Recognizing My Emptiness Helped Me Find My Life’s Purpose

Step by step towards my life’s purpose (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)

How I found answers by looking into the abyss

Have you ever asked yourself:

“What is my life’s purpose?”

I have certainly spent many hours on this question. I found it difficult to approach, especially when stuck in one of my many dark moments. Before I could connect with ‘purpose’, I had to look at the opposite meaning. Because of my crisis, I was in a space where this felt more natural to me.

What does it feel like to have a lack of purpose?

What is purpose? What is a lack of purpose?

For me, a lack of purpose is represented by an empty feeling on the inside, a void, a continuous search, and the need to attach meaning to myself and who I am. Going through life with a lack of purpose feels like drifting aimlessly. There is no intention behind what I think, feel, do, or experience. There is no consistency or integrity in my values. Everything feels random. I am reacting to life, rather than acting.

Purpose, on the other hand, feels entirely different. When I feel ‘purposeful’, I feel centered, aligned and balanced. Every part of me is whole and integrated, my spirit, my mind, my emotions, and my body. I am like the streamlined form of a dolphin gliding effortlessly through the currents of the ocean. Going with the flow feels easy because my alignment lets me navigate the ups and downs of the waves with grace.

Purpose comes in many forms. It is unique to each one of us, in the same way every one of us is a beautiful, unique, human being. Purpose means to be in touch with what your soul truly desires.

This concept of purpose calls for the acknowledgement of a higher force, our soul, our truth, our Higher Self, which goes far beyond what we can perceive in physical form. I believe each of us, before born, commits to a number of lessons or contracts to be fulfilled. These form part of our purpose. Our lives are guided towards fulfilling this purpose by meeting certain people and experiencing specific situations which are aimed at propelling us forward in our learning.

I can imagine purpose to stretch from one single learning to a large number, again, unique to each one of us. It is important to acknowledge this is not about comparison, but about aligning with your own soul’s truth, whatever that entails.

Maybe there is one main lesson behind your experiences and this one presents in different life situations. For example, if the purpose is to learn forgiveness, this may show up in a number of situations where you can learn how to forgive a bully, a former lover, your parents, or yourself.

Without purpose, life feels empty. There is no drive or motivation to do or feel anything. It feels like apathy or indifference. Why would I care? Why would this matter? Why would I do anything? Why would I move in a certain direction?

Actions mean little without purpose

However, I spent the first forty years of my life pushing forward with continuous action. Action came before everything else. My standard response to any situation was ‘action’. I did not tune into my purpose before doing something. This pattern led to a scattering of my energies.  I lost all sense of myself. I did not know who I was, what my values were, or where I wanted to go.

Very often, I found myself asking:

“Who am I?”

I first noticed the empty feeling inside myself in my teenage years. It sat right in my belly. It felt like an empty grey hole. It was not comfortable. In hindsight, this feeling of ‘unease’ was a message to change direction. I did not recognize this back then. I only noticed the feeling of discomfort and I tried to make it go away. I applied the usual remedies: boyfriends, best girlfriends, going out, getting drunk… Nothing filled this hole in a sustainable way. After finishing school, I pursued a career in corporate while studying at the same time. I lost myself completely in the process. The emptiness inside grew and swallowed me entirely. I started stuffing it with food. The feeling was like hunger, though, no food could ever satisfy it. I became bulimic in my feeble attempts to manage this nothingness inside of me.

Luckily, I found support to get over this situation. I found direction again; I got married and had children. We moved frequently. This kept me on my toes. There was no time to look at the darkness. Some years later, after moving to the other side of the world, the emptiness returned and brought me to my knees. I tumbled into a deep depression, the third one of my life, and the toughest one. It took me many years to heal. In hindsight, I understand this was my soul’s truest desire: to heal and to feel whole again. For this, I had to go through the challenges of looking at myself. This process was not pretty, but it was necessary. I observed that not everything my soul desires is fairy dust and butterflies. I found this tricky to accept.

At the beginning of my healing journey, my therapist told me:

“The purpose of life is to keep growing and expanding to find your own higher truth.”

This wasn’t the answer I was expecting.

