The Power of Purpose

I was working at a catering company as the sales lead when the Pandemic hit. I was the main point of contact for all of our corporate clients. During the week leading up to the lockdowns, our calendar of events was shredded. I left work Friday and never worked a day in that office again.

As I collected unemployment, I doubled down on my education. I dove into everything that sparked my curiosity, anything that helped me make sense of the world around me and what was happening. I paid mentors to help me learn more quickly.

I was still working for the catering company, but by August 2020, I felt the pull to fully commit to myself and my business. I had more and more astrology clients and wanted to give all of myself to this emerging passion.

As I told a friend of mine,?“I can’t afford to do anything that is not my purpose anymore”.

Unemployment checks shrank and eventually stopped. I was on my own, and I wasn’t sure, exactly, how this was going to look.

Was I an astrologer? Event organizer? Both? Where, exactly, was most of my money going to be coming from? What made me unique from everyone else doing this?

What was really motivating me?

By May 2021, I parted ways with my longtime business partner. It was undeniably the right decision, but my priorities were somewhat misguided.

“I need a website! I need a logo! I need a catchy business name!”

What I had at the time were a useful set of skills, an insatiable passion, and a commitment to learning. I had a growing email list. I was publishing blogs regularly and people were reading them. I had the respect of many of my peers, and I had a network of people who wanted to work with me.

I didn’t know?anything?about business. I was more motivated by looking like a healing entrepreneur than building a sustainable business.

A Gift of Honesty

One person, a fairly new friend to me at the time, asked me one day if I wanted some feedback on my website.

“Yes, please”

“You don’t have a ‘WHY’ on your website. What is your why? Why do you do the work that you do?”

He shared?the now infamous Simon Sinek Ted Talk?and proceeded to show me how I was prioritizing image over substance.

I had a website with cool sacred geometry and a handy collection of all the things that I did, but it wasn’t clear to anyone why any of it mattered.

“No amount of sacred geometry can cover up the fact that you don’t have a clear WHY”

Naturally, I lashed out.

After some careful conversation, I came around and recognized that he was right. He had been honest with me, something that was, frankly, outside the scope of the relationship for most people I knew.

Everyone else I asked said the website was “great”. It wasn’t their fault. When I ask shit questions like, “What do you think about my website?”, I am doomed to get shit answers.

I should have asked, “Why didn’t you book with me on the spot after seeing my website?”

“Is it clear what I am offering?”

“Is it obvious why someone who doesn’t know me would want to work with me?”

The Process

After some avoidance, I eventually bought Simon Sinek’s online course to find my WHY. The modules were fine, but I needed more. I needed someone to push me in deeper, to help me dig through my unconscious memories.

I hired my friend to guide me through the process. He had developed a program built on top of Simon’s that was more in depth and went deeper. It integrated Astrology, The Gene Keys, shadow work, and non-violent communication with Simon’s work.

Through the process of telling the story of my highs and my lows - what he called moments of Outrageous Love and Outrageous Pain - I began to understand what I really care about, and why that matters.

After finishing the work with my friend, though, I didn’t quite feel confident in my WHY yet. I would tell it to people, and most people didn’t get it.

So I revisited the Simon Sinek course and began reading all of his books - Start With Why, The Infinite Game, Leaders Eat Last. I was missing?something, but I didn’t know what it was.

What Do I Believe?

Simon talks a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr. The amazement that one man could move so many people to March on Washington and spark a cultural revolution - without the aid of the internet - clearly sparked his curiosity.

“MLK didn’t give the, ‘I Have a Plan’, speech. He had a?dream.” Sinek speaks and writes. He inspired people because they?believed what he believed.

So, I sat down and began to contemplate what I believe. Out of a rambling page or two, I distilled these couple of sentences:

“I believe that everyone has a unique purpose and yearns to actualize that purpose. I believe that purpose is intrinsically of service to all and supports the actualization of human potential. I believe that life wants to live passionately and that passion is our guide. I believe that we are supposed to live alive.”

My purpose has nothing to do with Astrology, men’s work, The Gene Keys, or Yoga.

