Blog, August 10, 2020
Purpose:
What’s your purpose? Do you ever think about that? I know I do. I have for years already, but every once in a while, I feel I need to do a check in on how well I am living my purpose or not.
Am I living my purpose? Just because I come up with some ideas about what my purpose might be, does not always mean that I stay on task with that purpose. Try as I may, I really do have good intentions, most of the time, but it’s not always easy to stay the course, and often, life blows me off course.
How do you find out what your purpose is? How do you know for sure? I personally pray about it. I write about it and I’ve even taken aptitude tests. One aptitude test from the 8th grade said my top two skills were Engineering and electronics. Well, I can tell you, I never pursued either one of those paths. Other types of tests have revealed I’m more right brain than left brain. You think there’s really anything to that?
My favorite way of finding my purpose is to pray and think about what I like to do. Well, I love to write! I love God and my family and friends and being with them. I love children, teaching, psychology. I love NA, recovery, nature, and traveling. I love reading, walking/hiking and I love sitting by a lake. I love or enjoy many things. But there are many things I do not love. Many things I do not like at all! And a few things I would never do for a buck and believe me, I have been pretty desperate at times for food & money.
I digress, the point is, finding your purpose is most often about doing what you love. They say, if you do what you love, then it doesn’t seem like work. By the way, I’m not just talking about monetary gains, there are many people who do not get paid money for doing what they love. The word, “mother” comes to mind. There are a lot people who give just because it makes them feel good to help others. It is “intrinsic” for them to do good. They have an “innate & empathetic need to be a part of the solution, not be part of the problem.
When addicts in active addiction and are drained of all of their inner resources and then some, when they are using and stifling any and all of their God given talents, feelings and desires they tend to create an even greater void in their body, mind and spirit. We all feel like we’re missing something when we do not use our creative talents, we’re nearly completely void when we are using, which adds to our degradation and pain.
Once we are clean and in recovery, we begin to start feeling like our old selves, maybe even better. Old dreams are re-awakened. But at first, we just need to do anything to get going, we take just about any legal job we can get. Maybe go back to school or begin to search for something that we feel we’d be better suited for, maybe a job we’d even like. Most often, money is the driving force when it comes to work. Yet, as I said before, there are also jobs where money is not the point and the most popular one being parenting.
In recovery, many of us do some service work to help out in our fellowships, local meetings, area and region. We do what we can to help the still suffering addict and to help get meetings going and keep recovery thriving. A lot of us find our niche by being of service and doing volunteer service. We get to exercise our artistic abilities; somebody needs to make a flier for the upcoming events. We have addicts writing and contributing to our literature. We need people to run business meetings, follow Robert’s Rule of Order, we need treasurers, literature managers, liaisons to help keep us informed with what going on at the next level of management. We need activity planners, hospital and institution managers and these days, plenty of tech savvy people.
There are all kinds of different jobs here for our volunteers. Greeters, secretaries, group representatives on and on. This is often a starting point for many of us to find out what we like doing and then pursue that vocation. I learned to type by being of service as our area secretary and typing up ten pages of minutes a month. There is also community volunteerism and I know of many recovering addicts who have used those jobs on their resume’s, myself included. Jobs such as helping out with neighbor watch, the towns parade, coaching little league or other sports.
This blog took a bit of a different direction than I had intended, once again. God’s in charge! Living your life with purpose is something you have to find out for yourself. I gave a few ideas on how to do that, prayer being the most popular, write about it. Take a test, answer some questions regarding your likes and dislikes towards what you might find rewarding or fulfilling to do.
I hope you all find your special path if you haven’t already. I pray that even if you can’t get a job doing your heart’s desire (rock and roll star) then maybe your hearts desire can be your hobby or your sideline. It will add to your fulfillment and completion of self. It’s important to feel needed and wanted, to feel that we are contributing while also satisfying a deeper need within us.
Question of the Week: Are you pursuing or living your purpose? Do you feel better doing what you love to do?
Try a couple of these sites to help you discover your purpose.
