What is Your Purpose?
In this video from the 2019 Embodied Men’s Leadership Training retreat in the California Panamint Valley Desert, John discerns the difference between earning a living and carrying out your life’s purpose.
You’ll learn:
In order to be powerfully successful doing the thing you dedicate your heart to, it “takes blood,” as John describes. It is a lifestyle; not something you can do 20 hours a week. He continues, “It’s your relationship to the blood-taking that matters.”
This doesn’t mean that you become a martyr. You can strategize ways to carry out your life’s purpose without doing everything yourself, like hiring support.
Ultimately, your purpose should be something you have no choice but to do - it doesn’t matter if you want to do it, or how you feel about it - because it’s coming through you in a way that’s unshakeable. You can’t deny it - like a force of nature moving through you.
This is different than making money or earning a living.
As John’s teacher David Deida suggests, if you are in doubt as to whether you are living your purpose, do nothing. For example, spend a year making money so you can support yourself, and then sit with the question, “How do I bring my gifts to the world?”
Then follow the impulses of your heart. Use others you trust to help you course-correct.
It is painful and frustrating not to know what you’re here to do in the world, and, as John asserts, it should be. Don’t try to escape the pain. In John’s words, “Sit in the mud,” continue to deepen, and create space for whatever wants to move through you.