The Power of a Multi-Faceted Purpose
To have the courage and dedication to gather a community online and to create and sell a digital product takes SO MUCH WORK. Not just of the physical or intellectual sort, but emotional. It takes energetic work. Spiritual work.
To make a level of commitment like that, to keep yourself going through the guilt of the good and the pain of the hard, you need to be fierce on WHY you want to do this in the first place.
Does your WHY need to be perfect?
NO!
But you do need to choose a why. Find a reason. Decide your reason.
Your connection to your business, your activism, any type of leadership, isn’t going to feel linear. Some days will feel great. But not every day is going to FEEL in alignment. Some days there will be discomfort, grief and confusion, while other days will feel full of purpose.
Recognize that all of these feelings are part of the process of navigating the messy human experience of running an imperfect business.
To be a leader, offer courses, and share your own medicine with the world with integrity - and in the face of adversity and your fears - takes such vulnerability.
You’ve got to get deeply connected and keep coming back to your WHY. But here’s the thing, if you try to come up with ONE reason WHY you do want to run a business, your building a shaky territory. If this reason shifts, it will be way easier to give up when times get rough. That’s why make let why be multi-faceted.
But first start with your heart centered why. It’s important a really grounded and connected passionate drive to what you do because the more proud you are of what you are offer, the more likely you will be to promote it and the greater impact your work will have.
Why do you care?
Why do you want to serve?
What do you want to see in the world? And why?
What really pisses you off? Why?
What is the red thread that connects your multiple interests and needs?
Keep coming back to your WHY until you have tingles all over your skin. Until you feel like the magic of this clarity is waking up every one of your cells and is DEMANDING that you show the fuck up, or it would be dishonoring yourself, your ancestors, and the earth.
Maybe you’ve heard about this a thousand times but maybe you need a reminder to go there again, to go deeper.
Tuning into your WHY takes embodiment. Tuning into your WHY means allowing yourself to really feel YOURSELF. To feel the depths of rage and grief, but to also feel your hope and possibility. To feel your power and potential.
It’s nothing we can just intellectualize our way through.
Okay, okay, maybe I am being a bit dramatic.
It's also okay if you don't have a psychedelic, coming-to-GOD type of moment of finding your way. It may come in little waves like a gentle breeze of hope. Hold onto that.
Then try and come up with at least 9 other reasons why you want to build your business, be an entrepreneur, or for what I’m an advocate for: offer digital products. In permaculture, we call this stacking functions. One action serving multiple purposes. The more reasons why you do something, the more benefits it has, the more likely you will keep it up when shit gets hard. It’s okay if these reasons feel self-centered.
Why?
Because…
1. Self centered means you are centered in yourself.
2. That’s why we first focused on your hearted reason. When your why is grounded in service and justice, make sure it’s big time nourishing you in other ways so you keep it up and don’t burn out!
3. Your purpose is so much more than just your career. Yes, it’s great to feel spiritually, emotionally and physically rejuvenated by the work you do AND if we put our work on a morally superior pedestal, everything else in life will suffer. We will see our relationships either adding to our work or taking away from our work leading us to either using our loved ones or resenting. That’s what patriarchy is BUILT UPON. Using women’s labor to build empires and seeing a nagging wife as abother.
Nope. We are building a new culture. We don’t need to build new empires, but networks of care. Let your work be ONE of your big passions, but not everything. But to be honest, when you are first starting your business and/or offering your first online course, it takes a LOT of energy. Don’t beat yourself up if it becomes the center of everything for a little bit, just make sure to take a step back once you it gets rolling.
Here are some examples of why you may want to offer online courses and/or become an entrepreneur.
You get to decide your own schedule
You get to do work that makes you happy
You don’t have to take jobs or work for people that feel horrible
You get to quite that job that you hate
You get to spend more time with your loved ones
You get creative freedom
You get to channel your different skills and passions into one focus
You get to wake up when you want to
You get to have more money and financial security
You get to feel challenged and watch your own growth
You get to take as much vacation as you want
You get to work from home or wherever you want
You get to travel as much as you’d like
When you decide and start taking definitive steps in that direction, the universe will guide you on becoming clearer and clearer in your why.
Want more journal prompts to reflect on and to help you tune into your why?
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