Tumbled onto a blog post that speaks to something I’ve been pondering for awhile

Check it out. From the website:
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Purpose — This is what it’s all about. It’s WHY we cure cancer, go surfing, have children, join the circus, fall in love, meditate, join the army, eat bacon, make a booty call, or go to therapy. There’s some underlying reason we do everything.

Now, if we’re coming from our “small self” — the part of us rooted in fear, a lack of worthiness or scarcity – then our purpose may be to stay safe, avoid being alone, prove that we’re “good enough,” make our parents happy, keep the boat from rocking, etc.

For the “small self” it boils down to safety and control. And for many of us, safety is where we feel good. But there’s more to life than settling for safety alone.

If we’re tapping into our “big self,” our “higher self,” then I believe our purpose is to experience deep joy, happiness, love, connection, satisfaction, fulfillment, peace, fun, and wholeness. And when we’re experiencing deep joy, love, wholeness, fulfillment, etc. we feel Good. I mean Really, Really, Really Good.

This Good feeling is more than the good we simply feel when we have our coffee in the morning or a cold beer on a hot day. It’s more than the good we feel when we are safe.

Stay with me here, but this Good is closer to a unification with God or The Divine or whatever you want to call that-which-is-bigger-than-but-also-includes-all-of-us. It’s really big!

Our purpose isn’t about “doing some thing.” It’s about experiencing this Good feeling. Our purpose is to experience a FEELING not to accomplish a certain goal. Our mission is the formula we can follow to experience the Good feeling. It’s how we tie together our strengths with some sense of meaning. It’s where we take a stand for what we value AND enjoy the process, too.

According to positive psychologists, true happiness can be found when we combine what we love to do (our strengths) with something that is meaningful. It’s the Reese’s peanut butter cup of deep pleasure and contributing something positive to the world.

Our purpose — to experience this Good feeling — is always going to be there. It’s the basis for all that we do. How we get there — the mission — will change.

At some point it will no longer light us up to follow a certain path. If we’re in touch with the feeling and we’re using that as our inner compass, then we can let go of the mission and make room for the next one.

However, if we’re not in touch with that feeling, we’ll simply keep doing the same ol’ thing and wonder why we’re dissatisfied. I get the image of a man trying to catch fish in a dried up lake. The water and the fish have moved elsewhere while he has not.