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This afternoon I had a luscious time sitting on my deck in the delightfully warm sunshine. My husband was out car shopping and I had the afternoon to myself. I was feeling mellow after an intense morning workout that zapped my body of energy. I thought that maybe I would pick up the drawing pencils I hadn’t touched in a couple of years. Or maybe take out my beading container that has been buried in the closet for the last three. The beading won out. Yet as I opened the container to get reacquainted with my beads I realized that my heart wasn’t into it. As I pondered the idea of drawing instead, it occurred to me that the beading and the drawing suddenly seemed like distractions that I’d created to keep myself from focusing on what I really love to do. Write about life.

Switching gears, I brought the journal that holds notes I’ve made while attending inspirational retreats and conferences out to my deck. Flipping through the pages reading my notes energized me. In particular were words from Caroline Myss that I jotted down from a day-long conference I attended in San Francisco a dozen years ago.

            “Asking questions about life’s purpose stimulates movement.”

How often do you wake up to the day and ask yourself questions about the purpose of your life?  I am someone who thinks about purpose quite a bit. I believe that I have a purpose, that you have a purpose, and that every event that unfolds is meant to guide us closer towards expressing our purpose. But in order to be guided, we have to be paying attention. I don’t know about you, but that’s where I often fall down. I am often asleep at the wheel of life.

“Approach each day with the expectation that it will be full of messages for you personally. Look at life symbolically. Look for larger and deeper meaning in any event.”

I love this philosophy and believe it to be the key for living a deeply meaningful life. But it intimidates me. Where do I begin? How exactly do I do this? How do I stay the course?

I remind myself that I have been intimidated by many things over the course of my life that I have later come to manage quite well. These things range from losing weight and developing a running regimen to learning Google Adwords and building websites. I remember that these things seemed overwhelming the first few times I tried, but I succeeded as I persevered. What it takes is intention and commitment.

“We must discover our unique gifts and then choose the way we will use them to be of service.”

I personally don’t think most of us have a problem in discovering our unique gifts. Is it fair to say that most of us know what we’re good at and what brings us joy? The hard part is figuring out how to make a living sharing these gifts.

Yet how many of us have asked for guidance to get to the answer? I know that I do once in a while, yet I’m not consistent. For all I know, the answer has been presented to me six ways from Sunday, but I’ve not been paying attention.