For the first time since I began the practice of an annual end-of-year mini-retreat eleven years ago, this year’s retreat has had vibrant staying power. The insights, takeaways, and more than anything, the process and particular questions from the retreat, have come up urgently again and again, particularly around life purpose and meaning.
The specific retreat question that keeps coming back for further reflection is:
Q: What is the work that only you can do, that you are uniquely responsible for, and won’t get done if you don’t do it?
I’ve found myself, in nearly every conversation with current, new, and prospective clients, asking that question.
I’ve also been asking it of myself.
Perhaps because 2020 was a year unlike any other I’ve experienced in this lifetime.
Perhaps because I’m ready, and my clients are too.
Whatever the reason, reflecting on this question shows me how much things have massively shifted for me, particularly around my tendencies toward shyness or hiding not showing myself fully to the world, for fear of being seen as weird (and yes, I’m weird…and now I’m OK with it).
I realize that my unique gifts and talents, my combination of lived experiences, my values, and the vision I have for my life came forward to perfectly equip me to fulfill my purpose. And that purpose will always look strange to anyone on the outside of it.
My purpose is my work alone; it’s not something I can outsource. I can procrastinate, I can hide, but then the work continues to not be done. And it keeps calling me, nonetheless.
Embracing what I’m here to do, and accepting the responsibility of all that entails, will never be explainable or look rational to anyone else.
But having either fear or no fear about looking irrational or weird to anyone else, it’s my work, and it’s what I’m urgently all about these days.
And in embracing that, I feel peace and enormous clarity, for the first time in a long time.
After all, it rides on all the gifts of clarity from the pandemic:
1. Even the most disorienting disruption is something I can adapt to. I am more resilient than I ever thought or gave myself credit for.
2. Maybe a degree of disruption is good, because it helps me see that the way I thought things worked, isn’t actually how they work.
3. Disruption triggers fear in almost everyone. Fear of lack, fear of losing control, fear of the unknown.
4. In the face of fear, most people become either more generous or less generous. This has a lot to do with what they believe about how the universe works, based on what they learned from experience or conditioning during a past stressful time.
5. When you are protecting your needs, from the biological to the political to the spiritual, you are living less than your full potential, because there is a question about security: about whether those needs will be filled. Doubt of any sort disrupts full or true alignment.
6. If you can embrace that the unknown might not bring negative results, but can be a catalyst for extraordinary results that couldn’t happen otherwise, different results can and often do show up.
7. Everyone wants and deserves to be free.
8. Fear prevents freedom, on every level.
9. Fear keeps you small and unable to self-actualize.
10. Self-actualization is an actual need that is always under the surface, calling to you to do what you are really here to do. You can ignore it, but it will always call you back if you get off track and aren’t fulfilling it.
11. When self-actualization is happening, it rarely looks logical from the outside. It is felt and known on the inside, and often guided by hunches and feelings. It’s more intuitive than logical. Because that feeling and knowing is intuition, and your intuition belongs to you alone; rationale belongs to everyone. If you’re following what makes sense or following a script, it’s pretty likely you’re not self-actualizing because you’re not listening within, to your internal guidance (which no one can do for you, and you have for a good reason: fulfilling your path).
12. Nearly 100% of people are afraid of their own self-actualization because of #11. They think people are keeping score and they’ll get points deducted if their self-actualization doesn’t look good to others or doesn’t make sense on the outside.
13. Nearly all of the people in your life (perhaps including you) aren’t self-actualizing because of #12.
14. A lifetime is a long time, but it’s way too short not to self-actualize. See #10. Self-actualization is what you’re here to do. If you don’t do it, you will suffer—either along the way, or at the end of your life, when you look back with regret because you knew it was your work, and yet, you didn’t do it. Likely because of fear.
15. You can’t delegate your purpose, your self-actualization. You’re on that part of your journey alone. And that’s OK.
16. That’s why, when you get off track and move away from the path of self-actualization—that which only you can do, and that which you came here to do—it calls you back. Every time. Even (and especially) if the path that keeps presenting itself looks strange to you or to others. See #12.
My biggest takeaway?
Self-actualization is the work. It’s your work.
No one else can do it, and it’s what you’re here to do.
The longer you stay in your fear, the longer it takes to complete. And you’re missing a lot of joy and fulfillment by hiding, avoiding it, and procrastinating.
Your purpose, your work, your self-actualization also looks different to you than it does to others. To you, it looks weird and completely terrifying.
To others, it looks like the blessing they’ve been looking for but didn’t know they needed, or that they didn’t know was there for them.
When they find it, thanks to you doing the work that only you can do, it often deeply resonates with them. It provides comfort, hope, and connection. It’s affirming.
From the outside, your work looks like brilliance, solace, and being understood, heard, uplifted. It’s more than worthwhile. It’s beautiful.
Your fulfillment of your purpose is needed.
And it’s calling you. Urgently. Because it’s why you’re here. And it’s exactly what we need from you. It’s what only you can do, and what you’re responsible to do.
And it’s what won’t get done if you don’t do it.
So, now that you remember that, what’s next?