#627: How to Find (Or Re-find) Your Life Purpose

Maybe you're somebody who has a life purpose. You knew from the time you were 10, I am going to be a veterinarian, and that is what I've done. Maybe you're like the other kind of people, myself included, probably most of us, to be honest. And we've been wondering what our life purpose is our entire lives. I'm having this conversation lately with my daughter and who is entering college soon. And, you know, she's concerned. You know, I think I know what I want to do, but how do I really know what I want to do when they're asking me all these really hard questions and I've got to make these decisions because it's going to shape the whole trajectory of my life. Let's deconstruct that today. Let's ask ourselves what a life purpose is. Do we need a life purpose? What if you found one and then you lost it and now you're gonna refind one? Hmm. Good stuff on the table. Stay with me.

Slow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope.

And jo and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives.

Breathe.

I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Flow dreaming. I'm Summer McStravik and this is episode number six 27, how to find or refind your life purpose. And a quick shout out. You know, I'm always asking for, you know, you guys to send me email. Just tell me how you think and what you feel and if you liked episodes or if you have any ideas. A lot of you do. Join me in the I love Flow Dreaming Facebook group. This one came in from Sonia Molina. I want to say thank you for suggesting this really good topic. Yeah. She said, how do you find your life's purpose? And after you find out, when you wait, how do you find your life's purpose after you find out it's not what you thought it was? Oh, boy. So we're going to unpack that today and maybe help you either let go of the need for a life purpose or jumpstart you onto a new road of purpose that feels authentic and real and juicy and fun and. And lucrative. I don't know. You just add on whatever other feeling states you want because that is what we do in Flow Dreaming. We are co creators, we're manifestors. We use non Physical and physical to get our objectives met. So let's look at life purpose here. Like my daughter and me and a lot of us, we often start with this idea that our life purpose should be something obvious that just hangs in front of us like a glowing gemstone hanging in the air that we have to reach out and grab. Our life purpose is clear, obvious, dumped in our lap. It's something that we stay with forever. We never leave it. We just get better. Very, very romantic, by the way. Romantic thought. Is it accurate? For some people, yes. For some, perhaps rare people who have a lifelong abiding interest. What is this? What's this thing that I'm making? I love making it. I want to make more of it. I want to keep making it. I want to make it better and better and better. And that's what they have, their life purpose. Many of us, though, took a very different road. We started walking in the forest. We got off the path because something interesting was out there in the trees. A beautiful little robin's nest. Oh, and then here's another tree filled with big fat pine cones. Oh, and then here, here is a waterfall and a stream and wait a second, was there ever a trail? Did the trail lead somewhere? Was there a clear cut path? Or was the trail we were on in the first place just going to kind of taper off into just a bed of pine needles and nothingness? My path has been one of growing to understand ever more as I age, that I tend to enjoy this ballpark of the same activities.

I love to communicate, I love to.

Write, I love to think. Right? That's what this podcast is for me. It's an exercise in thinking and dreaming and playing with possibilities and exploring and sharing it while I'm doing it. I have noticed that I enjoy working with others, making things that benefit them and help them. Right? This is the broad scope, I mean, the very broadest strokes of things I enjoy doing. But within these very broad strokes, you know, I could have gone into medicine, I could have gone into politics, I could have gone into many other fields instead of personal growth. It still would have fulfilled a lot of these same objectives and feelings in me. But I didn't even realize what those objectives were, except that I've been doing them now for, you know, almost what, 20, 30 years. So my life's purpose has really been in question. Some people would say, well, obviously, summer, your life's purpose was to be a lightworker. You are here to lift up mankind and humankind. Perhaps. I definitely have chosen to go into A field where I help other people become better. Because there is an innate feeling in me that if I help other people become better, healthier, happier, more truthful, more authentic, more loving, more giving, it's going.

To help all of us.

So it makes me feel really, really good. Chances are you're kind of like me, too. If you're listening to this podcast, certainly. But what kind of lightworker, right? That's where things get kind of fuzzy, and that's where this idea that there is this one path starts to really break down. My one path maybe wasn't to become the mother of manifesting, the queen of flow dreaming. I'm doing it. I've been doing it a long time. I've been sharing it and sharing it and sharing it. Will I always do it? I don't know. Do I enjoy doing it now? Heck, yeah. Will I evolve into something else?

