Living on Purpose. What does it mean?
Contributing to the world I wanted to live in has always been an imperative for me. Even if I was not always sure exactly what I had to contribute.
As a child this may have been a smile, a giggle, or light in a moment of sadness. My wiggling effervescence seemed always to proceed me.
All grown up, at university I got a degree in finance to bend my brain in a way it did not naturally tilt. My family took this as a sign I would go into banking and were understandably confused when I first became an elementary school teacher with Teach for America in urban Louisiana and then a US Peace Corps volunteer teaching business and marketing to adults in Vladivostok, Russia. For me, it was all very logical, my point was to contribute, and I was adventuring along figuring out how as I went.
For two decades I bounced around the world learning languages and exploring cultures. As a teacher, I organically slid into the role of coach long before it was fashionable. For nearly ten years in Russia, I was mentored by two amazing, inspiring teachers who challenged me to go beyond my boundaries and embrace what I might offer others as a mirror. Along the way I taught everything from marketing to meditation, ever humble and clear that being a good teacher means being a constant student.
As an overachieving only American girl child born in 1970, my default was multi-tasking, hyper achievement mode that bordered on exhaustion. Cosmic joke, at 40 I married a Swiss man bound by his comfort zone. His life goal seems to be the art of doing less. We are both successfully extremists. For many years, my own extremism worked for me, and then it did not.
Around the time I married, I also began to study with a new teacher whose impact on my life continues to expand. Now, years of meditating has taken its toll and the idea of achievement being the point of living lies flat. We are human beings, not human doings. The insipid phrase “It is what it is” looms large. Said with the shrug of the shoulders it is the other extreme. A new agey way to say, go with the flow. For me, it feels too much like an excuse to watch Netflix.
What happens outside of us, happens. The question is who do I choose to be in the light of any given situation? This is living on purpose for me.
During Covid my natural sense of urgency took on new proportions. How to contribute? Meditation called me, my long-time mission to get the world meditating one small circle at a time activated. More than a year into this mission, urgency knocks again, and my answer is a new online course, Living on Purpose, my contribution to healing and unity in this time of confusion and division.
Once a week, stop for a moment and be still. Listen. Tune in to the sounds and signs of your soul, of the nature within and without. All the answers are there like neon signs to guide you into life’s flow.
In this spirit I invite you to join me in this flow, together connecting to the magic of life.
or contact me directly at nicolecrabtree.food@gmail.com
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