Hanna:
Hello and welcome to episode 37. How are you? I’m amazing. We are about to head out of town this weekend to see some music. An actual concert is where I will be as this episode drops. Feeling excited for that.
I want to celebrate something for one moment here before we dive in. Are you one of my clients right now? If you are I want to give a special shout out to you because I actually have 9 private clients right now that are renewing their coaching package at the same time, which is totally fun for me to witness, usually its like all over the place because people begin at different times but right now I have 9 ladies coming back for their second or third round of coaching so we can work together for longer, go deeper on the incredible work of changing their thoughts and changing their lives…and I was just sending out some gifts to them today. I like to send physical gifts to clients to celebrate them and they already know that I’m a huge proponent of celebrating hard things but I want to celebrate all my clients today really quick, not just the 9 but all of the women I’m working with currently, a heart hug from me to you today for doing the hard things, and going all in on what you already know is going to be more hard things and saying yes to that again and again. I love you so hard.
It’s so funny, when I start working with someone or on our first call together I usually say you know, very clearly that like, this is going to be hard sometimes. Like its going to feel like hard work and it’s not going to always feel like a heart hug. Right? so this is all for you, this is more love then you’ve ever been exposed to in your whole life right here in this little coaching container, and that love is going to sting alot. It’s gunna smart like hell when I love you so so hard that I ask you questions and announce observations and share thoughts with you that no one in your life has ever dared to share with you before because no one has ever been in your corner like I am now. It might feel like criticism, but you must know that it is always love from my end, and if you have a problem with self criticism, it’s going to be especially hard for you to hear what I have to say sometimes. You’re going to have to work on hearing my love and interpreting it with love. And then people are like ok yeah I am so IN, I’m ready for that. And then we have our first session and I say something like, “So why do you keep choosing to feel like shit?” And they are a like OHH OK this is what you meant when you said I wasn’t going to like what you had to say all the time. But then they come back. And I ask even harder questions the next time. And they come back again and I love them so hard that they might cry or get angry because they are really practiced at turning love into self hate or self pity or not enoughness. And yet they come back again and again and again and then their coaching package is about to expire and they say to me, “OMG Hanna I can keep working with you right?” and I am like yeah, if you are ready for me to love you even harder this round! And they say yes. Again. So this is the snuggly love part where I say to you, you are so precious and intelligent and brave and perfect and resilient as fuck because I know that I make it harder for you all the time, but you keep choosing it in the name of growth, and there is no better celebration for me than to witness you say yes to you.
Ok happy happy day. Today we are talking about Purpose and passion and where the fuck to find it, becuase so many of you come to me and say I’m trying to find my purpose and frankly it’s stressing me out how much weight is on this idea of purpose so we’re going to hopefully start to take some of that off of all of our shoulders today.
“I’m on a mission to find my purpose.” Sounds kinda cool. But tbh it’s just a thought that causes us to panic and stress out and flop around like a fish outta water. When there is really no reason to do that. Like it’s just the message of “I don’t know what I am doing, what I’m doing must suck. There must be something better somewhere that will make me feel good. I need to go on this quest to find the mystical purpose because then I will be happy.
