiritual infers a sense that there is something greater than self. Purpose, in this sense of the word, suggests that we are not necessarily in the place we are for our benefit alone. Our Purpose affects others—far more others than we can imagine. So, our sense of purpose does not always match our greater Purpose. Indeed, the understanding of our Purpose is almost always elusive. This can often (quite frequently, in my case) lead to a Crisis of Purpose.
Crisis of Purpose is often (for me) a sign that my SPIES (Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, and Social well-centeredness) is not aligned or centered. Personally, it show the most in my Social well-being. I am less than nice to others when I am in a Crisis of Purpose (hence, my last fifteen years has been up and down and not the fun kind of up and down like a rollercoaster).
What to do in a Crisis of Purpose? (Here is where I feel like my life—my work, this blog, my podcasts, the person I try to be, etc.—is all a façade. But what appears from a distance is often an illusion, albeit an image of aspiration. Let’s face facts. Few if any of us really have our sh** together. Some of us just to more damage in the process of Purpose.) So, what do we do? We deal with it. We dig in and work on the SPIES. It takes effort. It takes self-forgiveness. It takes meditation, prayer (if you will), and introspection. Dare I steal from my friend, Laura Axelrod, and say it takes cycling through the Ten Words: attention, acceptance, authenticity, benevolence, balance, contemplation, creativity, cooperation, celebration, and care. (Authenticity is essential to tear down the façade—so here I am.)
So, here we are (here I am) in a Crisis of Purpose, asking if our path has been in vain and struggling with the “what ifs.” Here we are wasting energy (SPIES energy). Paradoxically, it takes more energy in the movement away from well-centeredness than it takes to move toward our center. This is why a Crisis of Purpose is so draining Spiritually, Physically, Intellectually, Emotionally, and Socially. We are fighting against the current.
Years ago, I was whitewater rafting with a group of friends when we dumped into a class-V rapid. We had been instructed, were this to happen, to simply relax and let the current carry us to the surface. This was easy and it worked. I know that the same principle applies in a Crisis of Purpose. Nevertheless, I tend to deny (my own) instruction and try to swim my way out. This, however, only sucks us deeper into the Crisis, as it does with the hydraulic (the term used for the river current that tends to pull us down). In a Crisis of Purpose, we need to pause. We are at the Attention stage. Accept this and let the current take us to the Contemplation stage. Here, we can allow ourselves to be carried out of the hydraulic, surface, and move on to reorienting ourselves and fixing what the Crisis may have damaged.
Coming out of a Crisis of Purpose is never easy—perhaps we never really come to full acceptance—but we must begin with attention to the Crisis at hand. Asking “what if” gets us stuck in the hydraulic. We must ask ourselves, “what next?”
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!!