# 14 - How to Discover Your Purpose
Episode 14
Hello there, Life Leapers! It's Rick Lewis with The Follow Through Formula Podcast, my 14th day in a row, recording a podcast based on a commitment I made back on day one, Episode 1, thinking, “Wow, what a good idea it would be to commit to doing 21 episodes in a row of a daily podcast as a way of demonstrating the joys and the obstacles to following through!” So here I am, number 14 really happy that I committed to this.
It's been very, very useful, and I feel like I'm on a roll. So, I'm going to keep on going right through to number 21. A listener contacted me today who told me that his small action is going to be to listen to every episode, which I think is really cool. What a simple and wonderful way to hitch onto this project! Just listen to all the episodes. If you've been struggling with trying to decide what small action you can take as we move through this together, that's an easy one. Just listen to each episode each day.
It's not the easiest thing to do, to sit down and start talking into a microphone when nobody is facing you. I find myself having to imagine who it is out there that might be listening to this and just speak to what I know of human experience, which often winds up being really my own experience. I think sometimes I'm just sort of speaking to myself, and if it lands squarely for you, if it resonates, it's probably just because human beings have a lot in common.
There's a lot that goes on for each of us just by nature of being human which makes us similar, and we wind up resonating with each other. I'd also love to hear your story. I'd love to hear what you're working on and what's resonating with you from these podcasts. What your goals are, what your struggles or challenges are. And if you'd like to share anything about what you've been considering or going through or realizing as you're listening to these podcasts, I would love to hear about it. You can send me an email to rick@gamesforconfidence.com, and I promise, I'll reply.
If you'd like to have somebody in your court who sees and hears what you are up to, then you can count on me because that's what I love to do. What I think about all day long every day is purpose and passion and practice. Hey, that's kind of cool: Purpose, Passion and Practice. When combined, those three produce an extraordinary result in human beings. And here I am, exercising my own purpose, passion and practice and coming up with cool little alliterative inspiration! There you go. A cool little list of alliterative inspiration: purpose, passion and practice. I really like that!
I was actually talking to a business coach today, describing to him that I started a daily podcast. He happens to have a podcast of his own, so he knows my world right now. He understood what I was describing in terms of the challenge of producing this daily podcast. In the flow of our conversation about podcasting he made a comment, “Well, of course you've got material backed up and ready to go.” I didn't actually tell him “No, I don't have any material backed up and ready to go. I am sitting down once a day, every day, speaking into a microphone. I head over to my computer and I upload it. That is my podcast each day.”
Often, like today, I just start talking without even knowing what I'm going to say or what I'm going to talk about. And I find that process very revealing and very exciting, actually. I just start enquiring internally as to what's there with the intention of openning up to something that will be useful to others. So here I am, today I just open my mouth and I start talking about what's there and what's there is this piece about purpose, passion and practice.
In my own case, the purpose, passion and practice shows up by just getting on the microphone and letting myself address what's already there inside of me. There is a deep desire to be on purpose, meaning to allow my energy to be put into things that matter to me and to help other people to do the same. So I'm saying this to you and, as you know, because I've been pounding the same drum every time I get on the microphone each day. I'm saying to you, “What is your purpose and passion? How are you going to practice in relationship to that purpose and passion so that you feel you feel fulfilled at the end of the day?”
I’ve written a guide called Find Your Hidden Purpose[CL1] . I'm not going to tell you the subtitle of the guide, because I'm inviting you to go get it. Go to gamesforconfidence.com/purpose to download this guide. What it's going to do is walk you through a few steps with some very useful questions you can ask yourself to get closer to discovering your purpose.
When I have this conversation with people and I ask, Well, what do you most care about? What's most important to you? People will say, “I don't know. I mean, there are some things I care about, but they're all kind of at a similar level of importance, and I just go from day to day kind of doing things that are part of my routine and I'm used to doing. But I don't really know what my one purpose is or my biggest passion.”
I've led a lot of people through this conversation to help them connect with what it is that matters most to them. Usually the thing that shows up in the course of our conversation is something that's just right in front of their face. It's something very obvious. It's something simple. It's something that they already have a relationship to in their lives, but it is hidden—not in the sense that when they find their purpose it's a big surprise, but in the sense that many of us are discounting what it is we feel strongly about serving in our lives.
When I start questioning them about their lives and what they do day to day, I look for certain cues of liveliness and animation in their speaking. It shows up in tone of voice, in facial expression. It shows up in posture. It shows up in volume and pace of their conversation. It shows up in their emotion. I keep asking questions until I start getting these visceral signals that we're getting close to something that has energy for them.
