Four Stages Of Remembering Your Purpose
How do I know if I’m living my life’s purpose?
From time to time, we may all start to wonder if we are living out our life’s purpose, or fulfilling our potential. We may wonder what it really means to live our purpose and if its something everyone can achieve. I wrote about the many ways we are already living our life’s purpose here.
In this article, which is based on this episode of The Guided Collective Podcast (if you’d prefer to listen), I’ll explain how you are already living out your purpose— even if it doesn't feel like it. We are always living our our life’s purpose, but we may need to change how we think of it. Rather than a final destination, we could see our purpose as an ever-unfolding pathway, upon which there are four stages.
There are four stages of remembering our purpose
Below are the four stages of living on purpose, and each of these stages is not only important, but part of the soul’s journey. We have to go through the early phases of feeling “off-path” before we truly feel like we are living on purpose. We are not just living on purpose in the last phase! We are on purpose in the first three phases as well.
PHASE ONE OF REMEMBERING YOUR PURPOSE: Releasing what's not working
In this stage, we are likely to feel anger, frustration, disconnection, and disillusion. You’re likely wondering if you’re “off-path”, or that you’re missing something to unlock your life’s full potential. This is incredibly useful and an important part, even if it can be a little uncomfortable. Your mind will likely be screaming at you to take action, because it thinks you’re off-purpose or off-path, or unproductive — but to soul, we're right on track.
In this phase, we must focus on connection— with yourself, your intuition, and to listen where maybe before you weren't listening. But changing our perspective, we begin to see the discomfort, frustration, roadblocks, challenges and resistance is a brand new way. We spend time on this in 90 Days of the Guidance Practice, where we see the Universe communicating to us through a feedback loop, showing us what our blocks and resistance really means.
The focus here is on the clearing and the healing. It's about letting go. It's about releasing who and what is not working. This will often feel like you're systematically moving through every corner of your life and questioning it. This is often where you will be making choices or life is going to bring you choices such as a significant change in your job or in your career. It may be a significant health concern. It may be loss or grief of someone or something in your life. It's often where some sort of big impact happens in our life that's asking us to change. In Living Intuitively, I guide you through this process of peeling back the False Self, to reveal the True Self.
PHASE TWO OF REMEMBERING YOUR PURPOSE: Discovering what is working
Now, we truly begin to follow our intuition, not just as something to help guide a step by step in our outer world, but we actually realise the value of allowing it to go or to lead us inwards. In this phase, we're really recognising that the work is an inside job and we commit to the Inner Work.
This phase brings more guidance to have fun, to create new stimulus, meet new people etc. It’s a phase creative trial and error and trying new things and pleasure for pleasure's sake. If you’re trying new things, experimenting, trying new classes, making new friends it’s a good sign you’re in this phase. This is a stage of curiosity and childlike innocence and of following the breadcrumbs.
Fun can abound here… but if we haven't done the work in the first phase, this phase doesn't really take us anywhere.
A support I often recommend to people in this stage is Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.
PHASE THREE OF REMEMBERING YOUR PURPOSE: Embedding the new reality
Once we’ve cleared out what wasn't working, and we've experimented with many new ideas, concepts, people etc, we will hopefully have restored with a certain zing and excitement of the new. Here, we are now likely to remember and enter the third phase. This is where we start to realise that there's the beginning of an idea, an interest, a buried talent. Maybe we start to see, “Hey, this could be a business or this could be a really viable side project,” but it's kind of only a seedling.
Think of this as that deeper calling or the vision, a realisation that sets in. In this phase, you don't necessarily have all the answers or all the steps. It's also where your head is going to want to rush in and take this idea and run with it. But really this phase is like the conception. And this is what I would call the conception of your soul seed.
“Your soul seed is really that big calling or feeling. The important thing that has to be birthed through you and from you and out into the world.”
To give our soul seed the best chance of blooming and flourishing, the first couple of phases are imperative. In those phases, to use the gardening analogy, you're really turning the soil, clearing it of the previous harvest in preparation for the new seeds you want to plant. Maybe it's even multiple seeds! And so you want to see what is going to take hold, so you will probably start putting a lot of effort into ensuring that the seed that you want to take hold is nourished, that it has the resources, energy etc it needs.
Working with my clients on their soul seed is one of my favourite things to do —if you’re at this stage, check out my private mentoring and Soul Seed VIP Days.
PHASE FOUR OF REMEMBERING YOUR PURPOSE: Living on Purpose
Ahhh! The holy grail… This is the phase we're all sort of idolising. We may think this phase is the pinnacle, but by itself, it's not the be all and end all. And it won’t mean much without those first three incredibly important and purposeful phases.
Now, when we reach the phase of truly living on purpose, there's a new normal. It's where that seedling, that calling the truth effectively of who we are, is the driving force.
“When we’re living on purpose, we’re truly guided by the feeling and the sensation of the purpose itself. ”
Our seedling begins to flourish, perhaps as a thriving project, business or momentum. Here your soul seed has bloomed and it's blossoming — but it still needs a lot of support to nurture it and grow it. Of course, our soul’s seed doesn't have to be a book or a business or a message or a movement; it may be the way you're parenting your children or the way you're showing up in your community. But in the work that I do with people, I like to work with those who are creating it in a way like a business, a project, or some bigger offering.
Now, our expression becomes important. We must show up as our True Self. We have to move through our vulnerabilities and move through old beliefs and old limitations to take what we have inside and bring it outwards. So those first few phases are really taking us inwards and then we're coming outwards with whatever is being alchemised within.
What stage of my purpose am I in?
Here are a few ways to know which of the four stages of remembering your purpose you might be in:
First and foremost, trust your intuition. Do a little check in and intuitively feel which stage you might be in. Did one of these phases really jump out to you? If so, it's a pretty good chance that that is the phase that you're in.
Ask your Spiritual Support Team in meditation for guidance. They're only going to be more than happy to talk to you about this.
You may like to pull some oracle cards to determine what phase you're in. As I explain in this episode of The Guided Collective podcast, certain cards from The Little Sage Oracle Card deck provide clues as to which phase you’re in. And if you do need help on working with the cards and understanding how to maximise them, my Mastery of the Oracle course could be a great help for you.
There's an ebb and a flow. There's a back and a forth. Sometimes we can have an inkling of our soul seed while we're still doing the clearing work. Just remember:
being present to this moment, being present to who and what is here is always purposeful;
you are not alone or off track.
you are exactly where you need to be.
Want help to live out your purpose?
No matter which phase you’re in, let me support and guide you to remember your purpose.