Possibly.

What I'm getting at is that the idea of a singular life purpose really doesn't fit most of us, and we can let it go. What we can focus on instead is what do I enjoy doing? What makes me feel happy inside? Right? So if I'm talking to my daughter, I say, what makes you feel happy inside? Well, the spark of discovery. She wants to, as it turns out, go into medicine. Who knew? I certainly never pushed her to become a doctor. In fact, it's kind of surprising. But medicine is a series of puzzles, and she likes figuring out puzzles. She wants to be in a field that's growing and safe and flourishing, one that is paying well, honestly. Let's look at all the different factors. And one where it never gets old. Because she's always helping people. There's always someone new to help, and there's always something new to discover and explore. It feels like something that could be ever renewing and ever fresh. These are the feelings she's going for. Will she end up a doctor?

I have no idea.

We're just at the start of this, but if we look at this in terms of her life purpose, we're already starting to get a sense of. Of the things that she's going to need to feel good and happy.

Security, challenge.

A sense of purposeful interaction and helping of others. Right. She does little of me there. Perhaps you guys following because I want you to start thinking about yourself the same way. And even more importantly, I want you to think about yourself right now. Like, no matter what I have chosen, until this moment, all of my past career, maybe I have been, you know, serving school cafeteria lunches for the last 10 years. And I love it.

I love it.

Is it my life's purpose? I don't know. What do you like about it? I love kids. I love making sure they're healthy. I love interacting with them. I love being one bright spot.

I love the daily exchange.

I love hearing their laughter. I love the freshness and the light that youth gives. Oh, now we're starting to see things. Yes, you could keep serving lunches or you could drive a school bus. One of my best friends actually does.

She loves it.

Maybe you would end up becoming an author, a juvenile fiction authority. Also communicating, teaching, helping. Maybe you'll go into school gardening and you'll learn how to create gardens and take them to different schools and help districts, as one of my other close friends does. You see, your life purpose evolves. Jobs are just the things that you do as steps along the way. And often your life purpose isn't even clear until you've done enough jobs that you get into a few of them where you start to say, I like that one, I like that one, and I like that one. What do they have in common? And they're not always the same job. Right? That's the world that makes us want to reapply for the same job over and over. Right? If you've ever done admin and you're like, that's all I can do. And everybody's going to hire me because I earn more money. And I know, but what's your life purpose? Is it admin? You're like, not really. What's your life's purpose? Well, I love scheduling and organizing, and I love a feeling of security that comes with knowing that there's someone else I'm doing it for. I don't have to always go out and generate new work or anything. I love being that person that people rely on. Okay, now we're starting to get clear on what feels purposeful to you. That is the distinction. What feels purposeful, full of purpose, different than a single little life's purpose, like pinning a tail on a donkey. Most of us are not going to be able to do that, but we can all discover what feels purposeful. And I'll tell you something else. If you have had to shift through 13 different careers, 18 different jobs to find things that feel purposeful. So what? Like, seriously, so what? Throw up that middle finger to all those people who are saying you don't stick with things. Throw up the middle finger to that voice in your own head that's saying you don't stick with things. You're gonna find Things that make you feel full of purpose. And when you do, you're going to pursue them. And those things will change as you change in life. The only reason that I could think of that you'd get upset at yourself from shifting. Shifting. Shifting is if you do find something that feels full of purpose, but then you get afraid and you doubt yourself and you say, ah, it's too big for me. I don't know if I can. This is hard.

And you pull back.

But if you do that, that's actually an opportunity as well. Why are we pulling back from something.

That gives you purpose?

