This morning I woke up and I KNEW my purpose...

This morning I woke up and I KNEW my purpose. I thought I knew it before today, but a series of events have brought me to absolute clarity.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I was contacted by a friend from primary school after more than 30 years. She and I were best friends from the ages of 8 and 13.

I also attended a webinar about purpose, from which I took a number of things but the one that had the greatest impact was this; 'think about your 7-14 year old self, what did you love to do, what did you spend your time doing most?'.

The third was a moment of relaxation and listening to an audio book. The book 'The Midnight Library' finds the protagonist in a library in which she can choose infinite different lives that she could have lived if she had made different choices. She was there because she was full of 'what if's'. 'What if I had given my all to becoming an olympic swimmer?'. 'What if I had never left that band and had stuck with my music?'. 'What if I had stayed with that man and followed his dreams?'. I'm sure that will resonate for more than one of us.

It got me to thinking about my own 'what if's?'. What if my Dad hadn't moved us away from Oxfordshire and the school I was doing well in? Would I have left school with great exam results, gone to college and to university and done a degree, instead of finding myself leaving a broken home at 16 and starting work in order to pay the rent on my bedsit?

Would I have friends that I was still in touch with now from school, college and university instead of having moved so many times that my friendships were always fleeting?

Would I have followed my childhood dream to be a writer?

That was the moment.

I have talked about being a writer for my whole life. When I was little (aged 7-13 + the rest probably!) I used to share a bedroom with my sisters and every night I would tell them stories straight from my imagination. These stories were inspired by anything and everything. I would make up stories about the characters on our wallpaper, about the animals in the countryside surrounding us, about the fairies 'up the garden'. I was always a story teller.

As I got older I started making 'radio shows'. I would interview my sisters, play records and share news stories and record them on a cassette deck. I loved to sing because I loved the stories in the songs and I loved to use my voice, the only instrument I ever learnt to use! I read everything I could lay my hands on and my best results at school were always for the creative and written pieces I produced.

In recent years I have written dozens of published articles, all unpaid, simply for the love of writing. I have started 3 novels and a non-fiction work. I am going to finish them now, I believe in myself and I now know that I can and will.

And strangely, I was having a conversation with my soon-to-be husband recently and telling him how much I used to love dealing with customers complaints, I loved to reassure and gentle them with well crafted words. Words are wonderful, powerful and magical when they are used well, and I started to see all these dots joining up.

How had I never made these connections before? I spend my working and personal life thinking and talking about this stuff and I have been saying 'I was born to be a trainer because I have been training all my life'.

Correction, I was born to be a story teller and to use that story telling gift to share what I have learnt with others. THAT is my purpose.

Leaving Oxfordshire, not going to University, working from aged 16 in all sorts of crappy jobs, none of that changes my purpose.

The work I do now is all about writing, I develop content and I share it with people using my voice. I absolutely love what I do, provided I am focused on those things, the writing and the sharing.

So you can be living your purpose simply by using your gifts in a job that might not be obviously connected. I now realise that I am doing exactly that. I am not a professional writer, but I am using my gifts and that's why I love my work.

So, this morning I woke up and I knew my purpose. And if I needed further proof of this being what I am for, I felt as if I was being pulled magnetically from my bed to my desk, compelled to write, my fingers flexed with the need to get my thoughts onto the page.

I have said so many times in my life 'it's weird, its like the words come straight out of my fingertips without me knowing what I am going to write'.

And so, here I sit at 5.30am (I rarely drag myself out of bed before 8am!) and I am writing, and it feels wonderful

This is the first piece I have written for me. I am sharing it with you because you might be wondering what you are 'for' too, and I want you to know it will come. And when it does, you will realise that you always knew it.

Sara Ballinger