What is Your Life Purpose?

by Richard Schultz

May 27, 2011

Why Are You Here?

One of the most powerful motivators in our lives comes from a sense of purpose and meaning. It breathes life into us and sustains us through every trial. It makes a life worth living, no matter what our condition. Life purpose goes beyond a role, a job or a career. It comes from a deeper sense of life meaning. It is an essence that is uniquely yours. It contains the secret to living a life that is fulfilled… your life well lived. Everyone has a purpose!

Project yourself to the end of your life. Perhaps you are 80 or 90 years old looking back on your life. Imagine from there that you have spent your whole life doing what you do now. From that perspective, are you satisfied with your life and your accomplishments? If not, it may be time to change. Maybe it is time to create a life and work that is fulfilling, meaningful and connected to your "purpose essence". If you relate everything to your purpose, work or play, it adds up to a life well lived with few regrets.

What is your purpose?

How do you find out what it is?

What is that unique energy within you that has come to express itself in this life?

From the beginning, our purpose has always been there, waiting for us to discover it. It has an emergent nature that is ready to reveal itself when I am ready to accept it and commit to it. Over the years it deepens in its clarity. Life purpose is also connected to the question of "Who are you really?" from our last blog.

Life is full of clues about what our purpose is. In early life, many of us knew the essence of our purpose, but we may have pushed it aside because of various fears or experiences that took us off track. But that is OK. The purpose flame will never go out until our own life flame is extinguished. There is always enough time to light that spark and consciously walk our path with purpose.

Is it Time to Light Your Flame? Here are some suggestions …

1. Commit to discovering your purpose. "Ask within" for the directions to the source, and then follow where you are led. Your committed heart will show you the path and resources. Be curious!
2. Look for information on the subject. Search the internet or go to a local book store and ask for suggestions. Find a book or two that resonates with you. It is likely to have lots of questions and exercises in it to inspire your self discovery.
3.  Consider hiring a Life Coach. Purpose discovery is part of many life coaching programs because it is so fundamental to our life fulfillment and motivation.  It helps to have the right questions and the experience of a coach to take you deeper into this fundamental life question. In WisdomWays Life Coaching, discovering purpose is one of the fundamental building blocks of our program.

What is Your Life Purpose?

Questions for Reflection

Do you know your purpose? If so, are you living it?

If you knew your true life purpose, how might it change your life?

What steps could you commit to now to find or follow your purpose?

Categories: General Interest  |  Self Discovery  |  Purpose  |  spirituality  |  Transformation
Tags: self knowledge  |  Purpose  |  transformation

Finding Out Who We REALLY Are!

by Richard Schultz

April 17, 2011

A Fundamental Life Question

From my early teens, I noticed a "still small voice" inside of me that whispered "Find out who you really are!" I didn't even know exactly what that meant, but I knew it was an important question. However, I was "busy". Busy deciding who I would "appear to be" to the world. In fact, I had been doing that all my life… building identities for myself. With every life experience I had, I would make a decision about who I was and who I wasn't. "I am that!" or "I am not that!" However, with each choice of who I was or who I was not, I seemed to move farther and farther away from discovering who I actually was! Until one day I decided to listen to and follow that voice.

But really, who am I? Who are you? 

Imagine an actor playing an important part very well. Perhaps he gets so deep into the role, that at some level when he is playing the part, he totally becomes that new persona. That new identity is channeled through him. For a moment, he forgets who he really is. Eventually, he does wake from the role and goes back to who he really is … something outside of and beyond the role he just played.

 Who is this "actor" that plays in this reality, this "world"?

Shakespeare said, "All the world is a play, and we are mere actors". Most of us are so caught up in the drama of life that we have forgotten that we are actors and that we have choices of how we are going to play our part. Consider that at some level, we might have even chosen the script that we are playing! The trick of life is to figure out how to become conscious again …of who we really are, behind all our masks!

How do we find out who we really are?

No one else can tell us or show us who we really are. However, we each have the perfect path to the answer within us! It is a personal path that brings us to clarity and "knowing of it". It is an unfolding of life that mysteriously gets designed exclusively for us. Life has this intelligence to guide us, but the key is in the asking. 

A Process for Your Self Discovery...

1. Let go of old beliefs or ideas of who you think you are or who you were told you were.
2. Personally commit to answer this question for yourself.
3. Ask within yourself "Who am I?" Ask with an expectation that you will be shown the way.
4. Be open to when and how your answers may come. Let go to the time-frame of how long it may take.
   • Your path could consist of a mixture of small steps and big ones
   • The steps may come from your intuition, or from signs in your outer experience or from dreams.
   • Each revelation will have a "quality" to it that you will come to recognize.
   • There will be lessons along the way. Embrace them & capture the wisdom of the experience.
   • Remember, that just when you think you are totally lost, you may be the closest you have ever been.
   • Be open to receive.
   • Trust
5. Courageously follow your inspired guidance by taking the actions revealed to you.
6. Allow for a continuous evolution and deepening of the answer. Just when you think you have finally arrived, consider that you may be just at a rest-stop along the way. Remember that the journey is as important as a destination.
7. Celebrate each revelation of who you really are!