The reason I wanted to talk a little about this today too is that I have a current client who came to me because she wanted to find passion and purpose, and in the course of our initial consultation, with a little lazer coaching, she decided that she had in fact already found it and now we’re 2 sessions in and she’s working on her relationship with her husband who works out of state and she’s literally no longer bothered by this thought that she can’t find purpose or is like desperate for purpose. So literally she went from no passion and no purpose to full of passion and full of purpose in 45 minutes and we’re on to the deeper work of igniting big love for her current situation. Ok so this is not to say that purpose and passion aren’t important or something to work on quote finding, but I think that just noting that purpose is not what we have been making it mean can help us to get there ALOT quicker and make it less of a struggle. Ok. So I’m just going to give you the punchline now: Passion and purpose comes from within, not from what job you have or husband or house. You create passion. And desire. And a felt sense of purpose. People say “my purpose is BLANK” My purpose is to have this business that helps people. My purpose is to be a mother. My purpose is to run for office or invent something or work in hollywood or be a makeup artist. And the interesting thing is that when you are already doing the thing that you think is your purpose, it makes you feel good, right? I am living my purpose, I’m doing the thing. So that’s great. But what about everyone else who doesn’t think I’m living my purpose, I’m doing the thing? They feel shit. They feel like they are failing. They feel like they aren’t “lit up”. The only difference between the person who is living their purpose and the one who isnt is how they are thinking. The job you have isn’t your purpose. You just think that it is. That can be a great thought to have, but what about if you lose that job or you start to think something else might be more fun instead? Then what? That wasn’t your purpose after all?
We get to decide to feel purposeful and passionate whenever we want, based on what we think ok. And in my very humble opinion that of course you take or leave: there is no such thing as seeking a purpose, because your only true purpose here is to exist in this world now, as you are.
So what I want you to do now, even if it’s hard, is to
Imagine living like there’s nothing left you have to do. Imagine for a second that there’s nothing you have to do. You don’t HAVE TO take care of your kids. You don’t HAVE TO go to work. You don’t HAVE TO stay with your partner. You don’t HAVE TO cook dinner, or go on this trip with your family, or call your mother, or any of it.
What would you do then?
There’s nothing that you have to do.
What would you do then?
I think that’s your purpose.
I think “your purpose” is something that’s been aggrandized in our minds, especially those of us that are millennials. We love these ideas of searching, finding, looking for, hunting, meditating on, manifesting, and there are tons of self help books out there that do a real disservice to use because they are written as if you will find your purpose or find your passion somewhere outside of you. And on the real, if you’ve not been listening to this podcast at all yet or if you don’t work with me privately yet, you probably still believe that right now, that passion or purpose is found in a thing that exists outside of you. Right, like there’s a job or a partner or a vocation or a location that is my purpose and my passion. It’s the ultimate trickery though, to convince people that there’s this thing, called Purpose, that you will find some day that will provide you with this feeling of like OHH YESS, MY PASSION, I’m lit up now. People who are trying to help themselves to feel better or find some type of healing, I think that telling you that there is a right person or right career or right path or right anything that will MAKE YOU FEEL purposeful, is doing harm.
Ok so, What’s the purpose of your life? I think it’s so much simpler than you want to make it.
Your purpose is whatever you want to do right now. Right now. Whatever you’re doing. That’s your purpose now.
And your future purpose is doing more of what you want to do and finding out what else you might want to do. Just being you. So that you can enjoy being you and feel purposeful and passionate about your life now.
And I’m going to talk today about how to create a feeling of purpose and passion for yourself now.
Some of you want to mediate on it and get your cards read about it and figure out your human design and ask your gurus what is aligned and go on a vision quest to find your purpose.
And if you want to do that and that sounds fun to you then that’s part of your purpose! So go and enjoy that process.
But if that sounds complicated or convoluted or like a lot of work or frustrating to have to seek purpose, it’s okay to relieve the pressure by practicing a new belief about purpose: that purpose is whatever is now.
You don’t have to try to figure out what it is if you don’t want to.
There’s a thought. What if you don’t have to “find your purpose”?
What if you could stop beating yourself up over not “having a purpose”?
Would that relieve some pressure?
Your purpose is doing more of what you want to do and finding out what else you might want to do.
If you’re doing that, you’re there girl. You’re living it.
When you can feel purposeful and passionate about you as you are now, what you are doing right now, what you have it creates more of that. When you think I need to find my purpose or find my passion, in something out there, it’s a never ending search and it also creates more stagnancy than not because it tells your brain that you cannot be happy until you find the mystical it. The mystical thing, purpose. Like think about how this thought actually counteracts the feelings of purpose and passion.
