Tuscany keeps giving its best and it’s as hot as ever. I’ve been having a good time and have been led by life to the most interesting events and people. Two town recommendations I wanted to give for those coming to the Tuscany region; San Gimignano and Lucca. We visited both places with my parents back in June and really enjoyed our day trips. Recently I’ve been drawn to stay put, as I’ve been hiking and engrossed in my self-discovery work and research. Having said this, pretty much anywhere you set foot in Toscana is amazing, though. The magic of this area I mentioned last week is really captivating for me personally.

My aunt Suski will be visiting me again, and we’ll be off to explore the coast of Italy at Amalfi, then hop over to Capri island and see some towns in the south (we’ll be staying in Matera). Pics and a travel report summary shall follow!

Wine grapes, Laku & Peppi and San Gimignano

What is life purpose? Where does it come from? What is yours?

I never consciously thought about life purpose, as I considered it a bit of a fluffy cliché and thought I kind of knew what I was doing and aiming for already. But actually sitting down with this term and starting to unfold my own purpose has given me so much clarity, direction and ease around life that I would encourage others to do the same.  

Monica and Michael Berg dive into the topic in their podcast “Spiritually Hungry”. I fully agree with them in thinking that everyone has a purpose; we all come into this world for a unique task – to engage in something we’re destined to do and work on for the entire duration of our lives. Our purpose guides us in everything we do and gives meaning. 

Our core, soul or essence is in the spiritual world often described as an onion; something that has a centre and many many layers on top of it. When we are born, we are that little core of the onion; a pure being in our highest self-worth. Along the years, we pick up conditioning and believes from the world around us; relationships, society, culture etc. and these start piling layer after layer on top of our beautiful onion core.

By the way - I’ve tried my best to come up with my own core essence analogy, but there really is no better way to illustrate the phenomenon than with the onion. The closest I got was fennel, a rose, rainbows…? Nah, we’ll have to stick with the onion.

Monica Berg thinks that we come to this world loving ourselves, then we fall out of love during the course of our life and need to peel back those onion layers to learn to love us again. I view the onion layers as something we need to peel off, in order to get to the bottom of our authenticity – and this is the place from where our life purpose can be discovered. Berg reminds us how authenticity should not be confused with honesty. Authenticity means genuine acceptance of who we are, which offers a base for how we show up in the world.

Clinical psychologist and author Shefali Tsabary believes we live purposefully, when our inside is aligned with what’s happening on the outside, and so we feel like we’re in flow and driven. When living purposefully, we feel charged with energy, connected to bigger purpose and in service of other or many. I think we sometimes get confused about the fact that our purpose can feel so obvious and easy that we can’t believe that "that’s it”. But because our purpose is what comes natural to us, it mustn’t feel like hard work at all.

There a few pitfalls we need to avoid, when working on unveiling our purpose.

Shefali thinks that what’s usually blocking us in our discovery work are the numbing feelings around unworthiness, fear, doubt and confusion. She thinks we often carry lack-based believe systems within us that push us towards negative self-talk: “what will others say?”, “what if I’m not perfect?”, “what if I fail, or am not good enough?”. Try not to listen to your ego talking you down.

We might also be afraid that what we do, already exists out there; pretty much everything has been done. But the thing is that nothing has been done exactly in the way you do it best - maybe some action connected to your purpose already exists out there (e.g. offering experiences, bringing people together, spreading word etc.), but not with your unique qualities and spark. This fear should not stop us from exploring our true potential.  

The Bergs remind us that we also shouldn’t see purpose as necessarily something tied to size and volume; something huge and lavish only available for special somebodies.

Michael Berg tells a beautiful story about his father Rav, a kabbalist, who was taught by his teacher for some years before he passed away. If we would view Rav’s teacher’s purpose (spreading the Kabbalah teachings) in connection with volume, someone could say his teachings didn’t really reach awfully many, as Rav was his only student. In effect, someone could question whether the teacher really lived purposefully in that sense. But Rav ended up founding a Kabbalah program, passing on the knowledge he gained from his teacher and has reached thousands of people around the world. Both Rav and his teacher might have had a similar life purpose, but it presented itself in different ways. Yet Rav couldn’t have achieved what he did without his teacher.

Well, how to then unfold our purpose?

