As 2014 looms around the corner, I have been taking stock of the year passed and what's to come in the year ahead.
Some great things happened to me in 2013:
- I have become closer with certain family members, such as my sister, a set of aunt/uncle cousins and overall have a deeper appreciation and love for my family as a whole
- I've forged an even deeper connection with my husband, the most amazing man I know
- I have more open communication with my boss and am more direct with him and my colleagues
- I have done some great travelling, including a lifelong dream ski trip to Whistler
- I completed the Landmark Curriculum for Living and took on a project to raise money for single mother families in Africa - a huge undertaking that involved several communities in my life and challenged me to achieve something beyond my wildest dreams
- I got further involved in community, volunteering at a senior's home and joining a board of directors of a school
- I've had a lot of fun celebrating friends and family's birthdays, weddings, engagements and babies
- I've enjoyed my city, great food, movies, etc.
All-in-all, 2013 was a wonderful year and I feel really blessed for everything that has happened.
On the flip-side, I cannot ignore several areas of restlessness that I have felt within my life:
- I want to switch careers and I am uncertain of what that transition will look like and what I really want to do
- I would not consider myself to always be living my life actively. In other words, I recognizes times when I have been living passively out of fear, laziness of an overwhelm to take action or make choices. I'll choose to lie on the couch and watch TV instead of writing, figuring out my next career move, being more active in managing my finances or working on a deeper spiritual connection with others, myself and the universe.I have procrastinated in getting in touch with people or returning communications from people. At times I have felt agitated, like a person without a direct path laid out and it's caused me discomfort; and likely been the cause of me having moments of overreacting. It's made me feel a void and recognize that while I can be having fun, it doesn't lead me to feel like I'm living a meaningful life.
After some self-reflection, I have decided that 2014 is going to be a year of explosive growth for me - a year where I really challenge myself and live life meaningfully.
What does it mean to live life meaningfully? Still discovering this myself, I turned to a blog post I once read by Steve Pavlina, a personal development author, motivational speaker and entrepreneur, called: How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes. I've been meaning to do this exercise from quite some time now, but I will admit something: Though I have taken several personal development courses, I find self-reflection to be challenging and sometimes even draining. So after a year of procrastination, yesterday I sat down and did the exercise, which comes with simple instructions:
1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open a word processor where you can type
2. Write at the top, "What is my true purpose in life?"
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn't have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.
I found it hard to concentrate after a while. Impressively, some answers I wrote along the way did stir some emotional chord within me. It was challenging for me to sit through the entire excercise in one shot and I did get up to go to the bathroom right when I was on the verge of my own great life-purpose discovery. Nope, life purpose can wait - I had to pee.
Here is what I came up with:
To live a passionate, joyful life in which I
continually challenge myself to achieve my dreams and act courageously ; to
have unabashed love for and connection with the universe, nature, others and
myself; to have peace of
mind knowing that every day I live an intention-filled life of my own creation.
I think it could probably be distilled further but what struck me as I went to pee (the interruption at least yielded a positive result) is this: perfection does not have to look perfect. This realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Since I was in my early teens I have lived much of my life as though I needed to look perfect. This principle has governed a lot of what I do or don't do, what I say or don't say. While I have been trying to break the mold, old habits die hard. And then recently I was at a friend's house and we started talking about a mutual friend of ours (I know, not nice, but it sometimes happens) who, my friend described, has always had a need to look cool. This was actually a bit of a shock for me to hear as I always looked at her in awe for having it all together. It was the first time that I looked at her differently - not to say that my other friend is right about her. But I thought to myself - if this is, in fact, an act and she is only pretending to have it all together, then I felt was compassion and empathy. I thought - how lonely is it to pretend and not be able to be yourself - to truly be vulnerable and share fully with your friends?
That is not how I want to live in relationships, in my career or even in my hobbies, such as blogging.
With this all in mind, I turn to the year ahead. Every year I make a list New Year's resolutions (I did the same on this blog a year ago) and forget about them or give up or don't even bother to try. This year, however I am only going to make one: to live my true purpose in life. To life it passionately and to observe what comes out of doing so. And to realize that perfection doesn't have to look perfect. And what a relief that is!
This post is dedicated to my loving brother who encouraged me to continue blogging in the new year. Happy New Year Bro!
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