You think: “I need to find my purpose to be happy.”
You feel: unhappy now
When you’re unhappy in your life now your brain goes to work linking you to more and more unhappy thoughts like look I don’t have the dream car yet either and look my boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet and look all my friends have kids and I don’t and that sucks and look I just have this crap job. And unhappiness is an unproductive emotion. It’s not really action-inducing. It’s like ill sit here stuck in my purposeless life.
And you literally block yourself from happiness now.
Imagine if you felt happiness now. If you felt purposeful and passionate and happy now, how much more you’d be doing, where you’ve be energized in the actions you take, the dots you’d be connecting then and the links your brain could make with what you have in your life now…wow I am so excited to buy my dream car one day, and I’m so grateful to have this boyfriend who loves me and is choosing to spend his days, right now, with me, and I with him, this one precious life we have we get to show up and love on eachother, and how cool is that that I have a partner to practice loving unconditionally now, I am such a great aunty to my friends kiddos, how cool am I to be able to spend time with them if I want to because I have this job that I’ve chosen because I want to make money and save some of it and spend some of it and I get to be happy now and create passion and purpose in each moment I’m alive.
So you see where the same circumstances, nothing different outwardly, you can have different thoughts about that life that creates a sense of purpose, passion and happiness. Right?
So purpose is a feeling, in my book. I am here for this. Purpose. I am here for now. Purpose.
I am here to get the work of myself. Purpose. I am here to explore the perfection in my imperfect life. I am here to love myself. I am here for me. Purpose. There’s nothing outside of me that is here to make me happy, that is my job. That’s my job! Back off. Right? Like phew I just thought of that one right now but it feels so important and true and purposeful like dude I have a job to do, it’s to make myself happy. It’s to be my own bff. It’s to create purpose within me. Why am I trying to outsource my purpose when it’s right here and I can harness that feeling all on my own? Like why would I want to wait for something or go on a fucking epic journey into the depths of Mordor and back to try and find the thing that will fill me up when it’s literally right here, in me. It’s my own thoughts, that I can use to fill me with a sense of purpose now.
So, if you want something to be your passion, or your purpose and have that expectation of a career or a milestone like having a baby or buying a home or I don’t know I used to think that it was owning a horse ranch, like for me I was like once I own a ranch with a ton of horses I’ll be living my purpose, whatever it is for you that you’re like looking to and expecting that it will be your purpose, what you are going to end up doing is suffocating your own life. You’re little quashing your own potential for big joy big love big happiness big passion and big purpose now.
If you have a gift or a talent or even a feeling of desire for something like the horse ranch thing, like why would you want to take those blessings and stomp on them with expectation? That it will be better than it is. Your expectation is killing your ability to make yourself happy. You think it’s all this other shits job to make you feel good. But when you generate your own purposefulness and passion in what you are doing now, you can generate more and more on top of that. It’s like it opens up your life to welcome in and want more things that you can think about with passion and gratitude and pleasure and purpose and it becomes easier and easier to have purpose. I hope that is making sense.
Sometimes people say to me like it’s not fair that some people find their passion or purpose like it drops into their lap without even thinking about it. Like she just found her passion in working at the animal shelter and she like totally is right for that job and it’s perfect for her and she’s so happy there and she didn’t have to work for it at all it was so easy. But just notice like if you think that feeling passionate or purposeful “just happens” you are missing what I’ve been teaching you about thought work. It is ALWAYS our thoughts that create how we feel, even if those thoughts are unconscious.
There are thoughts that cause happiness in that job for that person. There are thoughts that cause unhappiness in that job for another person. If finding your purpose was a real thing then why can’t we just say like ok everyone either get a job as a vet, an artist or a scuba diver, those are purposeful jobs. It’s because everyone has different thoughts.
IF you are in a job that you don't feel passionate about or any purpose in, it’s because of your thoughts.
