PUT YOUR OWN OXYGEN MASK ON FIRST BLAH BLAH BLAH
Once you are very clear about your life purpose, it becomes much simpler to think about your life through the lens of: does my life support my purpose?
I will use my life purpose as an example. My purpose is: To help relieve suffering of people and animals. I live my purpose in my day job as a specialist veterinarian. BUT, one does not need to live their purpose in their day job. Your day job might just be the funding for your purpose. You could live your purpose in your family life, friend circle, local community, recreational activity or hobby, religious or spiritual group, walking in nature, on your meditation cushion, tending a garden, travelling, through activism. Your purpose may feel chiefly fulfilled in one facet of your life, or it could feel enriching for it to weave through multiple areas of your life. Life purpose weaving could be the key for you to feel more aligned (“on purpose”), but everyone is different. There is no right or wrong way.
Pause and consider whether you are living your purpose, in the here and now.
*Caveat: Sometimes life purpose needs to be side-lined for survival.
I have been focussed on nourishing all aspects of my life over the last several years. It definitely takes time, and is a process. There is no end point, just a sort of perpetual symphony with an ever-changing harmony. Only after addressing full spectrum nourishment did I feel both the desire AND capacity to expand my ability to relieve suffering (my purpose) in areas of my life outside of my day job. Important emphasis here: first I had to feel nourished before expanding my purpose into other areas of my life. This could be the case for you before you fulfill your purpose in even one, let alone many aspects of your life. There is no need to do more or be more.
It is likely that your purpose involves some type of service or something outside yourself. Insert the oft-repeated clichés: “Fill up your own cup first because you cannot pour from an empty cup”, and “Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others”. They are clichés because they are true. It’s kind of annoying, I know.
Now I do not need to add in a whole lot of information about what an empty cup or running out of oxygen feels like or what causes it. We all know. Functional medicine practitioners have referred to this as “adrenal fatigue” but the reality is that it is much more complex and nuanced than your adrenal glands being tired from working too hard for too long- though it is a handy way of thinking about it. It is also called burnout or burnout syndrome. Your adrenal glands are the organs which make some of the stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and also some of the sex hormones. That feeling isn’t just worn out adrenals.
Exhaustion, fatigue, poor sleep, running on caffeine/sugar/drugs, self-soothing with mindless social media scrolling, shopping, eating, exercise, pornography, or numbing with alcohol or drugs. None of those things are issues in the short term, but in the long term, our edges become frayed, and we start coming apart at the seams. Sometimes the unravelling is a necessary part of our life journey (rock bottom, dark night of the soul, Saturn return, The Tower card), but if our only lesson is: don’t do that again, what we could lose in the process is simply too costly. We might not need to burn everything to the ground.
Let us top up our cups, affix our oxygen masks, and align with our purpose.
