The Limping Shrink Rule 3: How the route to finding your purpose may not be what you think

 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIvOtxfZt8v_lzVWcGp7dzUvzDERd5w_M7MOaHjjzLy_quHHA57ovBC5JTlq2j2gNQ2eITkXwFh696hWZ9LhYlVCNYwRi7rDTUDqwcj2EGTDADOiHgnpExo7m1kxNcRobJ7_PK4OYNem4/s683/hippos.jpeg.

Many of us are having trouble finding our true purpose. Wallowing directionless like a hippo in the river of life, envying those people who are already on their personal surfboards and easily harnessing the waves. We have a drive to express ourselves in the 'real' world outside our own heads but feel hampered by not having a clear idea of what that would look like.

We are looking for the thing that will give us the pleasure and reward of progress and make us impatient to start the day. Our talent. Our fruit. The individual unique thing that we can give back to serve the world that has grown us. 

Our culture has come up with a lot of ways to triangulate on what our true purpose might be, and an overview of these may well be in a future blog, but today I want to talk to the people who are waiting until they know what it is, or to know they are properly prepared, before going out and trying something. Today's blog is about something fundamentally important to purpose, and to expressing it in the world.

Getting the vision right first

There's this idea that some people have that you have to wait until you have the whole idea of what you are here for clearly in your mind, understand your goals for the next 20 years, and have a road map for getting there before you should take the first step out of your head and into the world. 

As if the way to learn to surf is to sit in the shallows waiting until you've worked it all out in your head and you just know that it's right.

Now when I put it like that you will have no trouble seeing that this is a misunderstanding of how self-knowledge and personal development work. Of course the self-knowledge and understanding of what's possible comes only when you experience new things, and bounce off the outside world. The learning, the growth, is in the doing.

The path of finding your purpose

So, while you might have been thinking (and many business teachers feed into this idea) the path of growth and purpose is straight or stair-like, like this:

This is only true in the most short-term sense. We have a short-term goal for which there are specific steps we can take that will get me there. 

From a greater perspective the path is an iterative process, an upward spiral that looks like this:

The first step of all is to do what's needed. We produce value for others. We are rewarded with acceptance, respect, gratitude, money, self-respect and self-understanding, and this gives us the self-knowledge, impetus and opportunities for work that is closer to what we're naturally drawn to.

Plans have an end-point, purpose discovery does not.

So as you can see, the perfect state of mastery, producing value for others with our particular talent and therefore having rewards and opportunities appear for us is not an end point, it's a continuous process, and depends on some work outside ourselves first. 

Getting onto the wobbling board and going through the struggle to stand on it is the first step.

The self-examination comes not before but during the work - how does it make you feel, what are the parts of it that give you joy or flow or intrigue you, what parts drain you, and what does your intuition say about what direction to try next?

And funnily enough, the steps you have to take to manage while you're out there on the ocean of life are exactly the steps you have to take to learn to love the life you have.

The Limping Shrink Rule 3: Dive in

So don't hold off from engaging with the world until you have reached some unattainable future state of perfect self-knowledge or clarity about your purpose. Get yourself out there into the surf, learn and gather strength and experiences. And then you can learn to ride the waves of life more and more skilfully and more and more pleasurably.

surfer-on-the-ocean-wave-during-the-sunset-120-small.jpeg from fshoq.com

Images of purpose path from https://pixabay.com/vectors/arrow-blue-handdrawn-right-310598/ and https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Simple-vortex-model_fig7_318093085 under creative commons licence

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