The radio and then TV show This Is Your Life was designed to show people that they had many people who cared about them, had a bright future, and had made a difference in people’s lives.
Intentional or not.
But it did something else.
It showed how seldom life turns out how we thought it would.
When I was a teenager, I had a life planned out as well as a teenager could. It involved dance and a university in New York. Marriage and children were far into the future.
Instead, I was married and a mother at nineteen.
Doesn’t everyone have a similar story? The life they thought they would have is not the one they are living.
If things hadn’t happened the way they did when I was eighteen, I would have lived an entirely different life. This isn’t the life I would have chosen then.
But it’s the life I’m in, and I realize it’s where I was supposed to be all along.
Life takes us where we need to be. Then we get to decide what to do with it.
We can live out our days doing only the basics of life, keeping quiet, going with the flow of the mundane, or we can fulfill our purpose, or mission, for being in this life.
Because everyone has a purpose-driven mission. And all our purposes and missions thread together.
When we see greed and evil in the world, it is the unraveling of those threads. It happens when we think we are separate, or better than others, or believe we are less than others.
Survival in all its forms can rob us of believing we can fulfill our purpose. Sometimes we are the people in need of help. Other times we are the ones offering it.
However, survival mode can guide us toward the life we were meant to live when we know and live our purpose.
We often confuse the idea of purpose-driven mission statements, thinking it means we have to do “big things” in the world when actually it is a moment-by-moment decision to live and share our gifts in daily life.
Sometimes that turns into a “big” world statement. Sometimes, it doesn’t. Life leads us to the ways we can express that mission. Everyone is equally important and needed.
Our Purpose / Mission Is A Promise
I believe our purpose/mission is a promise. Something we promised to be, do, live, and supply while living this earth life.
Imagine you are preparing to jump into this life that we know. You are somewhere else — you imagine where — and a crowd is standing behind you, wishing you well on your journey.
You turn and face those beings that love you and tell them what you will do as you play/live the earth game.
Facing them, you say: I promise to…
What did you promise?
Through the years, I have helped many people find, and then use, and live their promise, which it turns out is what I promised to do.
I said, “I promise to shift perceptions and lives toward the infinite.”
Our missions are unique to each of us. However, keeping our promise is necessary for all of us to experience the true big R Reality of Life.
Keeping our promise happens with both big and small gestures. We do so when we choose kindness and to be part of the solution and not the problem.
The world doesn’t change from the top down. The face-offs of ugliness that we see daily won’t change anything.
Change begins with each of us living our promise to the best of our ability. To learn and grow with the help of others along the way.
If you are working on your promise/mission/purpose sentence, here are a few hints.
You know it already. It’s built-in. But you could be spending most of your time resisting doing it.
That thing you can’t stop yourself from doing—and sometimes gets you in “trouble” when you haven’t learned the art of doing it well—contains the kernel of your promise.
Make your promise into one sentence with only a few words so you can say it to yourself every day without looking.
It will be something that will guide your actions, big and small.
You can do it. You are doing it!
I celebrate your living it because every unique gift lived moves the world to the tipping point where everyone has the ability and opportunity to express their mission and keep their promise.
Imagine that world. Choose that life. That shift begins within.
PS
Would you like help clarifying and then living your promise? Come join me for eight weeks as I guide you through all this and more in the Blooming Your Life course!
Everyone is intended to thrive in their life.
No matter how good it is now, it can get better; if you are stuck, you can get free.
I want to help!
BECA LEWIS coaches, teaches, writes blogs and books, plays with art, and is addicted to reading. She lives in Ohio with her husband and has kids and grandkids scattered across the country.
