What if you have already found your purpose, you’re just going about it the wrong way?
If you are doing something that you really love, but you are feeling drained, exhausted and burnt out, then read this newsletter to the end. |
Mark Twain famously said: “When you do what you love you´ll never have to work a day in your life”. Well, Mark. I have a bone to pick with you! Why is it that so many of us are doing what we love but feeling COMPLETELY overwhelmed and like we can’t make ends meet? I’m pretty sure that if Mark Twain were alive to answer my question, his reply would sound something like this: Even if you love what you do, when you are going AGAINST the natural tide, it can be EXTREMELY exhausting. It can leave you feeling like you never have any time for yourself and that you are not progressing. Even though are working your ass off, you are SO busy that you are unable to be the best version of you. As a result people don’t take you seriously or see your full potential. It’s hard to shine when your potential it stifled under a heavy layer of SHOULDA, WOULDA, COULDAs. You can be living very close to your purpose, but still not have caught the central current which carries you to the source. How do you know if you are still waiting to catch the current? Our purpose is our true North. It is our internal compass. When we are not living fully aligned, even if we are only out by 2 degrees, that equates to a HUGE gap 5 years down the line. Being near to your passion but still not having caught the current looks like: -Exhaustion -Constant distraction: always on your phone, wasting endless hours on TikTok or Instagram -A niggling feeling that you are not living up to your full potential -Feeling like others are unable to take you seriously in your profession -Comparing yourself to others who are living their passion -Feeling like you have lost the spark you had as a child -Looking for reasons why you never realised your dream (usually a combination of money and time)Feeling FRUSTRATED and -JEALOUS of people tapped into their purpose -All this combined can leave you feeling so overwhelmed with life that you don’t even have TIME to realign yourself. -I know because that was my reality for the first 31 years of my life. -Although I had always lived CLOSE to my passion, I was never FULLY living it. MY STORY I was into music my whole life. I started playing the piano age 9 and the harp age 19. Even though I had all the titles: Grade 8 piano and ABRSM piano diploma, I was afraid to play because I felt I wasn’t good enough. Something didn’t sit right with me about “performing”. I much preferred to accompany others to take up the lime light. I felt judged in the classical music world, like there wasn’t space for me. As a result I lived AROUND my passion – close enough to say it was my passion but far enough to take any real risk and start expressing who I really was. For me this looked like: -accompanying school choir on the piano -continuing studying so I could hide behind the role of student -teaching music to children By doing this I never allowing the full expression of my soul to shine through. When I got to around 28 I stopped playing piano and harp altogether because I didn’t feel it was “leading anywhere”. It felt sad to let it go, like I “could have done so much more” with it. But I thought having a career and making money was more important than nourishing the sparkle in my eyes. Looking back I can’t believe that for a while I gave up my passion altogether. But that’s life, right? It is “normal” to silently betray ourselves. As Stephen Cope talks about in his book The Great Work of Your Life, you can pretend that the serious…logical…rational….safe choice is the best. But your energy can’t pretend. When you make the choice to not dive into the heart of your purpose, there are signs. First your eyes stop shining. Then your spirit starts to deaden as you stay in a job that doesn´t imbue you with the energy of your Gift. You can be motivated by obligation, external praise or by society’s idea of who you SHOULD be in this lifetime. But none of these motivations has the authentic energy needed to master a profession. All of these external motivations lead to a downward spiral that will crash sooner or later (usually at midlife). It requires a heroic effort to simply carry on with life in the face of this emptiness. This is where the exhaustion sets in. You are not receiving back the energy you put in. And that energy can only come from living in the heart of your purpose. SO WHAT CHANGED FOR ME? When I was 31 I had a transcendental experience that caused me to UNBLOCK. It gave me the courage to move from the sidelines into the CENTRE OF MY PASSION. During this experience I realised that many of the things I was doing were not coming from an internal source of authentic desire. I was STRIVING for things externally to me: titles recognition positive praise By letting the striving go and connecting with what my soul was yearning to EXPRESS, thing shifted radically. The weeks after that experience I started to play the harp again. But this time it was coming from a very different place. I let go of all my musical knowledge, of technique and other people’s judgement and I started to play simple chords on the harp and add my voice. It felt good. It felt natural. It felt right. And more importantly, it felt like I was expressing