This is your opportunity to grow. You just found it. You spotted it. You found the golden Easter egg in the grass. It's saying to you, ooh, bite into this. This is where your growth is. This is your next step. Like I always say, everything you've wanted is right on the other side of this. And you found it. And how did you find it? Because you felt yourself pulling back out of fear. It shows you where you've created a fence around yourself. We fence ourselves in. We're like horses that create our own corrals. But if you let go of that and you go into it and you say, no, I'm gonna go into this, and I'm gonna feel what it's like to have a fullness of purpose, then there you go. You are now in your life's purpose. So, looking backwards, I've had a lot of jobs, a lot of different careers that were fulfilling different aspects of my life purpose, what fulfills me, everything from running a literary magazine to a graphic design agency to all the I did, you know, at Hay House, developing products and courses and webinars and radio shows. Making, creating, enriching, working in, personal growth. I can see the theme now. It travels through. But it's like a symphony, right? You don't go to a symphony to hear all the same song over and over and over for an hour you go. Because every movement's a little different. I know. I was just actually at the symphony. It was so super cool. A little side note, I saw this really interesting young composer do a mashup of Coldplay and Beethoven. Freaking brilliant. I loved it. But I was there because I wanted to hear each different sound. Each different sound is a job, a career, a little side route that you travel in the forest. But the whole thing is the symphony. You don't know what the symphony looks like or ends like until you're done and you watch how it all strings together. And yes, some of us have really Weird little, you know, side, you know, routes where we took that job for five years that absolutely didn't fit us and it was horrible and it was soul sucking or we didn't work because we were sick or taking care of our parents or staying home and raising our kids. It wasn't about work. It was about something else that was part of our purpose. We learned how to heal, or we learned how to take care, or we learned how to guide or we learned how to nurture or nourish. And that became part of our life purpose. It's not always about career at all. Oh, I hope right now you are taking a serious reevaluation about who you are, what you've done, and that you've actually been on the path you've always wanted to be on, but now you just see a little bit more clear the parts that were really not you but and you stayed in them a little over long. I know some of you are shaking your heads, ah, summer, man, I stayed in this for 20 years. I'll say, well, you took a real detour in your life's purpose, but maybe you were expressing it in other areas. Are you a mom, you parent, you a dad? Did you grow and nourish people?

Were you a good friend?

Did you take care of your own family or loved ones when they needed you? Maybe your purpose isn't about that yucky career at all. Maybe your purpose is about discovering you as a healer. Maybe it's about showing up in support of other people, being there, knowing what that takes. Believe me folks, it's hard. Anybody who's ever care taken others, it seems like easy, but it's rough. But we do it. So look at your life purpose from every different angle. And when we look at this idea of refinding your life's purpose, I hope what you're seeing right now is that you never actually lost it in the first place. You just changed stores in the same mall. Really? You changed stores in the same mall. You were in the jeans store and now you're in the swimsuit store, but it's the same darn mall. You're not refinding anything. You haven't lost anything. And yes, you will grow and you will move into new areas and you will build on things, right? You loved when you were two years old stacking blocks, right? Little Alphabet blocks. Oh my God, it was the best thing ever. Someone sat those down in front of you and it was like, oh, how high can I build these? How amazing. If someone said to you, today, we're going to sit you down with some blocks for an hour and let you just sit on your little mat on the floor and do it. You say, what? What? What I'm getting at is that we are meant to evolve. We are not meant to be doing the same things over and over. What fit you 10 years ago as part of your life's purpose should not fit you now because you've grown. You have a different awareness, taste level, ability, skill, interest, period.

And that's good. That's a good thing.

So what I want to do with you right now, because I know some of you are new to the podcast. Welcome. Welcome. Yes, we talk about Flow Dreaming, which is a technique and it's a philosophy and it's a way of living life that's really empowering. As kind of like you've been hearing me. I don't always talk about just one topic like this. Every show was a different topic. And it's all filtered through this lens of personal growth and flow and the technique that I use to reshape my life, program my future, go big inside myself, grow, nurture, heal myself, really, all of it. It's called Flow Dreaming. It's not meditation, it's not hypnosis. It is an energy technique that uses.

Your emotions and guided daydreaming and flow.

The philosophy of flow Flow psychology. So I won't describe it here because, well, I every now and then put out a Flow Dreaming 101 episode. In fact, there is a recent Flow Dreaming 101 episode. You should look that up. I should actually have it in my notes, but I don't, so I can't give you the exact number, but you can always find it by going to itunes or Google Play or to my website. Actually, I have just completely redone the podcast area of my website. It is freaking rocking right now. So you can look through all of these different episodes one by one. There's show notes, there's links to suggested titles, etc. You can listen to it there. It's pretty cool. And type in flow dreaming 101. You'll find it. But for those of you who want to sample Flow Dreaming a little bit, I want to do some with you. And we're going to do it around this idea of life purpose. Now, I never know what's going to come out because this just flows through me, but it will dip you into Flow dreaming. But bear in mind, it is not.

Soothing and slow and meditative. It's got energy, it's got emotion.

