“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how” – Nietzche
I’m going to do this review slightly different than my quarterly reviews. Since I’ve already broken down the happenings of each individual slice in life throughout this year, I wanted to do more of a big picture summary this time around.
My Word for 2014 was Purpose and my theme was Choose to Dance.
When the word Purpose hit my heart during last year’s reflections, I can’t say that I wasn’t already hip to the game plan on what my purpose was. I was running circles around in my brain on what comes after discovering your purpose. Apparently, I needed to gain more clarity around it so I could better align it with my work because well… who doesn’t want to make a living actually doing what they’re called to do in this lifetime?
What I didn’t comprehend at the beginning of the year, was that “Choose to Dance” would be the perfect theme to go along with a year focused on Purpose because it is exactly how you embrace what you’ve discovered. You choose Purpose over and over while creating its rhythm and letting it move you forward through life.
When I came across this post and read: Your purpose is a culmination of moments in your life where you are creating sacred places. This simply translates into knowing that you are surrounded by purpose. I knew I was onto something.
For me, my intention was create more purpose through 3 avenues: Alignment, Integration, and Movement. I kept that in mind when I set goals under all 6 slices life this year: personal, social, physical, spiritual, professional, and financial. I kept it in mind when I unapologetically shifted those goals several times throughout the year, while simultaneously forgiving myself when I sometimes did so out of fear. (If you want to know what they were and the adjustments I made just read my personal archives.)
Here’s the thing, we all know that life can run smoothly and then suddenly spiral out of control, so we can choose to crash and burn believing that we are not enough or we can be like the Phoenix and rise out of the ashes (the circumstances, the stereotypes, the ignorance, etc) through our actions, our activation time, and claim our purpose over and over again. What’s more, is that purpose evolves.
Zen Habits hit the nail on the head with this:
Our external purpose changes to reflect our inner. Purposes are not permanent. Nothing is. Stop looking for something to do for the rest of your life – it might be possible to find something that lasts forever; but most likely it will simply change in accordance with your internal state and needs.
In the end, I pursued everything I wanted while my true intentions revealed themselves through prioritization and follow-through to a self-defined finish line. I’ve concluded that by far this has truly been an Astonishing and Purposeful year.
See you all in 2015 : )
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