Those are what I do, they are not?why I am here.

Why am I here?

So now, with the work of Simon Sinek integrated, the stories integrated, and my own contemplations woven in, I came up with a single statement that captures the essence of my purpose.

I am here to empower others to live with passion and purpose so that, together, we can embody what is sacred to us.

All that work. This was over 6 months of labor. Meeting with this guide every month or so, trying to pick everything apart then put it all back together again. The process he guided me through was robust and painstakingly thorough. It added value to my understanding and helped to illuminate why certain memories left a distinct impression.

His process integrated Human Design, The Gene Keys, Astrology, and more.

Some of the sessions were 3+ hours. I felt exhausted by the work at times.

This is?mine?now though.

Still, if most people had to go through something like this, I don’t think they would.

What was the impact?

Meanwhile, my coaching business just…kind of…happened. I didn’t set out to become a coach, and yet I ended up with regular coaching clients. Most of them met me through events I had done or were referred to me and were looking for purpose. The work revealed the purpose of my work.

I stripped down my website and made every word count. No more fluff. The logo I had developed didn’t feel right anymore, so I never used it. It was my own fault because I wasn’t clear on what I wanted.

I developed a process, and it worked. By seeing people clearly, introducing new techniques and habits based on what I was seeing, and helping them build a new path forward, people were changing their lives.

For my clients who worked with me long-term, I integrated the process into the work on a trial basis, to get feedback and see what worked.

The response was immediate.

Telling the stories was not only transformative, it brought a new level of clarity into everything they did. Armed with a depth of self-awareness they never thought possible, they could now confidently go out into the world and focus on what was theirs to do.

And, more importantly, ignore what was not theirs to do.

It is now clear to them what their main concerns are, what they really care about, and how to use that clarity to execute more effectively, stay focused, communicate boundaries, and build more meaningful relationships.

Existential Flexibility

For me, my purpose is why I am here.

That has to be bigger than any one thing that I do or gift that I apply. One of my greatest gifts, seeing people clearly, is absent from my purpose. It is how I will execute my purpose, it is not my purpose.

What about if my circumstances change? My purpose has to be flexible enough to allow me to adapt to new problems and scenarios. I should be able to apply my purpose almost anywhere.

It is this flexibility that allowed me to shift my focus away from spiritual and healing communities toward broader networks of people. Purpose transcends realms. You don’t have to be spiritual or on a healing journey to benefit from or place a high value on knowing and executing on your purpose.

It allows me to apply my gifts in infinite ways and in every single interaction.

I don’t need people to care about astrology, meditation, or anything mystical. I don’t have to be a coach or a healer or whatever to talk about purpose. I’m no longer pigeonholed.

Why is that important?

I have big dreams for my work. I want to have an impact that transcends 1:1 work. I want to be an agent for change at the level of culture and organization because I know that 1:1 work will not have the impact that I know the world needs.

For many, spirituality is a deeply personal issue, and they have assumptions about systems like Astrology and Yoga that would need to be overcome.

By thinking bigger and more broadly, I can actually speak to the long-term impact of these ways, and then meet people there.

By meeting people where they are, they feel more understood and more comfortable. That means I can spend less time and energy dismantling defense systems and more time talking about what really matters, anyways.

For many, myself included, these methods have been incredibly useful in clarifying their purpose. But for me, it’s not about them.

You can change everything, without changing a thing

After tinkering with the process for the last 2 years, I am excited to announce a brand new program, The Power of Purpose.

I have isolated the process into an 8-week series of 1:1 calls. That’s it. No life changes, no new habits, no big commitments.

It starts next week, and there are only 3 spots left. 20 people signed up in just one week.

There will be another cohort starting in October, so make sure you watch for the next time I launch it.

The best part?

All you have to do is show up to the calls each week

The calls?are?the work. Not only will you be transformed by the process, but you will also have a clearly articulated purpose.

And it can guide you for your entire life

50 minutes per week averages out to 7 minutes per day.

There’s no excuse.

3 spots left, and we start Monday.?More details here