We need to start digging deep and ask ourselves a set of candid questions - journaling can be helpful here. Whereas feedback from friends and loved ones can be valuable in the purpose discovery work, we shouldn’t rely on external validation. Monica Berg differentiates how validation is asking someone: “help me to be ok” (as we don’t believe in ourselves that we are), whereas feedback is asking: “help me to get better”.

“The mystery of human exitance lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for”. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Shefali seems to agree with Mr Dostoyevsky’s quote, as she states that the key to unfolding our purpose is to move away from survival mode and instead, aim to live a life in order to thrive. What this means in more down-to-earth terms is shifting our thinking from “what do I need?” to “how do I want to feel?”. This can also be viewed as a shift from form to formless. If we for example think of wealth, we can view it from form and formless perspectives; “I want to be rich” (loads of money = form) or “I want my financial situation to grant me safety and freedom, no scarcity” (feelings = formless).

At this point I want to emphasize that there is no shame in wanting money. But consider this; rather than making money just to make money, we could aim to work purposefully – in a way that feels easy, natural and fun to us – to make that money. When we work in line with our purpose, odds are that making money will be more effortless, too.

The obvious questions to unveil our purpose are: What makes you feel most engaged, connected, creative and free? What are you already doing that brings you joy?

I encourage you to review your entire life here, even the “not-so-obvious”, little things that light you up: When did you last feel bubbly with excitement? What would you do right this second, if you had the chance? What do you like to spend your money on? What was your favourite timepass as a kid?

The Bergs recommend the following steps to unveil our life purpose:

• first of all, acknowledge fully that your soul or essence is a powerful, unique source that is meant to reveal great light into this world
• think of all your best qualities and even the characteristics and things you don’t yet embody, but are aiming for 
• consider what makes you uncomfortable and why
• challenge yourself constantly to learn and grow 
• trust the process – know that the universe is always working in our favour (more about this is my previous post)

Some visual Toscana magic

I’ve spent quite some time figuring out my life purpose during my sabbatical. The “authentic code” workshop from the To Be Magnetic program (https://tobemagnetic.com/) has been a big help here and I warmly recommend these TBM tools to everyone. Outlining my purpose has offered me direction when it comes to the things I spend my time on, both at the moment and when making plans for my future; in regard to my career and free-time.

Before carving out my purpose properly, I for example struggled with this blog. Some of the only feedback I had received in the beginning of the year was that my writing was too heavy and difficult to read. I was devastated and asked myself what the point was to spend hours on writing and editing, when “no one” understood what I wrote – no matter how much I enjoyed the actual writing process. As this blog serves as a creative outlet for me, changing my preferred writing style or content to match any potential audience better felt stupid - eventually the whole project did. Then, I started to work on unfolding my purpose and this had a significant impact on the way I viewed everything.

In a nutshell, my unique purpose in life is to inspire and support others on their paths - to shine my light in order to make you feel seen & heard.

Then it hit me. My writing can be one of many tools and ways to fulfil this purpose. And that I should write exactly what my soul desires, because it’s not about the quantity; how many people I can touch by volume. Actually, it’s enough if I reach one single person out there with my light. One person who gets inspired, has an aha moment or gets some food for thought. Likes a book or starts to follow an expert I refer to in my text. Enjoys looking at my pictures from Italy or even just smiles a little.

And if this fails, there is always the effect the writing has on myself; digging deeper into my essence, understanding concepts better by putting them on paper, noticing the shifts in my thinking or personal development and having a really good time scrabbling it all together + having that creative outlet. All this fuels me up to embrace my life purpose.

And there it was: the intention of my writing (something that excites me) and the connection to my life purpose. This connection made all the difference to the project. And even if this blog is still evolving and shaping up as we go, the vision around it got so much clearer once I connected the dots between what I do, and my purpose. 

Deepak Chopra reminds us: “You don’t have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body”. Purpose comes from our soul and is simply the reason for our existing. We are unique little souls and thus we all have a purpose, and by unveiling it and putting it in a package of words that make sense to ourselves, it can operate as our inner compass. I believe that unfolding our purpose is the key for us to find more meaning and joy in life.

We might feel happyish and pretty OK with what we do and how successful we are, but we can do better than that. As my example demonstrates, even a mindset shift can make all the difference. What’s your life purpose?  

Much love!

Bacio 💋 Cass