That’s a question that I get asked so many times by people, and I smile when I hear it.
The reason being is that there’s rarely one type of purpose for everybody.
Purpose generally falls into two categories.
Category one is the more traditional, typical definition of somebody who finds a vocation early in life, commits themselves to mastery and merrily goes through life refining the process.
Let’s look at an example…
Say someone becomes a masterful potter and they have studied at a fine arts school. They create pottery and sell it at farmer’s markets and genuinely enjoy what they do.
One could argue that this is their life path.
People like this who live upon a straight, defined trajectory generally have a defined identity center in their Human Design charts. A lot of our personal design happens at birth or even before we’re born.
Purpose as a Rich Tapestry of Experience
For other people (myself included), “what is my purpose’’is a question that we ask many times in our life as our identity morphs and changes.
As we go through various experiences and pass through various seasons of life we experience a rich tapestry of experiences. From the variety of things that we try, we usually pick out one little kernel of truth from each one.
And this approach to purpose is more like weaving our own quilt over time where we collect a patch from here and there.
These types of people are often labeled as jack of all trades and a master of none. Of course, this has a negative connotation to it.
I would actually redefine this approach as being a deep generalist.
A deep generalist is somebody who can look at a big picture, a holistic structure, and they can see how all the pieces and nodes of that structure fit together.
Now, this is a very valuable role. If you have an organization, you need to know how all the parts fit together.
How all the different pieces of the ship contribute to each other to actually move the vessel forward in a desirable direction.
In the first category, where people have a defined identity, they usually find what they want to do early on in life, or they might find it later on after having done something that was unfulfilling for a number of years.
But it’s a rather simple process…
They find the thing that they want to do, and then they commit themselves to it.
Living in Bali, I saw this a lot with people who had worked in the corporate world or they were in health care for a number of years and then they found breathwork (just an example).
All of a sudden they’re like, “Oh my God, breathwork is the key! Nervous system regulation is the answer to my life’s work!”
These people want to go out there and want to spread the word of this incredible modality.
Now the world needs a lot of people like that.
They need people with these clearly defined purposes.
And…
These people can be the envy of those who go through life with an undefined identity center and are often questioning what they are here to do.
In the case of a clearly-defined purpose it usually comes as a revelation. These people come into contact with the thing that they’re meant to be doing and that is that.
This can happen early in life. However, it’s more likely that it happens after a major inflection point in life, where there’s dissatisfaction with whatever they were previously doing.
The Second Phase of Life
Typically, the second phase of life occurs sometime around 30 years of age.
The first 30 years of our life is generally us sorting out our past conditioning.
Ancestral conditioning, upbringing conditioning, and our own karmic imprints are mostly dealt with up until our 30th year of life.
This is what the ‘Saturn return’ in astrology signifies.
After 30 years of age is usually when people start to break out into their own personal sense of individuation.
It’s a very common inflection point in life where people will begin to make massive changes. Maybe they went to school for something, worked a couple years at a job, and they feel like that’s not what they want to do.
“I’m done doing things as I was taught and now I want to do this thing over here.”
These people end up on a completely different trajectory. Educating themselves with as much information that relates to the direction of where they really want to go.
For those with a defined identity, they have the advantage of finding something discrete and easily recognizable.
Their challenge is to express their uniqueness amongst the other players in the field.
This is when people realize “I am a breathwork facilitator, I am a yoga teacher, I am a potter or I am a caretaker.”
Finding the richness and mastery of coming into one’s own unique expression vocation is important for these individuals. It’s taking that discrete role and beginning to expand the definition of it.
Those with undefined identity centers typically start to try out a variety of different experiences at this time. Some enjoyable, some not so enjoyable.
These people will inevitably find themselves back at square one. And quite often.
They feel like, “God, I’m back here again. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten anywhere.”
In truth, they have made tremendous progress. They simply don’t see it yet.
All of the things that they’ve tried go into a subconscious memory bank, forming a holistic superstructure in the background.
When I do readings for these kinds of people, they are more often than not the ones who ask “What is my purpose?”
I start uncovering all the things that they’ve done in their life, and how these endeavours contribute to a certain overarching direction or aim.
That’s usually when the eureka happens.
Because, we’re at a very interesting time in history. We’re at a time in history where a lot of old institutions are no longer providing solutions.
Old systems no longer hold their weight or importance. There is a birthing of something new underway, something that’s radically different from anything we’ve experienced, but it’s still under construction.
It has not fully sprung its roots into the world to the degree where it has penetrated society at large.
Instead, purpose lives as a vision within people’s hearts and within people’s minds.
It’s not something that they can fully articulate yet.
Many of us speak very vaguely about a new paradigm or a heart-led ethos. It’s obvious to certain people out there that things should just be an expression of what we enjoy doing and caring for others is a given.