And like if you see someone who is quote living their passion, it’s because that person has become consistent with their thoughts, maybe unconsciously, and it just becomes automatic.
If you want to have effortless purposefulness you need to consciously create it and then practice it and keep repeating it. And form a new neural pathway for yourself so it can be automatic.
So, if you’re done with the thought that you need to “find a purpose outside of yourself”. And If you’re also not feeling it now and you’re like okay I get it I could potentially feel purpose now and passion now, what do I do? Where do I start?
I want you to start to learn, to study even, how to ignite that emotion in your body.
What you’re going to do is to first figure out what you’re thinking now that makes you feel purposeless or dispassionate. What do you think about your life or your job or your relationship or whatever it is that you lack purpose for right now? Are you thinking “I am still searching for what I truly want to do” “What I’m doing now is not cool” “I don’t know what I want to do” “This isn’t where I thought I’d be” “This is the worst” “My relationship is stagnant” “I have no create energy”..like literally sooo many thoughts that I’ve heard in my own head and from clients who are telling me they lack purpose. So, be the compassionate watcher of your thoughts. Observe what your brain is saying. Write them down. Notice where you’re actually totally creating the lack of purpose and lack of passion right now. Right, none of those thoughts elicit purposefulness. Maybe they spark feelings like dread or like boredom or like unhappiness or like blah. My client that I mentioned earlier said it felt like blah. She thought “This is it.” And it felt blah.
Ok because just seeing what’s there, what thoughts are there now, that will help to prove that if you are creating lack of purpose, then you can also create purpose, right?
Then, the next thing you’re going to do is play pretend. I want you to imagine that you are someone totally obsessed with whatever you’re doing right now. Totally in a passionate entanglement of purpose and just steeping in that hot hot zesty passing purpose for life. What would that FEEL like? What would you feel in your body if you felt purposeful? Like physically. Would there be energy or movement? Would it be warmth? Where? Would your brain be fired up? Would your toes be wiggling? Then, What would you be thinking? What thoughts might be creating that feeling?
Start practicing generating purposefulness or passion in your body with thoughts about like “I can’t wait.” “This is so great” “I get to be here for this.” “This is what I get to use my time for.” “Ooo lala what a delight!” “I’m so good at this!” “Epic master of life up in here.” Haha. Ok and you’re going to play. Play with your mind a little. She’s game I promise. See what she’s got for you when you direct her toward this sensual and lighting bolt body tingle of purposefulness. Practice having fun doing this. Playing with your own mind.
When you’ve created something from a feeling a purpose, the result is expansive creation. It’s more curiosity. It’s explosive life purpose guided by passion and purpose.
So if this sounds totally backwards to what you’ve been thinking or what you’ve been taught, good. Generating purpose in your body first, with conscious thoughts, and then using that feeling to drive the actions toward MORE, BIGGER, CONNECTED, ALIGNMENT with things that are out there for you. Its magic. Because I think for many people it’s like but I don’t know what I WANT and I need to find my purpose to find what I want. But thinking that purpose is the answer to what you want is keeping you from exploring. It’s stunting your creativity and curiosity and willingness to want what you have and what’s right here and what’s coming and what’s next after that. To feel purposeful now, to cultivate that within yourself now, that will align you more and more with what you want. I was just talking to someone very close to me about how she didn’t know what she wanted until it kind of “fell into her lap” and the way that it fell into her lap was not actually random at all if we looked back at what she was creating all along. She was committing to living in the moment of her life, showing up and knowing herself intimately and lovingly within the context of her life which continued to grow and bring her more opportunities to dive into and feel purposeful in, until it culminated with what she’s doing now and her thought is “This is it”. But guess what?! That thought can and likely will change as life ebbs and flows and she upgrades to bigger, more, connected alignment with new thoughts.
I want you to study what creates purpose for you in your mind, what thoughts are purpose-inducing, as if THAT itself was the purpose of your life.
Go and live it. You’re doing it now. Enjoy.