Big Deal Energy

The Road to Self-Discovery: Uncovering Our True Purpose

• Laura Khalil

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Have you ever found yourself stuck at life's crossroads, questioning your purpose? We're all familiar with that age-old question we first encountered as children: 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' But today, I challenge you to shift your focus from the future to the present. Let's replace that question with 'What do you want to do today?' As adults, we write our own life map, and it’s time we shift our perspective on what it truly means to be alive.

Join me as I share some personal insights from my journey of self-discovery. We'll explore the concept of a 'yes day' – a day dedicated to saying yes to what brings joy into our lives. Through these experiences, I've realized that what we're truly seeking is not a specific purpose or meaning in life, but the vibrant feeling of being fully alive. Is it really necessary for our purpose to be linked to our profession? Let's rethink the paradigms and reshape our lives to find what truly makes us feel alive. Our true purpose might just be the exhilaration of living in the present. So why wait for tomorrow? Let's seize today and live it on our own terms.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome to Big Deal Energy. This is your business, festy, your home girl, laura Kalil, and I am really looking forward to today's episode because it is something different. We are going to be talking about a question that I have been hearing a lot lately from people in my or people who are interested in working with me, and it's not necessarily about Big Deal Energy. It's about gosh, my career, my life is at a crossroads. I don't know what I want to do next. I'm trying to figure out my purpose, and I've had a lot of people recently come to me with this question. I don't know anyone who hasn't dealt with this question at some point in their life, and so today's episode is all about addressing that question. If you are at a crossroads, if you are asking yourself what's my purpose? I don't know what I want to do next. I don't know where I want to go. I'm going to tell you how I have thought about this and how I recommend you do too.

Speaker 1:

I really want to start at what I consider sort of the origin story for these types of questions, and, like many things that are pretty pervasive, I think this starts in childhood with a question that I'm pretty sure all of us have heard at some point or another, which is what do you want to do when you grow up? And what this question actually does is it takes us out of the present and it puts us into an imagined future, a fantasy that does not exist yet, that may never exist about. We will be ready to do something when we grow up. We don't need to figure it out now. We can figure it out at a future date, and I meet many adults who are still asking themselves what they want to do when they grow up, and, frankly, I've asked myself that too. I do not think it's a resourceful question. I think it takes us out of the present moment, and the problem with that is that the only moment we do have is the present moment. The past is behind us, the future doesn't exist yet, and this is very often the origin of our anguish is living in the regret of the past or in a fantasy of the future, rather than just appreciating this moment exactly as it is. We're not trained to do that. As children, we are never trained to be present, and so, as an adult, when we are working on this very important work, part of it comes down to how can you appreciate what is as it is? What do you want to do today? What would bring joy to you today? I ask you that question as well. We're going to dive more into that.

Speaker 1:

But the question of what is your purpose? What are you driving towards? You know, as a kid, I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I think that, for many of us, part of the reason I couldn't answer the question is because the career I have could not have existed when I was a child. There was no such thing as business coaches, there was no such thing as the internet. So if you don't know what you want to do, it's it, in many cases, is because you are going to be creating the path as you go. You're literally creating the map as you walk the path, which is why being present is extremely important, because often our mind will, you know, in order to protect us, of course will try to figure out what is the outcome of these things, what's going to happen in the future? Right, because our mind is here to protect us. And when you are beginning to ask yourself what makes me feel alive? What can I, you know, get more out today that makes me feel alive. Things are going to start opening, things are going to start changing because you're changing and those things, those new paths, those new opportunities that appear, you could have never predicted. Now I'm not saying you don't plan for anything in life Of course you do. But in particular, this question, you have to take it day by day. You have to just take it one step at a time and see what becomes presented to you as you move down the path. Allow yourself to be surprised.

Speaker 1:

Part of the challenge is that, as children, we are given a pretty clear roadmap You're going to go to preschool, you're going to go to kindergarten, you're going to go to grade school, middle school, high school and then you're going to graduate. That script is written for you. That roadmap is given to every child so that we'll know what the plan is. We're just following the plan. Where things get a little bit stickier is as adults, after we've graduated high school. There is no plan given to us. There are broad brushstrokes that society will recommend Go get a higher education, get a stable job, get married, have kids, wait for retirement, to live your life. But you don't have to follow that path, or maybe you take pieces of it. We go from being given a map to having to become the map maker as we are coming of age.

Speaker 1:

The question is not about what you want to do when you grow up. The question is about what do you want to do today? While most people will say they're seeking their purpose or they're seeking the meaning of life, what they're really looking for is the experience of being alive. Your purpose is to feel alive today, and part of the journey is discovering what makes you feel alive. You will not feel alive when you lose 10 pounds, when you get the Botox we always hope. Geez, if I change this thing about myself, then I'll feel alive, then I'll be ready, as if we are all living in a dress reversal.

