Everyone has a purpose in life. Each of us has a unique mission that is fully supported by the special gifts and talents needed for our mission to be fulfilled in the world.
Like me, you may believe that your life is purpose-driven, but believing you have a purpose and actually living that purpose—well, those two experiences are worlds apart. As I myself learned, they are as far apart as heaven and hell.
A Midlife Crisis Turned My World Upside Down
When I turned 38, I had a midlife crisis that turned my world upside down. The sense I’d felt for years that something was missing in my life kept me trapped in my own private hell, and it finally became too painful to ignore.
If you knew me then, you’d never guess I was so desperate and alone. I’d achieved success at a relatively young age, becoming one of the top tennis professionals in the country. As the director of a prestigious athletic club, making $150,000 a year, I went to work every day wearing a warm-up suit. Married and the father of two wonderful boys, I lived in a beautiful home outside of Boston. You would have thought I had it all.
But behind the pretense lay the stark reality of my life. Struggling to fit the success mold, I spent all my spare time working, leaving my two young sons growing up without a father. I had chronic sinus, lower back, and digestive issues, conditions I numbed with alcohol to hide how bad I was feeling. I smiled, but I wasn’t happy. Now I see that my misery was the toll exacted from living a lie.
As I approached my late thirties, my false world began to crumble around me. For years, I’d believed that success meant earning a lot of money, so I could never do what I really loved for fear I’d get stuck in a second-rate, poorly paying job. Desperate, I signed up for a three-year program in “energy medicine,” hoping the courses would help me to heal.
The Healing Begins and Continues
In the program, I learned to awaken my life force that had been shut down over the years of denying my true nature. I saw that who I wanted to be and who I had become were actually two distinctly different people.
As I did the work to awaken and embrace my own deeper purpose, I started to notice that others, too, were hiding their quiet desperation behind a smile, a drink, or distraction. The “something missing” for us all, I learned, was authentic meaning and purpose in life—the one thing material success could never bring.
I started to trust my deepest feelings and soon found myself called to my unique mission in life, which is to teach that our own truth is infinitely stronger than anything others are telling us to do.
Living With Passion, Enthusiasm and Creativity
Today, knowing who I am and what my purpose is, I live every day with passion, enthusiasm and creativity. I am in better shape physically in my fifties than I was in my thirties, and I found the courage to leave an unhealthy marriage and quit that job as director of the country club.
In 2005, I opened the Rhys Thomas Institute, located outside of Boston but with a global reach, where I teach my students how to awaken to their truth through a method I developed, the Rhys Method Life Purpose Profiles System, so they can live fully in their life purpose every day.
You may be suffering as I did, denying your truth in life, not even aware of what it is. But once you discover your Big Why and take action to live it, you will achieve what you truly want in life.
First Step: The Pure Pleasure of Being You
The pure pleasure of being you marks the first step on the path to finding your life purpose and transforming your life. Then, as you share the truth of who you are with others, you find you have a larger life purpose that ultimately plays a part in the transformation of all your relationships, your society, and the world. It all begins when you discover your purpose.
You are your life purpose, and you always have been. If you are waiting for the right circumstances to show you your purpose in life, you are missing the point.
The reality is that you are already fully on your path; you just don’t recognize it. You don’t recognize it because you don’t know yourself well enough to see how you fit into your own life. If you did, nothing would stop you.
Your life purpose is always yours, and once you identify it, you can pursue goals and desires from a place of alignment with who you are and what you’re here for, not from what others tell you or from what you think you should do.
©2016 Rhys Thomas.
Article Source
Discover Your Purpose: How to Use the Five Life Purpose Profiles to Unlock Your Hidden Potential and Live the Life You Were Meant to LiveClick here for more info and/or to order this book.
About the Author
Rhys Thomas is a visionary author, speaker, and teacher in the field of energy medicine. Creator of the Rhys Method® Life Purpose Profile System and founder of the Rhys Thomas Institute in the Boston area, he employs energy medicine techniques to help people achieve personal and professional transformation. He is a certified Energy Medicine Practitioner, a Reiki Master, and a 2nd Degree Black Belt. Before entering the healing arts, he had a successful twenty-seven-year-long career as a professional tennis coach and speaker.