Now, for these types of people, their challenge is taking their myriad of different experiences and actually creating some sort of a discernible structure with that.
The primary difference between them and the people who had a very clear path to walk is that their work is about taking a lot of different experiences and creating a discrete, recognizable offering. Often these people can get lost in ideas that are too big, too complicated, or have too many parts in the mix that don’t relate with each other.
Their work is about distilling out the essence of their impressions and piecing things into a new form of order.
This path to purpose is generally where I see people, sometimes in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s, where they’re just starting to make those clicks happen.
From them, it simply does not usually happen earlier on in life like during the first 30 years.
I love the quote by Carl Jung, “Life doesn’t begin until you’re 40 – up until then, it’s just field research.”
This quote rings very true because I am a perpetual experimenter.
When I discovered this concept of a deep generalist and when I started to uncover that purpose can be about taking many things and synthesizing them into a unique expression and distilling that into a discrete offering – things clicked.
It makes so much more sense and it adds a lightness and a levity of things.
Now when I go through the natural troughs of a cycle where I feel like I’m back at square one again, I rest assured that all of the pieces I’ve been picking up and all the experiences are sorting themselves out into their rightful place.
People like this will have creative outbursts, and then there’ll be a trough of inactivity where they can get caught up in the complacency. It’s remembering that during those periods of boredom and complacency, digestion is happening on a level that we might not be aware of.
There’s a ton of stuff going on at the level of energetic digestion and in our subconscious mind that will only express itself later.
We are bound by the larger rhythms in life where things move out and expand and then naturally take time to contract. We cannot always be productive; that form of societal conditioning just wears people out over time.
It either depletes them energetically or it starts to veer them off on a path that is disconnected from what they enjoy doing.
We end up veering off more and more when we refuse to take time to sit down and reflect and ask ourselves, “do I enjoy doing this? Is this actually creating a positive, collective benefit?”
It’s important to realize that we are never coming back to square one. We simply arrive at a temporary period of rest. This period is simply a natural time of contraction.
Society attempts to impose its own version of a contraction period. We call them weekends where we are allowed to flop down and relax.
But, our peak output Monday to Friday is expected to remain nonstop.
This doesn’t jive for most people because each individual has their own energetic signature. Some people work very well in two hour bursts, and then they need to just sit back and relax.
Other people are great at basically starting in the morning and plowing through until dusk. They feel satisfied and are comfortable to simply flop their head on the pillow at the end of the day. It’s different for each individual, and so I encourage you to figure out your own rhythm.
Using a system like Trifecta, which blends human design, gene keys, and astrology, can help people uncover their energetic signatures and what will actually work for them.
The beauty of Trifecta, is it actually goes to a deeper level than just the day-to-day and our personality.
Normal, tropical astrology, human design, and gene keys looks at the personality level, the person we are in the world, and tries to make that more harmonious.
Trifecta goes to a deeper layer of who we are at a fundamental, essential level, and helps us discover the ideal path for embodying that and for taking action in the world.
It assumes that we’re already perfect to start with. There’s nothing wrong with us; we’ve simply just caked on a little bit of mud that occludes our brightness.
Purpose can just be an exploration for long periods of life. That’s totally fine.
Eventually, when we relax enough, and when we let go of the elements that aren’t serving us, our actual purpose will reveal itself. At some point, even those with an undefined identity center, will land on something.
You may be a synthesizer – blending many different modalities into one or responsible for creating something new that’s never been created before.
In my case, I’ve tried a number of different things, both in my career, and also in my entrepreneurial journey.
I started off with astrology and doing energy work and that led me to discover a number of different opportunities. I joined different startups related to brainwave entrainment, getting into video editing, graphic design and creative work. I made music and then went on to help people with their business and build up brands.
It’s been a long, exciting and unexpected journey – that’s for sure!
Now, I’ve finally arrived at two signature things that feel good for me.
One is this trifecta system, which taps into a person’s ideal reality to provide better alignment for life, business, and relationships. And the other involves working with people to help them as a long-term business growth partner.
And so both of these things are discrete offerings. They are also related as different phases of a continuum.
By offering both of these, I can have the richness of variety and the versatility of experiences that I’ve come to like and enjoy.
My journey is an example of how that second type of purpose, the one with the undefined identity, can actually evolve into a beautifully simple mosaic of expression.
Ultimately, what I really want to do is foster a community of people who really feel passionate about plugging into a new paradigm that is heart led and full of life force and vitality. One that contributes to building a positive future.
This is my big Why. And as long as the little things along the way stay committed to the big, overarching why, we will stay on the right track!
Interested in learning more about Trifecta? Check out my free training here: https://www.octaveleap.com/join-the-trifecta-training-1382
