Why are you really doing this work?

Hi Reader

“When do I get to stop working on myself and just live?”

I keep hearing different versions of this.

I thought I had already dealt with this. Why is it back? Surely I should be further along by now. How much more healing is there to do? When do I finally get there?

And I smile when I hear or read it, not because I don’t understand the exhaustion behind the words, I absolutely do and know it, but because tucked inside those statements is a really interesting assumption.

That somewhere out there is a finished version of you.

A version who has healed enough, unraveled enough, grown enough, understood enough, and finally gets to put the tools down and say, right, done, now I can get on with my life.

But before we even get into whether there is a destination, I think there is a much more important question.

Why are you doing this work in the first place?

Why are you on this journey that you are traveling?

And I mean get really truthful with yourself here.

What do you actually want all of this growth, healing, self-awareness and unraveling to give you?

Relief from pain. A different relationship. More money. Greater success. To feel good enough. To stop repeating the same patterns. To be chosen, respected or loved differently. More freedom. More peace. To stop feeling frightened, hurt, angry, jealous, overwhelmed or lost. To finally have the life you thought all this work on yourself was going to create.

There is nothing wrong with any of those reasons.

They are incredibly valid and human reasons.

But your intention, your truth, influences how you approach this journey and how you experience it.

If I am doing this because I want the pain to go away, what happens when something hurts again?

If I am doing it so I can become a better version of myself, how often am I going to look at who I am today and decide I am still not there?

And if I believe that enough healing, growing and unraveling will eventually deliver the relationship, the money, the business, the freedom, the peace, then somewhere underneath all of it I have made myself a deal:

I do the work, and eventually I get the reward. A conditional journey.

And when that reward doesn’t arrive when I thought it would?

Well, no wonder I might eventually think, for goodness sake, how much more of myself do I have to work on?

Earlier this year, a man reached out to me who had experienced IMAD (I Make a Difference program) back in 2007.

Sadly, he now has a terminal illness.

He said he wished he had taken what he called the privilege of doing IMAD — his words , more seriously at the time, and embraced more of what we explored.

Nearly twenty years later, with the time he now has, he could see the value and reason for growing in a way he hadn’t seen then.

It was a conversation that left an impression on me.

Because ultimately, what are we actually on this earth for?

From what I know, from my own experience, and from conversations I have had with people from many different cultures, religions and spiritual understandings, there is a common thread I have encountered again and again.

We are souls here having a human experience.

What each of us believes happens at the end of our time here may be very different, and our individual purposes may be different too.

But really take some time with that.

What does being a soul having a human experience actually mean to you?

For me, my reason for beginning this journey was incredibly simple.

At eighteen, I knew there was more to me, and I wanted to be the true me.

I wanted to know me, be me and experience me.

And I was going to do whatever that journey required.

Little did I know how much I would unravel, heal and question, or that one of the greatest discoveries would be the incredible beauty of my human self.

I also had no idea then that soul and human could work together in a way that, for me, is magical, or how much potential sits within both of us waiting to be experienced and expressed.

For me, our purpose for being here is to experience who we truly are, to explore and express the potential of both soul and human, and through that journey to increasingly see the beauty and love all of who we are.

And maybe that is why I don’t relate to this as endlessly working on myself.

I work with myself.

There is a difference.

Working on myself can make me the project that needs fixing, improving and eventually completing.

Working with myself is a relationship.

Life happens and I relate with, experience and explore myself within it.

Something hurts and I listen.

I notice how I am participating and explore whether it still reflects who I am.

Sometimes I heal something, sometimes I unravel something, sometimes I discover something wonderful, and sometimes I discover something I would really rather not know.

And yes, there have been periods of healing in my life that have been incredibly raw, overwhelming, exhausting and at times depressing, particularly when I have been immersed in the emotions I had suppressed over time.

And through all of it, finally realized I needed to understand what I was feeling, make friends with it and love it.

Because it was part of me too.

Over time, working with myself has simply become a natural way of navigating this journey.

It isn’t something I start and stop.

And the amazing beauty of it now is that I don’t know what is going to unfold.

I don’t know exactly what is coming next, what I am going to discover, what I may be asked to heal, what I may create, who I may meet, what may change, or what new part of me may emerge.

But I do know this: whatever unfolds, it will be something I choose to participate in, and my soul and human will navigate it together.

That, for me, is the magic.

Not getting to the end and reaching some destination when I actually have no idea what that destination is meant to look like.

And if I think I do know exactly what it should look like, then I have already created expectations around the journey, and very possibly neediness around the outcome.

And for me, that is information being communicated to me.

It tells me there is something else there to explore, understand, heal or unravel, so I can create more space for trust.

Trust in myself, in my soul and human working together.

Trust in what is unfolding.

Trust that allows me to choose, participate, act, create and respond, without needing the whole journey to unfold exactly the way I imagined it would.

Because the magic is not in arriving at some predetermined destination.

The experience itself is the magic.

I am not trying to finish myself. I am not renovating, building or creating some completed version of me.

I am here to experience myself. All of me.

So perhaps before asking how much more work you have to do on yourself, go underneath it.