And before we drop in, I Just want to give you one more little resource, two more resources and then we're going to close our episode today with this flow dreaming. There is a playlist I want to recommend. A playlist is a series of flow dreams that I have previously recorded that you can listen to. Think of them sort of like guided meditations except their energy exercises that have a different objective. I want to recognize the ready to go big playlist right now. It is not about life's purpose. It is about expansion and expression. It is the closest thing I have to helping you find life's purpose. At the moment of this recording, I haven't actually recorded a find your life's purpose flow dream. And I was kind of shocked to discover that. I realized it's because I felt that if I did, it would make people feel like they were trying to find something elusive that they would either get or not get. You know, the golden ring on the merry go round. So I had always put it off, but now that I recognize that bing, bing, bing, it's going up on my. It's going up on my radar. So I would, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw that actual playlist coming out for me soon. Find my life purpose. The other thing I want to recommend to you guys is me school. Okay? It is enrolling. It's super exciting. I am talking to you guys. I am doing live seminars, free workshops and webinars right now. And if you want to interact with me and do live flow dreaming with me and see me in person on video, free, free, free wherever you are, please join again. Go to my website. There will be a sign up there for you to jump in. And if you're listening to this, in hindsight, you know, let's say it's six months from now from when I first sent this out. Reach out anyway, right, right now though, I am enrolling in musical and I would love to see your bright and beautiful faces there. I would love to work with you. I have restructured and totally re changed it for the new 2020 decade. I'm super excited. Our class is on fire. It is a great place for you to be, a life changing place for you to be. I just, I cannot stress that enough. Hundreds of students have told me, shown me, proved to me that this works. I know it work for you. So those two things in mind, I now want to. Excuse me if you hear me adjusting my desk here. I do record in my own home office and you can hear my little noises sometimes as well as the occasional, occasional siren. And it Turns out that there is a school across the street as well. So you'll hear school bells, sirens, desk noises. Ah, well, that's what happens when you're doing this from your own lovely home office. And believe me, I would not give this up or trade it for anything in the world. So let's go ahead now and close our eyes. And we're going to drop into flow together.

Let's start by taking a nice deep breath, inhaling, exhaling and dropping our shoulders, relaxing and releasing. We're letting go of all tension in our body. Rolling our neck on our shoulders.

Releasing.

And relaxing our jaw. Continuing to breathe. Relaxed, relaxed and inflow. We imagine we daydream. We let our minds go to wander. Our mind is wandering now.

In that.

Beautiful and soft forest. Forest of big, beautiful, strong trees. A forest with sunlight filtering through, warming up our feet, warming the leaves, the needles that have fallen on the path. Forest is bright and airy.

It's filled with birdsong.

It's filled with life.

It's filled with the sound of rushing water.

It's filled with so many wonders everywhere you turn. A magical waterfall. A beautiful cliff made of translucent stone. A gorgeous cave filled with hidden treasures. Sweet forest creatures. Gentle, beautiful, soft, friendly. The forest is filled with meadows of.

Soft grass and blankets and pillows and alcoves. The forest is filled with wonders beyond imagination.

The forest is filled with life and possibilities and potential.

It's filled with everything you could possibly.

Ask for or imagine. And you realize looking down, you're not on a path at all. You're freeform. You're wandering. You're heading into situation after situation, area after area of your life.

Like beautiful sunny glades chock full of the most delicious flowers with the best.

Scents in the world. And you're realizing every new wonder that I encounter is for me, it's part of the world and I found it and it's perfect for me.

It matches me in all of these gorgeous and beautiful ways. I love being here. I love experiencing this. I love digging into this. And in some cases, I build things in this.

I build beautiful things, build families, homes, I build work, I build networks, I build purpose. I build love. I build and build and build because.

Every area has a different set of resources for me, as a it should.

That's what I've needed. I've wanted the areas of the gorgeous cliffs and the areas with the water and the pools of light and the.

Areas where everything is growing rich and green and verdant.

I've needed all of this, the purpose in my life. Is springing up under my fingertips, moment.

By moment, wherever I go, whatever I do, the purpose is there. It is growing with me and in me. And every now and then, I stumble into areas and I say, oh, I don't feel much purpose here. And maybe I stay and maybe I leave, but I release my feelings around whatever I choose because eventually, ultimately, I am always going back into purpose.