Speaker 1:

One of the best things that I did was a couple of years ago. One of my girlfriends, christina. She posted on LinkedIn about taking her daughter for what she called a yes day. What it was was just saying yes to whatever her kiddo wanted to do. I thought that is pretty brilliant. I went with one of my girlfriends and we had our own yes day. We went and we got that nitrogen ice cream. We went to the trampoline park If you've ever heard my story about getting trapped inside of a foam pit. It was during that yes day. We went to go get tarot readings. We went to the zoo. I can't remember what we did for lunch. We did something for lunch too. It was so much fun because all we focused on was being present that day and doing things that, by and large, made us laugh, brought us a lot of joy and helped us to feel alive.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying every day you're going to be literally jumping from the trampoline or swinging from the rafters, but there's certainly one thing you could do today that would put a big ass smile on your face. If that sense of purpose comes inside of your profession, that's incredible. But it might not be. It just might be a thing you do before or after your day job. There are lots of people who, for example, they love running marathons, they love going to open mics, doing improv, baking cakes for their friends' birthday parties, reading, playing disc golf. I have a really good friend who his day job is as a printer and he spends all of his free time coming up with storylines for Dungeons and Dragons because he absolutely loves that and is really good at it. It's not his profession and it doesn't need to be.

Speaker 1:

You know, I think our capitalist society has really conflated your purpose with your profession, and I am certainly have been guilty of this in my own career. Certainly in my early 30s I thought they had to be the same thing. But there is an entire industry that has spawned around trying to make money from things you enjoy. And I just want to say to you I want to give you permission that you don't have to. You could just enjoy your things and not try to make everything a money-making scheme, and then you can just go to your job and do your job, and that's all gravy folks.

Speaker 1:

So sometimes, when this comes up, I will ask people when they're saying I'm trying to figure out my purpose, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. Next I'll ask them well, what do you want to do? And there's something very interesting that happens People will usually tell me exactly what they want to do and in the next breath will tell me why it's impossible. And then they'll revert to saying, well, I just don't know what my purpose is. And frankly, I think, as you can probably tell by listening to this episode, I really disagree with that.

Speaker 1:

I think the struggle most people are facing is that they do know what makes them feel alive, they do know what that purpose is, but they don't want to pay the cost or bear the uncertainty or embarrass themselves or look stupid to others doing that thing. The reason we feel is impossible is because it's quite likely quite different from what you're doing today and there are obstacles to overcome in order to get it like anything you really want to like. There's going to be obstacles to getting it right, and anytime we want to transform in an area of our life, there is a cost to pay. See, the bigger the transformation, the bigger the cost, the bigger the payoff. And so we stay where we are, unhappy, telling everyone. We know how this is in it, and there's this one thing we want, we'd love to do, but it's impossible. Fact is, it's not impossible, it is very possible.

Speaker 1:

I remember this feeling quite a bit when I was working in the full time world and I'd go out for drinks with folks after work, and you know what would happen is it would become kind of like a complaining fest, right? People complain about their bosses, their jobs and I would do it too and at the end of the day it really becomes. Well, you can complain about it or you can do something about it. There's going to be a cost to do something about it. You may need to find a new job. You may need to have a hard conversation.

Speaker 1:

You might look silly in the process. People might judge you in the process. You know, there's a woman in my city I've only ever seen her skipping. So this is an older woman who does not walk, she skips, and I've seen her multiple times and every time I see her I think that bitch looks like she's having the time of her life. It looks fucking weird, and you know what you go, girl. After all, who are we really living this life for? For the judgment of others or for the fulfillment of ourselves? But it is absolutely worth it, because that is the key to your growth.

Speaker 1:

Now you don't need to make radical, huge steps overnight. In fact, that rarely works. I would much rather you start with baby steps, and there's two things I want to share with you that can really help you if you were trying to quote unquote find your purpose or recapture that sense of feeling alive, because there is truly nothing better. So the first step is I want you to pay attention to what makes you feel alive. By that I mean what makes you excited, what could you talk about for hours? What do you lose hours to doing? What do you jump If there's the opportunity to do it? What do you absolutely love doing that you just want to do more of. The second thing is to pay attention to what drains you, where you lose energy, where you just absolutely are dragging. It's the worst thing ever. You want to get out, and we want to look at both of those, and what we want to start doing is move towards each day, doing more of what makes us feel alive and less of what drains us.

Speaker 1:

Now, sometimes, when I bring this up, people say but Laura, everything drains me, and I don't know your particular scenario, but what I can say is that it often sounds like you have been playing side role in the story of your own life, living for others instead of yourself, and it may be time to embody that main character energy. It's time to put yourself first. Now, that's naturally going to piss some people off, but you know, what I like to say is that's what therapy and communication skills are for, and if you hear yourself saying well, there's something that drains me, but I can't change it. Well, that's a really important clue into a growing edge, for you See, you can change it. You're the one in charge of your life. It's a matter of learning what the cost is and learning how to pay it. This is how you find your purpose. This is how you live a life brave by design. If you've enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to share it with a friend.