Do you ever feel like you don’t understand your own power and impact until you open up to someone else? I recently had a powerful experience that reminded me of this lesson that I keep learning. Eckhart Tolle says it well, “…my relationships are here to make me conscious.”
Some context – Recently I began designing an online course that I will be launching this fall to help people figure out and create the infrastructure to live their purpose. Part of my own coursework is to write a vision statement for what I am hoping to enable students to achieve by taking my course. I was at my son’s rowing regatta, an event where you’re out all day just to watch minutes of a competition. Needless to say, there is A LOT of downtime, during which I had the opportunity to connect with another mom. She had heard about my book and started asking questions and inquiring if I would be interested in speaking at her MBA alumni monthly meeting. I happily agreed and shared details about my latest project with her – this online course. She immediately wanted to know more because she is in a massive career transition and wants help.
What transpired next was far more powerful than almost anything that has happened to me in months. She shared with me that she was deeply moved by my words, my sentiments, and how I expressed them to manifest what I wanted for others. It was in her response that I saw my own power, my gifts, my uniqueness.
The initial vision statement is here. The backdrop in the following paragraph is what really struck a cord for me. “We envision a world where every individual is living their purpose… fully engaged, fully utilizing their gifts and playing them all out with joy and passion. When we consciously realize our own agency, by constantly inventorying and advancing even the smallest of steps forward with purpose partnerships, then we’re able to co-create magnificent intentions into an epic reality.”
The Backdrop – I have been struck by how touched people are by the first book. It has moved people, who don’t cry, to tears. The book has made hardcore engineers ponder and sit with one image for days. It has sweetly enwrapped a grandfather and granddaughter in a poignant and powerful place. It is there that words form together that have never been spoken but when they come out, alas, an exciting and scary step can be taken. Something touches them deeply with the words, the images, the colors… Perhaps it is a big question that confronts them, stops them in their tracks, creating a paradoxical moment, one of great fear that they haven’t been living up to this question. Or maybe the question is something they have to push away, buried or plain out avoided because they felt there was no way to explore, no safe place to sit with the possibility, the possibility of what would happen if they step into their own magic, their own divinity, tap into the flow, the energy of something far bigger, far greater than they ever imagined. I want to create a magical, safe and a bit of a scary playground for people to explore and play in the possibility of their purpose, to test out the voice that is deepest in them, give them space for that voice to be heard, explored, shined a light upon to receive the fresh air it deserves like sunshine on a sapling just breaking through the ground. I want to help give their purpose structure so they can begin the process of living and integrating it every day.
Upon reflection, this experience reinforces for me the need we have to reach out to others and allow them to help us see ourselves. Purpose is a team sport, helping me see this once again was such a gift. Who do you need to reach out to that may help propel you forward?