Many of us have become very good at shielding from others what it is we deeply care about, because it is so vulnerable to allow others to know what it is we really love or care about or enjoy, or that pains us.
A purpose might show up as knowing there is something that needs to be addressed, something wrong in the world, or there's unnecessary suffering that's occurring somewhere, and for some people their purpose has to do with correcting or solving or helping in those situations. Others of us are wired to create something new that doesn't exist yet in the world. We want to bring something into being that is calling from inside of us and saying, “I want to be manifest in this world.” There's a book that needs to be written or a course that needs to be taught or a cause that needs to be championed, or a group of people that need to be seen or some information that needs to be more widely circulated.
A purpose or passion could really look like anything, and my experience is that from early in our lives, most people learn to mask what these deeply meaningful activities and pursuits are because inevitably, as kids, we wind up getting corrected in our pursuit of things. We wind up being told that we're doing it in a way that's too messy, or we're spending too much time at it, or we need to stop and come in from outside, or we need to feed ourselves, or we need to be wearing different clothing, or we need to do what we're doing with less volume, or we need to do it on a different schedule—and these are just the practicalities of having guardians who have to take care of us!
We had to have our activities modified and guided to keep us safe and to keep us connected and in flow with those who were coexisting with us. But as kids, when we're involved with things that feel passionately enlivening to us, doing something we just want to keep doing or keep exploring or keep learning about, these forms of interruptions can often be received as injunctions and almost as criticisms about engaging in that activity.
More deeply difficult is when an adult tells a child that what they're doing is inconsequential or meaningless or frivolous or waste of time, or will never amount to anything. Those are deep wounds. There are lots of ways we can get messages as a kid that what we're doing isn't worthwhile or valuable or a priority, and those messages get internalized until after a while we ourselves have the self-critical voice that initially came from the outside that we start carrying ourselves, and we apply the criticism without needing an outside force to do it. Then we grow up and we start trying to live an adult life. But wonder why we're not feeling fully alive, fulfilled, satisfied by our daily activity, happy with our work lives, happy in our relationships, because we've been conditioned to back away from and avoid the things that most bring us to life.
Well meaning, good parents do this all the time to their kids. They give messages that arrive in the form of injunctions to stop doing what they're doing, which seem very reasonable and practical to us as adults. Parents want kids to slow down or calm down or stop doing something that is dangerous. To be less emotional, to speak mare calmly or to speak more kindly rather than with pure, uninhibited force or demand. There are so many ways parents need to give our kids guidance and correction and direction that seem very reasonable. But unintentionally, such repeated corrections can have an impact on the child that gets internalized as an injunction against fully being themselves, against authentic expression of what's really there for them.
The complicated part is these things start to run in familial patterns, where somebody in our ancestral history gets deeply wounded or shut down in relationship to their own passion and purpose, and then winds up living a life where they're ignoring that.
The only thing they can pass on at that point is to teach their progeny how to also ignore who they really are, and if their child refuses to ignore who they really are and is adamant on pursuing it the adult will have to face the deep wound that they still have from having abandoned themselves at some point in their lives.
They will have to face that and go through a process of deep grieving, maybe even rage at having gotten disconnected from who they really were. And if they can get that far, then they're going to have to find a way to backtrack and reclaim that and re-engage that person who they actually are. In the process of doing that, it will be necessary to admit that much of what they've been up to as an adult has been a waste of their time and energy. It is not easy to reinvent yourself as an adult if a long time ago you departed from your authentic self. It's hard emotionally. It's hard, practically, and it could be hard financially if you're in a job that's a good paying job you've been doing for years but you hate it.
Ask a parent who has left themselves behind at some point who now has a kid who's trying to naturally live and pursue their purpose. It's a very difficult situation for a parent to be in, because they either have to reverse and admit they've been way off course or a little bit off course for a long time, or they have to shut their own kid down. They either have to face what happened to them and do the hard, deep work of reclaiming their essential self, or they have to shut their own kid down and divert their child from being as alive as their kid is when they are connected to themselves. As long as the child is allowed to be fully alive in the presence of the adult who abandoned themselves, it's going to be a living reminder of what they missed and what they gave up.
Purpose, passion and practice are the core of the follow through formula.
All three of these need to be present together in order for us to reach this goal of following through on what matters most. It's a big ask. It's a big piece of work. We could say it's a life's work for a human being to line themselves up and learn how they can stay in that position to continue to put their energy toward what matters most and feed it and to serve it ongoingly. It's the greatest joy for a human being to live from that space.
