Hey everyone,
This morning I woke up feeling like shit. I’d been up late last night working and this morning, probably due to a mixture of the exhaustion, the weather, and some bug I seem to have picked up, my brain felt foggy and my my limbs were so heavy, I felt I might pass out. Which I then did, sometime before noon.
So why am I here writing this? Why am I at my computer at all? Why did I just spend an hour writing fiction and editing two new chapters of my novel?
The answer can be summed up in one word: Purpose.
Some people will scoff when I say what I’m about to say, and that’s okay because I used to be one of you, but I have discovered that when you’re doing the work that’s in alignment with who you are, when you’re living on purpose and creating the work that you were born to do, that work does not drain you, it energizes you.
This morning, I swiped my entire to-do list clean of everything—all the freelancing work, the promotional material I’m writing for The International Freelancer, and the calls—all except one thing. The novel. Because I knew that if I spent that hour on my writing, I would feel energized at the end of it. I would feel less shitty, I would bitch at my family less, and I would actually aid in my recovery.
I am a person of many different interests and a wide variety of skills that I do like to use. So yes, I enjoy building businesses and I enjoy freelancing and I love self-publishing nonfiction titles that I can write in a matter of weeks, and of course, I love selling. I have built entire careers, sabotaged those careers, and found new ones. And when I look back, one thing remains constant in my life: I have always wanted to write fiction. And I have always found reasons and excuses not to.
Until now.
It took me a long while to understand that it was time. It was time for me to honor my dreams of writing fiction and that indeed, the reason I avoided it so much and made the journey far more tortured than it needed to be, was because it is—and I’ve known this from an early age, the first time I wrote a short story at age six—the work that is the most meaningful to me and that I’m most passionate about.
Here’s what I know about work that feeds your soul and is the work you were meant to do: You may well avoid it, you may well worry that you’re not good enough at it, you may well find it difficult to even get started. But when you do? When you finally get over your own bullshit and find the rhythm and the flow? It energizes you. The work that you’re passionate about and that you’re put on this earth to do will never burn you out or make you feel like you “wasted” hours of your life. When you’re doing—actually doing and not just resisting—the work that is your true soul work, it will heal you. It will elevate you. It will fill you up. It will nourish you.
How do you know you’re living your true purpose and that your life is in alignment?
How do you know what you were meant to do with your life?
How do you know what your passion is?
Tune into your body and let it guide you. Look at the work you do that makes you feel better after you’ve done it, the work that heals you, the work that you could do for hours on end without once feeling tired.
That’s when you know you’re on purpose.
That’s the work you need to do more of.
That’s what will lead you to the life you were born to live.
That’s how you find your passion.
Cheers,
Natasha