a part of myself that had been dormant my whole life. It felt like I was giving space to the part of me that that used to be buried underneath the layers of “I should be XYZ”. I wasn’t doing it for any external goal other than for me. SO HOW DID MY PASSION GROW? I felt I was being carried along by the natural current of life when I started to play for my friends. They seemed to like it. At first I thought maybe they were just being polite. But when they starting inviting me to play at their events I thought “Oh…maybe they really DO like it?!” This was a great lesson for me. That when starting a project, the most important thing is to do what you love. If YOU love it, your friends are probably going to LOVE it. And if your FRIENDS love it, then other people are most likely going to love it too. I never set out wanting to create singing circles or record an album. I wasn’t LOOKING for the current. It just happened as a natural progression of me EXPRESSING WHO I AM. And that is how your passion shines forth. From inside out. Not from outside in. HOW TO SHIFT FROM THE EDGE OF YOUR PASSION TO THE CENTRE Living on the edge of your passion happens when you are TOO SCARED TO TAKE THE RISK of moving into the centre: —you feel stuck in a job that pays the bills —you don´t have a guarantee that life will get better, so you´d rather stay trapped and comfortable .—you worry what others will think of you —you feel now is not the moment You justify to yourself that you are doing the rational thing, the logical thing. But this is actually your FEAR talking. This is the very thing keeping you blocked. It’s time for you to say goodbye to sitting at the back of the classroom. It’s time to stop hiding behind more ceremonies, more education and more healing. It’s time to embody the energy of being ENOUGH to show the world who you really are. It’s time to realise that just because you are struggling with overwhelm and exhausion, it doesn’t mean you’re not doing the right thing. More than likely you are doing the RIGHT thing. You just haven’t caught the current that will lead you downstream to the source. SO HOW DO YOU CATCH THE CURRENT? 1) Be honest with what you wantIf you are a music teacher and you want to be a performer, OWN IT.If you are a teaching assistant and you want to be a teacher, OWN IT. 2) Notice your jealousyJealousy is a beautiful signpost of what it actually IS that you want. Notice who you are you jealous of. Notice what they are doing that you secretly want to do. Write down an action that you can take to bring more of that into your life. 3) Give yourself permission to be a complete beginnerIf there’s one thing that will stop you moving towards your goals, it is PERFECTIONISM. Perfectionism will stop your dreams in their tracks. If you are transitioning from the edge to the centre of your passion then I have a message for you. IT´S OK TO BE RIDICULOUS. IT´S OK TO FEEL LIKE A FRAUD. IT´S OK TO BE A COMLETE BEGINNER. This is all a NORMAL PART OF THE PROCESS.When I reconnected with my passion: I never dreamed I´d be facilitating singing circles I never dreamed I´d be recording an album I never dreamed people around the world ask for my musicI never dreamed I´d be giving concerts on stage I just followed what felt good. DESPITE the fear. DESPITE the anxiety DESPITE the voice telling me I didn´t know enough, I would never make it work bla bla bla What’s waiting you on the other side of your fear is a sense of freedom and fulfillment that you can’t even imagine. And it’s closer than you think. You just need to unblock yourself and find the current that will take you downstream to your source. TIPS FOR UNBLOCKING If you are living on the edge of your passion and you LOVE what you do, you just haven’t quite found the sweet spot. Don’t give up. You are on the right path. You are just blocked (be it by fear, be it by ideas about your capabilities or by your time management). Here are 3 tips that helped me UNBLOCK and UNLOCK. 1) Morning Pages 30 minutes of writing every morning will cut through all the mud standing between you and your clarity. Give yourself permission to be NEGATIVE. All of the complaining and frustration that you vomit on the pages is VERY WELCOME. Becuase this is what is standing between you and stepping towards what you REALLY WANT. 2) Cut out Inflammatories I suggest gluten and dairy but you know what makes you bloated.When your tummy is bloated, your creativity is bloated. When your digestive system is blocked, your creativity is blocked. Now more than ever is the time to make your eating habits work FOR you, not against you. 3) Carve out time for play Having space to play is one of the most important things you can do for yourself when you are looking to connect with your purpose. It is outdated and harmful thinking to assume you don’t have time to play and that it is always about work. If you don’t believe me, try working for a week straight without any down time and ask yourself how you feel. You could sit around all day wondering “why am I blocked?” Or you could just choose one of the above actions and try it out every day for a week and observe any differences. If you are in the process of unlocking your purpose and are looking for some extra support, check out my free guide to Discovering Your Soul Purpose here. Don’t give up. You are closer to finding your purpose then you think. Love from Abbey xxx |