Our lives are constantly evolving. With a baby in the house I see daily how different my life is from a year ago, and just yesterday I spoke with a friend who is lucky enough to get to decide whether to go live in Italy for 3 months (or more) before she and her husband choose to start the next chapter of their careers.
When we’re in the middle of a chapter it’s so easy to think that things will go on like this forever. But, when we’re coming to a moment of transition, sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to ask BIG questions and make dramatic changes.
That’s why I think now is a perfect time to share with you another excerpt from my book, Inspired Action: Create More Purpose, Productivity, and Peace in Your Life. The following is Chapter 6: When Purpose Changes which explores some strategies to make these major transitions more graceful and recognize that even the expression of your purpose can sometimes change with each your chapter of your life.
When Purpose Changes
Few things in today’s life are guaranteed; nor can we expect them to remain the same for long stretches of time as previous generations could. The days of lifelong commitments to a company or a job have virtually disappeared. Your focus and your purpose may change several times throughout the course of your life. It may go through refinements, clarifications, or enormous course changes. So, what do you do when such a time comes for you?
My mother’s life has been full of course changes. A truly accomplished woman, my mother has, thus far, led a life story with at least five chapters:
- Chapter 1: She grew up as one of eleven children in an Iowa farm family that, fortunately, encouraged and highly valued education.
- Chapter 2: She went to college and then graduate school to earn her PhD in clinical psychology and organizational development. Then she practiced as a psychologist for the next decade.
- Chapter 3: Following a family move and the closing of her private practice, my mother decided to go back to school and get an MBA, which resulted in her career during the early 1990s as an executive coach (back in the days before coaching was well known.)
- Chapter 4: After growing her successful coaching career, she wanted to expand and internationalize her work. So, she spent more time traveling and attending conferences as a strategic consultant and advisor for organizations and associations across the world—in the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, Russia, and Samoa.
- Chapter 5: After a decade of jet-setting, she retired from her fast-paced career and rediscovered the sweet renewal of being a homebody. She surprised everyone by falling in love with drawing and painting, which resulted in her getting a bachelor of fine arts in her early fifties and realizing that art was her new core passion.
My mother, blessedly, is still healthy and active, and who knows what Chapter 6 of her life might bring? But I think her journey so far provides an impressive example of the varied expressions that one’s life purpose might take.
What have been the chapters in your life? Are you in a transition moment right now? What does that mean for you? How do you handle and navigate the experiences that come with such transitions?
Here are some suggestions for how to handle changes in purpose:
- Keep things simple and focus on the basics. Remember to breathe. Take extra time to rest and renew yourself every day; focus on “extreme self-care,” as expert coach Cheryl Richardson would say.
- Expand your focus and start back at the beginning. If you jumped immediately to this chapter and have finished reading it, then pick up a copy of Inspired Action to take a look at Chapters 1-5 as well. Doing the exercises in those chapters will probably give you a clearer picture of what the purpose of your next chapter might be.
- Embrace the change. If your vision of your next chapter is beginning to become clear, then give yourself permission to let go of the previous chapter and embrace the next. Grieve its closing if you need to, but you must release the old to make space for the new.
Course changes are an inevitable and essential part of our lives. The better we learn how to manage ourselves and our energy through them, the better the outcome will be.
Next Actions
- If you are going through a purpose change (or even if you’re not), it’s time for extreme self-care. What actions could you take today to take better care of yourself? More sleep, better food, more time doing things you love? Brainstorm a list of possible actions. Then choose one, and make a commitment to do it every day for the next week. If possible, add another one the following week, or if necessary discontinue the first and start the second.
- Give yourself a renewal period. Choose a deadline in the future: three months, six months, one year, whatever feels right. During this time, give yourself permission to focus all your available time and bandwidth on renewal and exploration. Combine some of the extreme self-care activities you brainstormed above with expansion and exploratory activities that help you to widen or deepen your understanding and connection with your new purpose. Such activities might include taking classes related to your new focus, reading books on the topic, talking to people who are doing similar work, or taking a retreat to envision, imagine, and plan for this new phase.
- Give yourself permission to grieve and release. The previous chapter of your life had its own blessings and challenges. Take time to reflect on, appreciate, and understand those structures and patterns, and then release yourself from them. If necessary, have a party or go through a ritual that allows you to celebrate, honor, and acknowledge the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. Include people you love if it feels appropriate, or make it a private celebration of your transition.
- Clean house! To start something new, you have to make space for it to grow. Now is the time to remove anything from previous chapters of your life that will not provide value to the next chapter. When I say “clean house,” I certainly mean taking time for some physical reorganizing of your home or work environments. However, I also suggest reviewing your time commitments. Now might be the time to phase out any commitments that do not align with how and where you are moving forward. (For more on this, see Inspired Action Chapter 5: Time for a Commitment Audit.) Walk into your new life feeling lighter and ready for what may come.
