Remember your purpose
Follow the deeper calling of your heart to a lifefilled with meaning and success
By Jim Huling
November 2009
“And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
Does the chorus of this well-loved song echo a message that’s always playing somewhere deep inside you? I don’t mean on the surface. On the surface of your life, you’re busy — so busy that questions like this can frustrate or even anger you. But even if you’re frustrated, stop and think for a moment. Is the message there?
I know it is because it’s there for me, too. And I know from personal experience that throughout even the happiest, most fulfilling life, you can still feel a calling to something more, a sense of purpose that pulls you forward.
You’re conscious of this calling when you’re doing something that feels especially right.
You might be writing in a journal or dabbling with watercolors and canvas. You might even be teaching a group of students or solving a complex problem at work. Whatever it is, when you’re doing it, you lose all sense of time and you feel a level of energy and peacefulness that seem to elude you in your day-to-day routine.
For me, these moments always came in my professional life when I was teaching. As an executive, I consistently created situations where I could deliver a passionate message, usually to those in leadership. A close friend once remarked that he thought running a company was simply the price I paid for the opportunity to teach the leaders. I didn’t realize it then, but he was speaking a great truth about my calling.
You’re also conscious of your calling when it’s absent.
Have you ever noticed in a special moment — a moment when everything else in your life is going well — that you still feel something’s missing? When you feel this, you may berate yourself for never being satisfied with things as they are or some similar inner criticism. But often, something far more powerful is at work.
A homing pigeon can be placed in a container with no ability to see, taken hundreds of miles away, and when released, it will fly directly home. Like the instincts of a homing pigeon, these moments confirm that there is a vision inside you of the life you were born to live. And in every moment of every day, they are guiding you home.
You may not always be aware that you’re searching.
The pull of your deeper calling can come and go, sometimes disappearing for entire seasons of your life. Often, it can seem to haunt you, bringing pain and frustration, and make you determined to put it behind you once and for all. But still, it returns. And in returning, you are reminded again that you were born for a purpose.
Today, I spend my professional life doing what I love most: teaching others about leadership and life. And I can say without any hesitation that every experience of my life has led me to this moment, that I have never been happier and that I know there is still more to come.
The challenges of these times are hard and may have caused you to do whatever was necessary to sustain your life in the short term, for yourself and for those you support. But you must not give up. The greatest human tragedy is to abandon the search for what lies in the deepest part of your heart.
Remember that you have a purpose.
The larger story of your life is still being written. When it is finished, your current challenges will be little more than a footnote, but following the constant calling of your heart will have led you home.
Jim Huling is an executive consultant, a national keynote speaker and a professional coach. His leadership experience spans more than 30 years, including a decade as CEO of a company recognized four times as one of the “25 Best Companies to Work For in America.” Jim is also the author of “Choose Your Life! a powerful proven method for creating the life you want.” He can be reached at jim@jimhuling.com.