As I’ve mentioned, I've created this guide that will help you to find your hidden purpose. And like I said before, I'm not going to tell you the subtitle, because the subtitle gives away some of the fun of what happens in this guide. It's really cool! You should go get it. It's at gamesforconfidence.com/purpose. Get the guide. Download it. And when you open the guide, make sure you don't skip ahead in the guide because it sequentially leads you through a process. Each step provides information you need to know before you get to what comes next in the guide. I walk you through some very specific questions that will help you get some insight into what your purpose really is.
What lights somebody up always winds up being something very simple and very straight ahead.
I'll give you an example of a very good friend of mine. I've known this person for years, a very generous, kind hearted person who has spent a lot of time studying in the areas of spirituality and various facets of human development. Professionally, this person is an editor and has edited dozens and dozens of books on the subjects of personal development and spirituality. But what this person has never done is published their own material. I have been asking this person for years, “When are you going to write your own book? There's a book inside of you. You've been studying this stuff for years. You're a practitioner, you practice it in your life. Growth is important to you. When are you going to write your own book?”
This person is a classic introvert, somebody who just really likes to keep to themselves, does not like being the center of attention, doesn't like serving as any kind of visible example or teacher or guide to people. Even though people say to her all the time that her presence and her company is very, very valuable. She has lots of conversations with people, and she's sought out by friends of hers for conversations because they always feel very heard and guided with a form of wisdom, and people feel seen by her.
Just in the last few years, this woman finally decided she was going to try and write something. I've been helping her with this process, so I've seen many iterations of what she started to try and write about. It's been all over the map. She's come up with many different ideas, a lot of which I have seen, many of which I haven't even seen. And it wasn't until she hit upon a subject matter which is so simple and so straight ahead and so completely integral to who she essentially is, that all the pieces fell into place.
What she's now writing about is kindness. Simple, basic kindness toward other human beings and specifically about being kind to strangers. When she hit on this topic she realized that every cell in her body was resonating with it, with the need for all of us to start being more kind to each other, especially when we're out in public and just encountering each other as strangers.
She knew what a difference it would make if we were more open and more inviting of interaction with each other, and that this is sorely needed in our world.
She's written a book, and the book is called Smiling at Strangers. It expresses a simple, simple idea, and it is full of stories. But get this: the stories that are in the book are stories about her breaking a lifelong contract that she's had with herself to keep her head down, keep her eyes on her feet, not engage with other people, and just get to the store and back in one piece without feeling ashamed or embarrassed because she spoke up and said something to a stranger. She put her attention on a purpose and discovered it through the process of committing to write something of value. She realized that this was so important to her that she had to start doing it.
She started practicing this, going out for walks and engaging strangers with a smile, with a comment, with a gesture, a wave of a hand. And in doing so, she started to discover a liberated life force inside of her that is bringing her to life in a way that she has never experienced throughout her whole lifetime.
Based on this simple idea and sharing it she found her purpose.
It showed up through a feeling in her that we should be more kind to each other, just a little bit more generous and acknowledging of the other human beings that we coexist with on the planet. That's what she's doing. The part I didn't tell you about this person is that this person is my mother. This is my mom I'm talking about.
She is discovering a whole new phase of life at 83 years of age. The benefits to her are tremendous. It's so inspiring to watch. But not only that, in the process of breaking this familial contract to stay small and invisible and not be seen, she's liberating others as well. This has had a tremendous impact on me, and she and I have been doing this for years, trading big leaps back and forth and inspiring each other. It's so much fun. It's such a joy to do this with my own mom again!
I didn't know I was going to talk about my mom in this podcast. But here we are. And I know she's listening. So, Mom, way to go! Yay! I'm so happy to know you.
What I want for you dear listener is what I want for me. That's what I want for my mom and my dad, my brother and his family, and all of my kids, my wife, my close friends. I want all the people I know and love to live from purpose, because what else are we here to do? I don't think we really fear death. I think most of us fear being fully alive. When we're fully alive, death isn't even an issue anymore, because we are ready to go at any time because we've done our job.
When we're doing what we came here to do, once that piece is in place, death is no longer an issue.
What we are really scared of is being fully alive and fully seen because that's vulnerable place to be in. We can get hurt when we're allowing ourselves to be seen. But gosh, the alternative to not letting ourselves be fully seen is so much worse than the hurt of being rejected or criticized or judged. So have courage.
Have courage, people, whoever you are, whoever you are listening to this. Live the real you, follow through on you. And if I can help you do that in any way, shape or form, I would love to. It would be my privilege and my honor to support you. This is Rick Lewis with Episode 14 of The Follow Through Formula Podcast. Thank you for listening, and I will be back tomorrow. Game on!