If I Didn't Know My Purpose I Would Do This

At a really young age, I had the awareness that there was a reason I was here this lifetime.

I couldn't necessarily explain what I felt, so I associated this feeling with having to find a career that I loved.

I was raised by Cuban immigrant parents who really wanted me to pick a professional career so that I could pay my bills and be safe. The options on the list were: doctor, attorney, or engineer.

I tried my best to make them happy. I took the LSAT, the GMAT and briefly tried studying for the MCAT. Wow, did that time really suck the life out of me.

Deep down, I knew I was an artist. When I started to follow that knowing I eventually began to understood what my calling was. You're looking at it.

If I had to start all over today and discover my purpose, the one thing I would do is pay attention to my skills. Because our skills are clues to what we're meant to do with our lives. I would specifically look at my innate skills, my learned skills, and my feeling-called-to-learn skills. Let me break that down for you below.

Innate Skills

These are the skills where you feel at home. You may have worked hard to develop them. I put it hundreds of hours to be a great intuitive. But, even when you're working to develop them, you're not complaining. The momentum just takes you. Other innate skills are just the ones you are naturally good at.

Learned Skills

Those are the ones we happened to learn. Maybe a parent or a teacher introduced them to us? Maybe we chose to study them? And maybe we're really good at them. But just because we're good at them, doesn't mean we love them or that we're meant to do them. These skills, we need to be honest about how much emphasis we should put on them. They may play a role in what our purpose ultimately is, but they are not the one and only skill to consider. Sometimes, these skills may even be tossed away or put on the shelf.

Feeling-Called-to-Learn Skills

They are exactly that: you're feeling pulled down a rabbit hole of one topic. You may not know anything about this topic, but for some reason you feel like you need to learn. With time, you may even get good at it!

When you look at these three categories of skills and put them together, ask yourself, why would a person have these skills? What would they do with them? If you want to take it a step further, you can look at all your life experiences that lead to these skills and reflect on what is your life trying to tell you? Why would your soul give you these breadcrumbs? Where is it trying to take you? Take some time this week and reflect. Make a list of these categories and then do some detective work. Let me know what came up for you!

Assignment

Grab a piece of a paper and make three columns.

• Label the first column: "Innate Skills"

• Label the second column: "Learned Skills"

• Label the third column: "Skills I'm feeling Called to Learn"

Take a few minutes to write down your skills for each column. Don't over think it. Just write. After you have written your skills, what do you think your soul is trying to tell you by gifting you with these skills?

Leave your reflections in the comments!