This journey is the most exciting, miraculous and rewarding adventure we will ever take. However, it is not without its perils. Our ego has every trick in the book to keep us asleep and attached to our life dramas. As we finally notice each lie that we have been telling ourselves, it can be momentarily painful. However, as that painful moment passes, there is a joyous new freedom in being a little more in our authentic self.

If you get a little stuck, consider reaching out to people with some experience and skills to empower you to be free once again. All of humanity has a vested interest in each of us discovering our authentic selves.

   Who are you? Really...

Questions for Reflection

Have you noticed a calling within you to answer this question for yourself?

Are you consciously following a path of self discovery?

What have you learned so far? 

What is your next step? 

Fly With Me!

Categories: Self Discovery
Tags: self knowledge  |  who am I  |  authentic self  |  transformation

Becoming the Butterfly

by Richard Schultz

Aug 13, 2010

The Butterfly is a powerful symbol for Transformation!

At just the right time, the caterpillar spins its chrysalis and going inside this dark chamber for a time, it emerges a new being with wings to fly and beauty that attracts and inspires all the set their eyes on it. The butterfly symbolizes for us possibility potential and freedom.

What if we were butterflies?

• What if we could emerge from every life experience or situation, no matter how dark it may appear, transformed and renewed by it?
• What if every experience was just pure potential for growth ... a transformation capsule in time, a chrysalis that we could emerge from with beauty, grace and wings to fly?
• What if life was intelligently interacting & collaborating with us to teach us to become "butterflies"?

I have had a passion for transformation for over 20 years. An inner voice has continued to call me towards my own emergence and personal discovery. Many times I have resisted emerging from the seemingly safe confines of my own "chrysalis", afraid to encounter a greater truth. I have been afraid of what might happen if I let go of my old beliefs or identity. However, whenever I did; whenever I allowed the "transformation chamber" of my life experience to renew and refresh my spirit, I have emerged more free, more colourful and more in my essential essence of love.

This is my first blog in a series of blogs on personal transformation... about becoming butterflies with each experience of life. The blog and my website will present knowledge, tips, hints, stories, techniques and resources to use our life experience as the alchemy for our self discovery and transformation. From time to time, we all enter the seemingly dark experiences of our own chrysalis. The question is whether we emerge from that chamber or not. If we do emerge, are we be able to spread our wings and fly or are we crippled and bitter from the experience.

It is my hope that these blogs will inspire you to discover your essential essence, and once there, to pollinate the world with your passion, purpose and light. It is also my hope that you will co-create this experience with me as you also share your stories and gifts with me. I look forward to your light blending with mine on this journey to joy.

We are Butterflies!

Questions for Reflection

What life experiences have brought you your greatest learning and growth?

In your "darkest times", what has helped you to emerge, learn and fully let go?

Are there some life experiences that you never fully let go of that still hold you in a pattern of anger, saddness or guilt? 

If you knew you were a butterfly, what would you change and where would you fly now?

Fly with me!

Categories: Transformation
Tags: transformation

1 Comment     Comments

Sue Marlatt, Fort McMurray, Alberta , August 22, 2010 at 12:09 AM | Reply Beautifully put Richard! I believe I am in the chrysalis stage once again. I have learned over the years to have patience and trust and to know that there will be an amazing transformation after a so called painful cocoon period. I am trusting that, once again, as my amazing husband who I have spent 19 amazing years with has just passed away and emerged as a beautiful spirit in another dimension. I have definitely had some fairly 'dark moments' in the last six months, however, through it all I trusted in the Divine and knew that everything was exactly as it should be. The Universe only gives me gifts. It is up to me to 'unwrap' them so as I said good-bye to my husband's 'physical form' I also said Thank You to God as I know I will only grow from this amazing experience. In order to 'unwrap' the gifts I receive, I have to let go of all expectation and totally emerge myself in gratitude. Did I feel anger, sadness and guilt through any of this? Of course - for a second, and then I chose another thought, one that brings me opportunities to grow and to fly instead of crippling myself and my family. And to reflect on your fourth question, if I knew I was a butterfly, I would just let go and trust - trust the wind to take me to where I need to be at this very moment, trust the strength of my wings and the wisdom of my inner knowing to take me to the next stage - to the next chrysalis to emerge yet again as an even stronger, more beautiful butterfly - forever evolving, forever grateful! I am so blessed.....