A great professional goal is to love what you do and feel invigorated by doing it. I, personally, am constantly evolving my career so it meets (or comes close to) these objectives daily. There were times in my life, however, when this goal was definitely out of reach. During my medical training I experienced several episodes of burnout, with fatigue, disenchantment, and an intermittently despairing mood. This caused me to embark upon a multi-year mission to heal myself and transform my career into something I could genuinely love and successfully manage without losing my balance.
When we are young, we are no stranger to resilience. As children, we are constantly trying new things — such as sports, games, and creative activities — meeting new people, and putting ourselves out there to form lasting friendships. But, as we get older and into adulthood, we start to lose a little bit of resilience. And, on top of that, we have a lot more responsibilities, worries, pressures, and roles than we did as kids.
For many of us, our 20s can be an era of utter confusion. Pressure from all angles of life including uncertainty towards our career path, unbalanced relationships, and financial struggles appear to be thrown at us faster than a 90-mph baseball pitch. It’s as though the world is grabbing us by the shoulders and shaking us to say, “wake up, your life is about to begin.”
You can access every gift that the spiritual path opens up. Some of these gifts are well known, others are hidden. It might never occur to you, for example, that resilience is a spiritual quality. Resilience is the same as being flexible; it is the opposite of being rigid or stuck. In Buddhism resilience is defined by a simple image: in a storm, the grass bends with the wind while the mighty tree is blown over.
Todo el mundo tiene un propósito en la vida, y dentro de ese propósito se encuentra un talento único que espera ser expresado y compartido con el mundo. Si alguna vez has visto a alguien viviendo el propósito de su vida, es inspirador ver que exudan felicidad. Tener la misma experiencia para ti es pura felicidad. Si no has encontrado tu propósito, está bien, lo harás. Después de todo, es tu derecho de nacimiento.
Una de las formas menos discutidas pero más poderosas de alinearte con tu verdadero propósito es identificar y liberar los desencadenantes emocionales que te están ralentizando y desviándote del rumbo.
Deepak Chopra has notably said, “There are no accidents … there is only some purpose that we haven’t yet understood.”
Everywhere you look in my area (the southeastern United States), the 90s are back. The sundresses with little flowers on them, chunky white tennis shoes, and even cartoon nostalgia printed on sweatshirts and backpacks. These bucket hats are lighting up a part of me that I had long forgotten. A part of me that I worked so hard to cover up as bills, responsibility, and taxes got in the way. My guess is that this part of me reflects a part of you that you have also numbed out to or simply judged and shoved away.
Do you have an answer when you ask yourself the question, “What’s my purpose?”
"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?" - Zhuangzi