I'm always going back into purpose. I refined my purpose over and over with each bright new day. I gather in purpose. I gather in love and contentment and excitement.

I gather in feelings of desire and joy and.

And pride and interest.

I gather them in.

And I accept.

My purpose may be samely similar day after day, the same career, the same family, the same trajectory. Or perhaps my purpose might be ever changing. Shifting colors like a command, all different colors, reflecting like a beautiful sparkling bowl of light, of crystal with thousands of facets reflecting every color.

Maybe that is what mine looks like. What's. Without question, I'm in it. I never lost it. And when I remember that feeling, it grows so strong in May.

So strong.

And I acknowledge it and I release it and send it out with a.

Big burst of feeling. Thank you. I love being in purpose. I love being on purpose. I love exploring purpose. I love dabbling in purpose. I love going deep in my purpose. I love everything I do that leads.

Me to feeling fulfilled in my fullness and in my fulfillment. This is what I desire, and this is who I am and what I am. And I never get off that path. I relax into it, feeling so joyful, feeling content, feeling relaxed. And I hold that feeling even now, letting it course through me, my heart, my flow, through the imagery, the daydream that already is receding.

As I find.

Myself coming back, returning from flow, opening my eyes.

All right, my friends, there you have it.

How did that feel?

Really good. What I hope you were noticing is, yes, the music is alive. It is following and promoting that feeling in you. That emotion in you. And that emotion is what is speaking.

With carving, sculpting all of your energies, all of yourself, all of your future.

And that's a flow dream. Now, of course, the one we did was relatively brief. There is another gorgeous many hundreds of them@flowdreaming.com so check it out. I also really look forward to talking to you about MI School. In fact, I'm going to end today's episode with a little something I recorded for you that kind of. I hope it kind of gets you inspired and helps you understand why I am such a harp on this why I harp on it, because of all the things you can do in your life to grow your family, to grow your income, to grow your well being, I can't think of anything better. I haven't encountered anything better. So with that, my love to you all, stay with me for the next minute or two as I share the details and I'll see you all next week for another episode of Flow Dreaming. I want to take a moment to tell you about MI School. Now of course you can look all of this up on the website@the flowdreaming.com look up me school and the whole thing will be written out for you in great and glorious detail. But as long as you're here and you've just been listening to this episode, maybe the thoughts crossing your mind, what would happen if I really learned all of this Flow Dreaming stuff? What would happen if I gave myself some personal growth on a really stepped up level?

What would I be capable of?

Where could I go? Most of my MI schoolers enter MI school not exactly knowing where they want to go. And that's mistake number one I want you to avoid. You don't have to know what you're trying to create for yourself. If you've been through a transition recently or you're even just looking at the next decade of your life and thinking what's going to happen in it. Well, I'm here. We're here because that's what we specialize in. Showing you, helping you, pointing you where you can say, ah, I know how I'm going to feel in that decade and I know some of the things now that I want to add in. We take you from a place of being stuck and not knowing into a place of total powerful clarity of excitement. You are raring to go. And maybe that's a feeling you haven't had in a while. Well, it's still there. It's hiding. And I know how to get it back. So come join me. Come visit. We are a beautiful, vibrant, loving, intimate community of very powerful, accepting creators, seekers and dreamers. We make things happen. You will be intensely surprised by the quality of people who are around you. And why? Because I spend my time with you for a whole year and I'm picky. I am. Which means that everyone in MI School is a choice Cut Man. They're the top, they're the best people. Doesn't mean they're the biggest in their careers or this or that. But they're good people and they're people who do the work and they're generous people, and they're loving people. They're the people I want to hang out with. And I'm inviting you to come in with us because over the course of the year, we're going to talk together every month, multiple times a month. You're going to be learning things, you're going to be testing things, trying things. I have hundreds of techniques that I teach you, and we go over them together, and they will reveal you and unfold you to yourself in a way you have never seen before. So please, come join me. At least get on my schedule to talk to me. I open up times throughout my work month where I talk to potential new students. And it's gentle. We just discuss. Hey, are you ready? Are you almost ready? Maybe you're not ready. We'll find out. But it's good to call and it's good for us to talk because it puts it on your radar and it's the first step in your commitment to yourself. So I invite you to go to flowdreaming.com swipe to it on your phone, or go on your desktop and go ahead and set up a time and let's talk. I can't wait. Sa.