Are You Clueless About What To Do With Your Life?
Do you feel lost or clueless about what to do with your life? Need some help figuring it out?
If you are guessing instead of knowing what you are supposed to be doing with your life ... you are not alone. You may be just like the story below about a girl who does not know what to do with her life.
But hidden in the background of her life are clues to both her life calling and purpose ... that her calling is to help terminally ill patients and her purpose is to learn the healing power of love, laughter and forgiveness.
You have the same clues in your life ... and I can help you find them and begin to understand the secrets they reveal about who you are and what you should be doing with your life.
But let's start first with her story .. and see if it sounds a lot like yours. Reading about a life that can be lived two ways -- one not knowing what you are supposed to do with your life and the other spotting the clues and following the divine plan for your life. See if the difference helps you get motivated to find the blueprint for your own divine plan.
Not Knowing What To Do With Your Life
There are key turning points in a life, times when having a clue makes you turn left instead of right (think Donna Noble in the Doctor Who episode). Here is what a life looks like when you make choices based on surface appearances and follow the fate mapped out for you by your family, friends and culture. (You can use my free online workshop to discover your fate if you are curious where you are heading.)
Missing Important Clues
In the forefront of her life, visible to all, is the first important clue. When she is growing up, she knows she likes to spend time taking care of her aging grandmother -- but she does not know why. The stories her grandmother tells and the laughter they share over them are special moments ... ann* (green language) they create a strong and loving connection between them ... but when her grandmother passes on she does not think much about it and the experience fades into a fond memory.
Drifting Through High School
In high school she drifts between classes, understudies for the lead actress* in the high school comedy, gets an A+ on her biography of Florence Night.in.gale, does her volunteer work as a candy stripper in a retirement home and seems to have more fun with the residents than with the kids at school -- which makes her feel kinda weird.
And lost.
Her career counselor reads the results of her career vocational tests and suggests, based on her uninspired grades and lackluster interest in academics -- to go to the local community college and major in English -- her best subject.
Doing What Her Friends Do
Eventually she gets* married, and to help pay the mounting bills she goes after younger clients who are willing to pay more for the latest styles and give larger tips. After the kids are born, they move to an more upscale neighborhood in a new development so they raise their kids in a secure environment.
She gets a part time job cutting hair to pay for the local community college -- mostly because she wanted to keep her her best friend company. She and her best friend move around a few salons, and she ends* up at a nice salon with a clientele of all older women wanting "wash and sets" and all the old fashioned styles reminiscent of her grandmother and mother.
Her clients become her friends, and as they age she starts making house calls when they are not well enough to come in to the shop. She makes a living wage, has more fun laughing with "the ladies" than taking tests, and eventually drops out of school to get her cosmetics license -- even though they no longer teach the styles she does on a regular basis.
As her clients start to need at-home-care nurses, she meets them and some of them become her best friends. But money is tight because medicare doesn't pay for hair* cuts and she doesn't make enough to take time off to go back to school and get a nursing degree, as her clients and friends suggest.
Making Ends Meet
When she takes her kids to the park near her parent's home, she watches the older men playing checkers and chats with the seniors taking strolls around the community park while the kids play. She eyes the senior class at the Yoga studio and secretly longs to sneak in and take that class instead of the stay-at-home-mom class she is taking with her friends.
Growing Older
And she worries about her parents getting older, and if her kids will find their way in the world or end up settling and be stuck in a less than passionate job like she was. And on her nightstand are books whose characters face growing older and dyeing* with Grace.
As she grows older, she looks back on her life ... wondering if she made the right choices. She loves her kids, but as they pack up and go off to college, she feels like all the passion and purpose in her life is moving out of the house too.
The thought crosses her mind ... do her kids want to grow up to be like her? Does she want them to have a life like hers?
Contrast the above story with how her life would change and unfold if she noticed the clues and how they illuminated her life calling and purpose .... and was able to put together a picture on her box of life that illuminates the divine plan of her life. Here is her career / divine plan collage.
Knowing What To Do With Your Life
Now, instead of drifting through life, following her best friend and making guesses that result in a life story that misses the mark ... here is how her life could have gone if she had known what her calling and purpose were.
Spotting Clues & Investing Time
When she is growing up, she knows she likes to spend time taking care of her aging grandmother. The stories her grandmother tells and the laughter they share over them are special moments ... and create a strong and loving connection between them. She knows deep in her heart that this is somehow a part of her calling. And she writes in her journal and takes several workshops ... and that investment pays off by helping her discover what her life calling is: to work with terminally ill patients. She reads, journals and does a few more workshops to figure out her life purpose: to learn the lessons of the power of love, laughter and forgiveness in healing.
(See her combined life purpose statement here.)
Discovering Where She Belongs
Knowing that, she spends the remaining time before her grandmother passes away learning more about how to care for and relate to her grandmother and her grandmother's friends as they face death -- some with more grace and humor than others.
