How do I know what I want to be now that I am grown up?
As children, adults often asked us this question. What do you want to be when you grow up? You may have had many answers to that question as a child, depending on your experiences and the influencers around you.
Today I want to ask that question a slightly different way.
As an adult if you had to choose only "one thing" you love and share that with the world what would that be?
As adults reading this many of you will say to yourself, "Well what could I do that I love AND have it ______________________ (fill in the blank)?" Pay my mortgage. Put food on the table. Let me have free time to pursue my passion. Allow me more time with my kids.
We immediately start to qualify what the "one thing" will have to produce in order to be selected.
I invite you to let that go and just feel and see and hear and sense into the "one thing" without qualifiers. It doesn't matter what that one thing is. It can be to make people smile, to share your story, to help others feel better, to paint art, pursue music, or hike in nature. There is no right answer. There is no wrong answer. And there is not limitation on possibilities.
You may get your "one thing" right away. Congratulations.
You may have a difficult time listening to your inner voice or getting past all the conditioning and training you've simmered in your entire life. That is when you can enlist the help of another. Often times an observer can hear things we say in a way that we don't. They can pick up on the recurring themes and feelings in our share.
Once you have a knowing of what that "one thing" is then I invite you to forget the "how" and surrender into the having and being and sharing of whatever it is.
Stay with the feeling and knowing that this is the one thing that you want to give, that gives you such joy in giving, that with or without the courage to give it you still want to move forward into it. Stay with this vision and allow your creativity to come up with more and more ways for it to be expressed.
Getting into the "how" shuts down creativity and invites limitation. It invites expectation of "how" your gift is to show up. It's like wearing blinders where you might miss opportunities around you. The "how" can also invite doubt and fear that can shut down our excitement of giving.
As entrepreneurs we sometimes limit ourselves as to our original dream or idea. We may have blinders on as to where we might be more creative, allowing our one thing to show up in a multitude of ways.
P.S. “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell
