So many people spend so much of their lives asking, Who am I? What am I doing here? Searching for their purpose in the world. They look for it in books and in classrooms and in seminars. They look for it in other people, on social media, in the news. They look for it at the beach or in the desert or in the mountains of Nepal. Some people get so caught up in the looking that even if the skies parted and a golden scroll descended from the heavens reading, HERE IS YOUR PURPOSE, they wouldn’t even see it.
It makes for great storytelling. Every great book or movie is about someone on a journey of self-discovery. Over the course of a few hundred pages or a couple of hours on the big screen, we follow our hero through trials and tribulations, and in the end all becomes clear. It would be awesome if life worked out like it does in the movies, but there’s a reason they call it make-believe.
So let's just rip the band-aid off right now: You have no purpose. There is no magical force that’s going to speak to you and tell you what you should do with your life. If you want to find yourself all you have to do is look in the mirror. I promise, you're not lost; you're right there. You don’t need to toil endlessly in the pursuit of finding your purpose and finding yourself because everything you need is right there, staring back at you. At IMS, we train people to stop searching for their purpose and start Naming one for themselves. Let me tell you something, it's way more empowering, and it saves a heck of a lot of time (and trips to Nepal).
Here’s the thing, when you read those books and watch those movies, you’ll find that nine out of ten times, the thing the main character is looking for was right there in front of them all the time. I find the same to be true with so many of the people I train. They’re so wrapped up in finding the thing that’s going to direct them toward purpose that they don’t see the purpose they’re looking for is right in front of their nose. They haven’t learned how to see and, more importantly, how to name it for themselves.
When clients struggle in this area, I often recommend our Power of Intuition course. There’s no greater tool for finding, naming, and fulfilling purpose than your own intuition. Unfortunately, I find that most people tend to lump intuition together with things like deja vu or a funny feeling in your stomach or a tingling in your spine. Strange, maybe even mystical sensations and feelings that happen to us from the outside, that we have no control over. But that’s not intuition. Intuition is not a mystical experience or phenomenon. It is a higher brain function that all of us can access at any time. You just have to train it.
Most people will say things like, “I’m just going to trust my intuition.” Like it’s something that’s happening to them. And they might even have moments where they are accessing intuition but, because they don’t really understand what intuition is and how it works, I would argue they are usually mistaking another emotional response for intuition. A “gut feeling” is not intuition. It’s more than likely just your nervous system responding to something it perceives as a threat. When we learn how to train it, Intuition works more like a spotlight, showing us things we might have otherwise missed.
Here’s a simple example: I’ve always been a car guy, sports cars in particular, but I’ve never been a truck guy. I can tell you anything about a Ferrari or a Porsche or a Corvette, but when it came to trucks I knew there were big ones and even bigger ones. That’s about it. Then I moved to Colorado. The first snow of my first winter, I walked out to find my BMW 3 Series literally buried under the snow. Suddenly I needed a truck.
Because I do things the way I do things I started to research. I learned the different makes and models, the differences in engine power and performance, the advantages and disadvantages of All Wheel Drive versus 4 Wheel Drive, I mean I took a deep dive into this stuff. The next several days, I’m driving around, and suddenly there are trucks everywhere. There’s a Tundra. Oh there’s an F-150. And that’s a…what the hell? Was there a surprise run on trucks? Because all of sudden, I’m looking around and all I see are trucks!
Now of course there were no more trucks on the road in those few days than there had been the week before. So what was going on? Well, there’s a whole bunch of sciency stuff behind it that we cover in depth in the Power of Intuition course, but for our purposes here, before I needed one of my own, trucks just weren’t on my radar. I simply didn’t notice them. 99% of what we’re exposed to on a daily basis just gets eliminated or dumped into our subconscious because the brain decides it’s not relevant to what we’re doing or what we’re focused on. But when I started to do the research, when I put my focus on learning about trucks, I turned on that spotlight of Intuition. It took the information I was feeding it and it went to work on my behalf saying, “Hey Joey, there’s a truck! Hey look, there’s another truck!”
Like I said, it’s a simple example. Naming and fulfilling your life’s purpose is going to be a little more complex than deciding between a long bed and a short bed. But the principle is the same. You can choose any area of life and learn to access intuition to work on your behalf. It just needs three key things to work: Obsessive Focus, Emotional Importance, and Time Investment. Once I realized I needed a truck, I became laser focused on doing the research. It was emotionally important that I could get out of my driveway in the morning and not lose my job. Time investment in the case wasn’t so much about the amount of time invested but how I used the time I had. It was the first snow, still another month maybe until we were really socked in. But rather than wait until the last minute and make a hasty, uninformed decision, I used the time to do the research and make sure I was creating the best outcome.
Intuition went to work helping me to find a truck because I made finding a truck important. In our Power of Intuition training, one of the very first questions we explore is, What's important to you? Take a minute and think about it. Where does your mind go? What do you love? What lights you up? Think of what you're good at, what satisfies you, what's important to you, what you have to contribute to the world. Most of the time, people look for their purpose as it relates to their career or service role, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be literally anything that fills you with excitement and inspiration.
Maybe running is really your thing. You’re into the science of it, the health and nutrition around it, you run a couple marathons a year. Is there a purpose there to be fulfilled? Sure, why not? If we want to frame it in the context of career, there are all kinds of ways to use your passion as a way to make a living. You could write about running. You could go into sports medicine, working specifically with runners. You could be a trainer or be a coach. The point is, once you name the thing you're passionate about and you start to put your focus there, your intuition will come on line and point you in directions you might not even have considered before.
Maybe you’re crazy about photography. Or cars. Or geography. Or rocks. Look, I don’t know what you’re into but I bet you can name at least one key thing that you love. Something that really lights you up. Doesn’t matter what it is, the same ideas apply. Name it as your purpose, own it, and put your focus on it. Make the fulfillment of it your vision. Do the research, get to work building a database of information that will inform your intuition. Keep that emotional importance front and center. And understand that you’re going to have to put in the time. Fulfilling your life’s purpose isn’t going to happen overnight and it isn’t going to be handed to you. But you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. We've got a killer set of tools, techniques, and strategies that will support you to bridge the gap from where you are to where you want to go.
So let’s get busy. Let’s find that thing that sparks a fire. Let’s get the intuition tuned up and working on your behalf. And let’s start creating a life of purpose and fulfillment. Click here to learn more about the Power Series and sign up for some training today!