In the last two years, I’ve been questioning the gift of personal freedom, the gift of choosing your path. Here are the questions: out of all the paths that can be taken in a day what makes my choice the right choice? What if I made the wrong choice according to my life purpose? How can I guide myself to make the best possible choices to pursue my life purpose?
These questions used up a lot of my energy throughout the years. I was asking myself these questions without even realizing it. This showed through my anxiety, especially my fear of missing out or even through depression when I felt regret as soon as I decided on a path. I thought there was something wrong with me, it would discourage me even more. You can say I had a deep fear of failure, which also made decision making more difficult for me. I think that many people have this kind of fear, which can hinder success by staying in our comfy bubble. However, something just clicked, and I’ve never looked back.
I remember it was a month or so following the passing of my mother in law. I was starting to question everything, and I felt like I was in such a rut. I had a wonderful family, I decided to put away my career as a Social Worker to stay with my kids. I wasn’t sure if that was the best choice for me, then it led me to feel lost again and questioning why I am always questioning which choices are right for my life purpose.
I decided to read about The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, which brought some clarity. I came to the realization that I was my own guiding system and I needed to develop this system. My understanding is that we are the answer to most of our concerns from something as simple as what should we eat today to something deeper like what is our life purpose.
A light switch turned on in me after just reading a few chapters of this book, it led me to read many books including The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham by Esther and Jerry Hicks. These books all have something in common, they all share the idea that we are our best life navigators, once we become aware of it, we can learn to use our guidance system. The next few paragraphs are based on the two books mentioned above and my ideas based on my understanding of my personal growth.
How did we become oblivious to our own guidance system?
From early childhood, most of us are raised by a system that relies solely on outside influences to make the right choices for ourselves. A good example of this is when we are younger and we are forced to eat all our dinner, even what we aren’t hungry anymore. We learn at a very young age to ignore our natural instincts of satiety. This can lead to overeating as you get older, this wasn’t our parents’ intention, but something this small can have a greater impact on us. All the way through young adult life, most of us make choices according to what looks good, what are parents want and we forget to check into how we feel about it. We are the reflection of our upbringing, which certainly doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, but it is important to not be stuck in just one mindset. To expand, we need to become aware of what makes us feel good, what makes us feel right and uplifted, because in the end all the choices we make, will have a greater impact on us, not on our parents.
So, we learn from a very young age that we aren’t the wise ones and that we need to focus on listening to others, to make the right decisions for our own life. If we always make decisions based on other people’s happiness, who is taking care of your happiness? People are more likely to thrive around you if they see that you are happy and see you thriving by making your own choices. Now that we are aware that we have our own guidance system, how can we become aware of it and master it?
Bringing awareness to our guidance system
I am sure you’ve already heard the saying “Follow your gut feeling”, this is your guidance system. This is primordial for our survival, our “gut feeling” is usually never wrong. Have you ever been in a situation where you had this eerie feeling “in your gut”? Once you remove yourself from that situation, you realize that you removed yourself from a situation that could’ve been a disaster? We should be grateful to have this life navigator to help us in our daily lives. Some people have an instinct while others have lost it through the years of living through other people’s expectations.
Our guidance system has two polarities the good and the bad feeling which are often felt through our emotions. When we are thinking or talking about something that is giving us a good feeling, we are usually making a choice that is aligned with our life purpose. And if the opposite emotions come up, we should listen to it and adjust our choices to bring upon a good feeling. We can use our guidance system for anything in our lives and we should become aware of it on a daily basis, but first, we need to feel the emotion, even "bad" ones. We need to accept every emotion that comes and then be mindful of them.
How to develop of guidance system
As mentioned above the first step for developing our guidance system is by acknowledging our feelings and accepting them. Once we accept our feelings we can move on and reflect on these feelings and identify which emotions are present. Here are a few keys to master your guidance system so that you can use it to guide you towards your life purpose:
1- Being emotional intelligent
Developing your emotional intelligence is key to your guidance system because it allows a person to acknowledge their emotions but not letting it overwhelm them. When we are blocked from our own emotions, we don’t see clearly, and we can lose focus and completely make a wrong turn in our path. If we team up with our emotions, we are more likely to see the next clear path after a rocky one.
2- Mindfulness
The practice of mindfulness is all about bringing awareness to your body through mind, body, and soul. It helps to bring alignment within us and from there we are more able to make clear and conscious decisions. These days there are so many phone apps that a person can download to practice mindfulness from Headspace to Mindful Coach. I can’t put enough emphasis on the importance of practicing mindfulness to live up to your life purpose.
3- Writing exercise
A great way to utilize our guidance system is by it writing down on a piece of paper. I’ve done this many times and use it with some teenage clients living with addictions. It helps to have everything right in front of you, it can sometimes be a reality check.
a) Write down on a piece of paper: the situation, event, topic or the concern.
Ex.: Should I quit my Monday-Friday job to pursue my passion for writing?
b) Identify the emotions towards it
Nervous and Excitement
Ex: c) Identify the reasons for these emotions.
Nervous: I am nervous because it is a big risk to take, but with high-risk can come high rewards.
Excitement: I am excited about the thought of doing what I am most passionate about. I am excited about the thought of waking up in the morning and doing exactly what I want to be doing.
To Sum it up
We should utilize our own guidance system that has most likely been hiding in our back burner for quite some time due to our rooted regiment to follow direction and guidance from the “wiser” adults. Furthermore, bringing awareness to our guidance system is the first step to utilizing it for the benefit of our life purpose.
Finally, my understanding of my life purpose is to do everything that guides me towards positive feelings, in other words, I follow my good feelings in everything that I do. I accept negative emotions as they come, but I don’t ruminate too long on them. I often do the writing exercise to bring purpose to the negative emotions which help to clear my path and make room for more positive experiences.
Now start mastering your own guidance system to pursue your true-life purpose.
Thank you taking the time to read this article and please feel free to share your knowledge or comment