Purpose? From engineering to coaching

Do you ever wonder what your purpose is? There are still moments when my mind offers up confusion about mine. Today I hear, "This is all interesting, but what's my actual purpose?" Sinking into that thought is bringing up the desire to reflect which is taking me back to a couple of the most entertaining, unexpected shifts I've had professionally.

I have been coaching clients since 2010. Whoa, as I type that I can't believe it's been that long. And sometimes my mind doesn't understand how that part of my career path even happened let alone how it's stuck around so long (and why I'm not doing my actual purpose, whatever that is, giggle).

I remember how I started coaching people. It was born from some personal growth work I was doing on the weekends to help me stay sane at an insane workplace. I seemed to have some skill and interest so I started doing part time business coaching after getting certified as a Master Practitioner of NLP.

First unexpected turn of events.

Working with clients led me to add hypnosis to my offerings which eventually morphed into a custom technique designed to help clients release deep seated emotional and physical issues.

Did that for a while until I moved abroad which put me on another winding path where the past 3 years has been all about delivering mindfulness coaching and training.

I can tell you the activities I've done of late were nowhere in my career plans. Some days I still don't know where it's all heading. And, though my practitioner self knows that plans can differ from reality, my mind seems to think otherwise and that I am clearly off the life purpose path.  

Which is why occasionally, in quiet moments, I hear, "when am I going to do what I'm supposed to do, my actual purpose?" My mind is sure that we've missed a signpost along the way even though my lived experience tells me I've always been and am right where I'm suppose to be.

So just for fun, let's look at this transition into coaching. It was fueled by an experience of working at one of the unsafest workplaces. Check. My reactivity to the daily dose of emotional games and office politics was a huge gift though at the time I hated almost every day of it.

But that gift of feeling bad, if you let yourself stay in it long enough, gave me a level of clarity about my relational challenges. At that time I was only aware of the social anxiety and overwhelming, captivating emotional life. They were active so much of the time I had to do something about it.

It wasn't the first time my career plan was thwarted. After massive layoffs in the semiconductor industry that had dissolved my job, extreme fear set in. As a member of the "laid off can't find a job as an engineer to save my life" crowd, I spent many months doing nothing which led to a self esteem boosting exercise of learning how to swim.

Struggling to learn how not to drown in a pool, I found a new connection to my body which birthed a desire for better work life balance. That new insight led me to see and take the opportunity to own and operate a small hobby store, very much not part of "the plan".

I remember how running the store provided a lot of freedom I hadn't had in my career, something I hadn't noticed before. I finally felt I could chart my own course after being "raised" professionally in large organizations. I especially enjoyed the creativity and absence of office politics and "cover my ass" emails.

With freedom came some familiar ickiness though. Just like in my engineering career, my ability to work with people "comfortably" turned out to be, let's just say very challenging. Sadly, I wouldn't know until recently how much old family dynamics played a part in my dis-ease relationally at work.

So imagine, there I am in charge of a small retail store and its staff, I stepped into an already established small family, and unknown to me at the time that role would prove to be a continuation of my own family system.

While the perks were great, I got to be at the helm and drive activity while exploring things I liked: technology, processes and customer service, the role also came with difficult leadership challenges that triggered the heck out of me.

This was definitely not part of the plan!

Or was it? Those moments of discomfort in professional shifts certainly gave my mind some awesome opportunities to tell me I was off track and "See, this wasn't the plan". My discomfort was proof to it and because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, my mind implored me to get career guidance because, obviously, I missed my "calling."

I believed my mind back then and spent many hours reading books and finding career resources. It took me a while to understand life doesn't always go as planned because plans are only best guesses; they aren't necessarily reality.

Don't get me wrong, I love plans because they help me take action. But sometimes that action takes me to something different that life wants me to try. And if I'm in the moment and not too identified with what I think "should happen", I'll see the unfolding of something interesting and decide to move with it instead.

From what I can tell, that's how the journey of life naturally unfolds.

But imagine how my mind spasms every time it looks back on all the twists and turns it didn't plan. Never in my young life did I say, I want to go to school to be an engineer and then run a small hobby store for a few years before I go back into engineering so I can become a coach.

I get it mind, you have a point, it wasn't planned - but it's what happened.

And life's not done with me yet. I'm still actively following life, even as I write this post a new path is unfolding before me. I don't understand how all the pieces wil come together but I trust it will all be ok.

I'm more delighted than upset most days about the unexpected twists and turns but it doesn't mean my mind is always quietly participating. This is very much the case today.

So today I offer, compassionately, to my mind as it loudly asks me about the how and when of my "actual purpose" a sentiment from Eckhart Tolle, (paraphrasing here), "I get you, mind, and the purpose of my life, right now, in this moment, is to write this post".

:)