Friday 12 April 2013

Give Yourself a Break, Already!

Gorgeous roses at Overstrand Open Gardens, Summer 2012, Norfolk UK.  I think enjoying fabulous flowers should be included in everyone's Life Purpose.


There are lots of self-help books and websites out there that go on and on about Finding Your Life Purpose (and I use the capitals deliberately).  It seems to be the Holy Grail of self improvement these days.  I've spent a lot of time sweating over this one, until it has become one of my OUGHTS.

I know I am a writer.  One of the things I was put here to do is to write, to make the pictures in my head into stories that other people can enjoy.  And I do.

But I am also a butterfly, and Initiator, not a Completer/Finisher, which means I bounce from one project to the next, doing whatever  holds my interest for as long as it does, and then moving onto the next thing, or going back to something I was working on before.  Sometimes this means I don't finish stuff. More often, it means I take a long time.  This is a truth about myself that I am working on coming to terms with.  No amount of discipline has ever worked for me.  So I just have to work with what I've got, accept it, and find a way to use it to my advantage.

I think this is why the whole idea of a single Life Purpose is stressful for me.  After all, if my Life Purpose is to Get that Book Published, what happens when I've achieved it?

This is why this article from Kriss Carr lit up my brain. 

Because Life Purpose is just not that simple.  Life is complex and myriad.  I am still mulling over the jewels contained in this article, but I urge you to take the weight off yourself and read it.  Maybe goals are ok, but fixing everything on one idea for a whole lifetime?  Perhaps thats not for all of us.  Perhaps we are more interesting than that.

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