When her grandmother moves into a care facility, she gets to know the caregivers and talks with them about the experiences and lessons they have had caring for aging and terminally ill patients. She shares her ideas about her life calling and a few of the caregivers recognize a kindred spirit and become her closest friends -- making her feel accepted and understood for wanting to hang out with people she loves ... people her grandmother's age instead of her own.
Using Schoolwork To Explore Her Passions
She researches the illnesses her grandmother and the other patients have and uses what she learns as the topics of her required term papers in school. Its obvious to her teachers that her passion is caring for her grandmother and the aging because she excels on any project that involves the topic of healing, nursing, her grandmother or humor. Her biography of Florence Nightingale, her poetry on the process of aging gracefully, and her artwork that combines journals, old photos and letters from the patients at the care facility all earn an A+ and stand out from her usual lackluster grades.
Becoming The Family Expert
It is no surprise to her family what her life calling is ... since she has become the one the family, relatives, friends and even neighbors turn to when someone is diagnosed with an illness to learn what it is and how bad it is. That, along with her collection of corny jokes about diseases, addiction to medical TV dramas and desire for a subscription to a jerry.'atrick trade magazine for her birthday -- gave it away.
She works a deal with her career guidance counselor to take a physical therapy class in place of the usual High School Physical Education class to help her grandmother with her mobility, flexibility and strength. After her grandmother passes away, she volunteers to work at the care facility which turns into a part time internship during the school year that earns her school credit and a well paying summer job.
Building Her Network & Experience
When the opportunity comes up to try out for the lead in the High School play, her caregiver friends advise her to pass it up and create a one-woman comedy show about aging and dying ... which gets rave reviews. As the word spreads, she performs her play at all the local hospitals, in the nurses' rooms and terminal patient wards, and retirement homes. Her play brings her in contact with more health care professionals, who become sources of more jokes as well as mentors who urge her to consider going to medical or nursing school. One thank you gift for her play -- a copy of the movie Patch Adams, inspires her to be serious about her upcoming career choices and gives her a way to express what she wants to do with her life.
Advice & The Right Path To Follow Her Passion
She talks to her career counselor and her mentors about medical school -- and signs up to take all the biology, chemistry and physiology classes she needs to apply. Her mentors invite her to go with them to a local nursing convention -- where she connects up with one of the convention planners who hires her to give a presentation next year on "humor and the terminally ill patient" that leads to writing a regular column in the association newsletter. In her senior year, her college and scholarship applications reveal her growing area of expertise, her commitment to her profession and glowing letters of recommendation by some of the top professionals in her field who attended her presentation and regularly read her column.
She has a tough job deciding which of the eight schools that accepted her will help her combine and develop her talent for writing, love of humor and passion about helping the terminally ill. Her best friend at school, who is studying to become a hairstylist, recommends the one that offers lots of classes in alternative healing methods taught by leading experts working in the field.
Getting A Degree That Reflects Her Passion
She ends up getting a degree with a minor based on her own independent study of the effects of humor on the life span and quality of life of the terminally ill. Her research, which is turned into an article in a medical trade journal {the same one her column appears in} earns her an invitation to become a research assistant in a lab studying the healing effects of laughter on the brain and body chemistry.
Meeting & Marrying A Kindred Spirit
She meets the love of her life at a medical convention and they stay up half the night talking about, of all things, Saint George and Mother Teresa, while discovering they both love trading corny disease jokes. Their two* combined salaries make it easy to afford the mortgage for a home they can raise kids in, and still be close to the urban center where they both work.
Being kindred spirits means they share a fundamental connection that goes beyond their own relationship to include helping each other in their work. When the kids arrive, she is able to work part time from home and revive her writing career as a columnist as well as become a highly paid consultant to health care companies looking to use laughter and humor to keep their patients healthy and ease the stress on both terminally ill patients and their caregivers.
Letting Her Passion Find New Outlets
When she is taking the kids for a walk in the local community park near her parent's home, she stops by and chats with the old guys playing checkers -- sharing jokes and picking up new material for her column, which is now being syndicated in a growing number of magazines aimed at the "Silver Set" ... living past 70 and loving it!
She knows what is coming as her parents age, and has an eye out for what inspires her kids so she can help them connect with and explore their passions -- and eventually find their own life calling and purpose. keeps flexible by attending a Yoga class, sometimes filling in and teaching the Seniors class. And on her nightstand is a book she co-wrote about how a character like her grandmother faced growing older and dying with Grace.
As her kids get old enough, she shares her life calling journal with them, and she encourages them to start exploring their life path and calling with a journal of their own. She wants to make sure that when they go off to college, they choose the one that will help them live a life filled with passion, as well as purpose.
If you wish you had a life story like this second one ... know that it is possible to learn your life calling and purpose .... and reveal the divine plan for your life.
You have the same clues in your life ... and I can help you find them and begin to understand the secrets they reveal about who you are and what you should be doing with your life.
Here are the pages I recommend you read next ...
How Do You Figure Out What You Are Supposed to Do With Your Life
Read more life purpose statements
Using Your Life Purpose To Change Your Life