I thought she should come up with a precise plan, guiding me towards what I had to do, a bit like an excel spreadsheet with action steps one to three-hundred-and-fifty-five. Then I could follow this plan, step by step. Easy!

Instead, my therapist advised me to keep asking questions to find out for myself. She pointed out it might be tricky to find the right question, but practice would get me there. Well, I thought, I could ask her this question straight away, so I dove straight in: “So, tell me, what is my career?”

She asked me what I was thinking.

Well, had I not come to her to find out? However, my therapist directed me back to myself and asked me to feel into what lights me up. She also said to look back into my childhood as there is often truth in what a child truly desires.

I reflected on this. Writing had always been my passion from a young age. I remember saying I wanted to be a writer, and as a matter of fact, I had poems, short stories and two and a half fully written novels sitting on my computer, waiting to be seen or acknowledged. But was that enough? How would I get there?

My therapist told me to connect with my intuition. Whatever felt warm and exciting was a step in the right direction. This way, I could create my own spreadsheet master plan.

In hindsight, this hint was the first clue to deciphering my purpose. I was meant to turn around the order of how I did things: Listen within first to connect with my intuition, and then, when the feeling was great, step forward in that direction. Step after step. Repeat.

Filling up the void from the outside was not the answer

I learnt a lot during my years of healing. I dove into the connection of our bodies, minds and souls. I reconnected with my emotions. I rediscovered spirituality and faith. I looked at the darkness from a different perspective. I finally understood that nothing from the outside could ever fill this hole. The healing had to come from the inside. I had spent the entire time trying to fill my emptiness from the outside. I had not looked for the answers in the right place.

It took me years of trial and error to understand how to connect to my inner being and to my intuition. Even now, I don’t always manage.

One good method for me is to record my dreams. I keep a notepad and pencil next to my bed. Before I go to sleep, I put out my questions. When I have a significant dream or thought in the middle of the night, I take notes of the guidance, otherwise I forget. Over time, I built up my guidance system, mainly by linking certain symbols to experiences. For example, for many people, a snake might be a symbol of fear. I love snakes and I associate them with healing. Whenever I dream of a snake, I know there is a wonderful message of healing behind it.

Through the dreams, I also learned about ‘asking the right questions’. I was still trying to find my purpose and asked about it every evening before I fell asleep:

“Shall I go back to teaching? Do I need to study for another degree? Shall I continue writing? …”

I never got any satisfying answers, failing to see how I was trying to fill myself through outside experiences once more.

Finally, I had the following dream: My mother was supposed to visit us in Australia, and I had to pick her up. I was lingering at the airport without any idea of when she was going to arrive. In my dream, I wrote a letter to my dad to find out. I noted down all my questions: Have you remembered to buy bananas? How’s the cat? What is the weather like at the moment? There were hundreds of simple, banal questions. There was almost no space left when I got to the only important question, the one that mattered in this very moment. I squeezed it onto the bottom of the paper in tiny letters. When is mum arriving? The question was almost lost in the maze of the other topics.

When I woke up, I knew I had been asking the wrong questions. My energies were scattered again. I thought about it. The moment I allowed myself to connect within, the right question became obvious:

What is my soul’s truest desire?

I asked.

Within an hour, I had my answer. It dropped into my inner knowing: 

Write about everything you have experienced on your healing journey. Be raw and honest. This shall be a testimonial for others who will follow in your footsteps.

I remember my first reaction very well:

No way. I’m NOT doing this!

It felt too embarrassing. I would completely and fully expose myself. I would open up. I would be vulnerable. It was scary. What would my family think? What about my friends and everyone who knew me? Should I share myself on such a deep level with the whole world? I had a lot of fear around this.

At the same time, another part of me was already busy setting up the story plot. Millions of thoughts rushed in.

I need to include a chapter on friendships. My parenting experiences need to go in there. All of my health lessons!

Part of me was extremely excited.

Nervous fear coupled with crazy excitement: the absolute winning combination for a soul-purpose-yes

I sighed. I saw where this was going. I could not get the idea out of my head anymore. I mulled it over. Three days later, I sat down and started writing. I penned 10,000 words in two days. This document has grown considerably since and is the foundation of all my blog posts.

I still follow the same structure today: by asking questions. Sometimes, they are not the right questions, but that is okay. I am getting better at it every day.