The Only Three Questions Needed to Navigate Life

Often, the path forward remains obscured (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)

Ask, Act, Align

Who am I?  What is my purpose?

Have you ever asked yourself these questions?

I have.

While navigating the jungle of self-improvement, soul-searching, and inner-growth wisdom, three common threads appeared:

1.       Understanding the larger picture of your purpose

2.      Navigating the path from ‘now’ towards your purpose

3.      Discerning how to make the right choices to get you there

I translated these themes into three questions I ask myself daily.

Once you learn how to work with them, you’ll have everything you need to move forward in life.

1.      What is your heart’s (soul’s) truest desire?

This powerful question allows you to skip around the ego traps which prevent you from tapping into why you are here. It targets you right to the core, where your heart resides. By definition, this means reaching into pure and true love. Connecting with this allows you to tap into deep passion which overrides ego. Here, you can connect to your unique soul-print where authenticity and truth reside. What could be more powerful than tapping into these powers?

The best part is, if you don’t yet know how to connect to your heart, you can still find answers by opening up to the unconditional love yearning to shine at your core.

Allow yourself to receive answers by placing your hands on your heart and breathing deeply into this space. A good indicator is excitement coupled with tingles of nervousness (learn about my personal experience here).

If you cannot do this yet, don’t give up. It takes practice, like everything.

A message can reach you in different ways. You might simply know something to be true or hear a voice in your head. A friend might call and tell you about an idea that feels exciting. You might see an ad on TV or the internet. A message might pop into your inbox. Song lyrics can carry messages. Be open to receiving. Listen and pay attention. If you are unsure, keep asking until a common theme emerges. There is nothing wrong with asking multiple times.

 What could your soul truly want?

 Maybe this is about:

• Setting up a community garden 

• Reading to kids that don’t have anyone teaching them

• Caring about animals in need

• Sharing your experience through writing a blog

• Bringing beauty into the world by designing wonderful clothes

• Lighting up someone’s life

• Being content with who you are

• Having a healthy body

This can be anything. There are no rules, except for one: it needs to ring true in your heart.

Don’t be discouraged if your purpose does not seem like the big throw (like becoming the next president). Your purpose has a reason, and it is uniquely tied to your gifts. Often, you don’t know what ripples you create by committing to your heart.

You might have more than one purpose, or succeeding ones. Everything is fine.

A great indicator can be an untended passion or forgotten childhood dreams.

Beware your ego: it might step in and talk you out of connecting to your intuition by inventing reasons to keep you from pursuing your path. Usually, this is fear-based. Sometimes, this means you  need to do healing work first to clear the way.

 2.      What is your next step?

Once you identify your truest desire, common sense says you need a process on how to attain it. Call it the logistics. This path might be unclear (follow my personal story here). You might think you’ll never get there. Your mind might go into overdrive and drown you in overwhelm.

This is the moment to let go of any expectations on the hows and the whens.

Trust and have faith.

Focus on the next step only. Allow yourself to surrender into the flow of events. What seems like a detour might be a short cut. What appears as a burden could turn out to be your greatest blessing. We tend to judge what happens from an ego perspective whereas our heart tells us to move along with the flow.

Who knows, the person you bumped into might turn out to be the perfect personal trainer? When you go out to volunteer you could meet someone special there. You’ll never know.

However, this doesn’t mean every moment in your life will turn out to be the big turnaround. The big moments require consistency and stamina beforehand.

Often, we don’t know why we are led down a certain path. It might become clear in hindsight, or it won’t. This should not be your concern. Simply focus on the next step. Take one after the other. Allow everything to unfold and remember, it takes time to move forward. Sometimes, things need to fall into place before you can reach the next milestone.

Trust that everything is going to plan.

3.     Does this step feel right and align with your truth?

Not every potential stepping-stone is the right one for you. The crux is only you will know.

There are countless expectations placed upon you, through your parents, friends, society, media, school… The trick is to discern your own truth from everyone else’s.

You might still carry trauma (see my personal story here) or your ego might interfere.

If you are an empath, your energies might be mixed with other people’s energies (more info here). You might pick up on fear and drama simply by watching the news. All of this can interfere with connecting to your own heart’s truth. In such cases, consider doing an energy clearing meditation every day (access one of my favorite ones here and see my meditation teacher’s website here for more inspiration).

Allow yourself the time to briefly pause and consider your heart’s wisdom before choosing your next step. Take a deep breath and imagine letting go of any expectations. Ask your heart’s wisdom to speak to you. Feel into what feels right. Then, communicate with clear and kind words.

It takes a lot of practice to discern and tap into the higher perspective of love. Don’t be disheartened if you feel you are making mistakes. Errors are stepping-stones as well; steps towards mastering the art of discernment.

 Good luck on your path!