How to Find your Life Purpose
Who did you want to be when you were 7 years old?
As babies, we are getting used to being in a body. As toddlers we’ve mostly figured that part out, and have evolved into the next stage of learning: mastering emotion (More about Emotion, what is Emotion). We feel connected to ourselves and the world around us through feeling and emotion, and we are very porous and open.
At this time of life, we know we are individual beings, but have a hard time seeing ourselves crisply and clearly. One of the jobs of parents at this age is to mirror our emotions. This helps us to understand our individual identity, boundaries, a develop intuition.
The age of 7 is when our minds take the reign from emotions. Until then, the way that we experience life, our parents, our friends, siblings, and our own inner life is based on emotion.
We don’t have a very strong sense of separation at this time or individualisation. Life is experienced through emotions, feelings, and sensations. It’s a very “right brain” time.
How Our Parents Help us Connect with Our Life Purpose
In childhood, the energy centres are not filtering out energies from the surroundings very well. (Part of why it feels good to sit in the lap of our parents as children – their energy field acts as a shield to the surrounding energies until we develop into our own).
We accumulate the energies of our surroundings, and we accumulate the energies of our emotions, and this contributes to how it feels to be you and how you feel about yourself.
When we get reflections back to us of what we are feeling, or how we feel about something – it helps us to feel a stronger grip on our identity. Fantasy, emotional life, enjoying the sensation of being in a certain space or participating in a certain activity are what fill inner life.
Did you have a favourite room, toy, song, character? These were things you were drawn to intuitively. They felt good to have around. Not only was something about them energetically supportive for your system, they also served as extensions of your identity, and helped you to define your individual self.
The Mind’s Task – Crystalising Life Purpose
At the age of 7, the mind starts to form and crystalise itself. Where emotion is amorphous and “filling” life experience, mind serves a more structuring function of consciousness.
We can reason, analyse, and organise information in the mind. We can also filter information. This makes us less vulnerable to the influence of surrounding energies.
Our emotional lives become more protected when the reasoning faculty turns on. At this age, we start to experience the world as “thinkers” more than “feelers.”
The goal of this emerging stage is to organise and understand our identities intellectually, to make sense of the emotional content we’ve created and accumulated up until that time, and create a mental map of concrete objects and concepts for navigating physical life.
The problems arise for us when we transition into this stage with emotional wounds. These wounds block us from understanding our natural essence with the conscious mind, and it shuts down.
If you look for who you wanted to be at 7 – you are likely to find the original understanding of your soul path. After the age of 7, we continue to form our identities, and we take on the beliefs and norms that we are expected to uphold. This can sometimes put us at intellectual odds with the information that was begining to crystalise and emerge at the age of 7.
Did you want to be a hero ? A leader? An artist? A healer? A philosopher? A Scientist? What kind of play were you drawn to? What kinds of characters did you like? Who do you admire?
Spiritual Healing and Psychotherapy to Access your Life Purpose
If you struggle to access your authentic self, you might feel empty, stuck, lost, chaotic, anxious, or low. There is a sense of certainty and purpose that comes when you are in touch with your true nature. Life’s challenges are still there to be faced, but they are faced with a loving self-confidence that is as good as armour.
Knowing your life purpose is like knowing the version of you that is attuned with your essential self. When you live your purpose, you grow and develop along the way in a process called self-actualisation.
Self-actualisation is often accomplished first in the form of psychotherapy for anxiety, depression, and trauma treatment. Most often trauma treatment for cptsd (complex post traumatic stress disorder) leads to what is called post-traumatic growth – when you become a stronger, more whole, happier you.
Reconnecting with your life’s purpose is about getting really honest about your inner life. This helps you to find out where you have gone of track, if you have emotional wounds, how they have steered you off track, so that you can heal and course correct.
Journalling, self-discovery practices like shadow work, emotional healing techniques, spiritual healing, energy healing, and psychotherapy all help to reconnect you with your authentic self and life purpose.
Rachel is a psychotherapist, soul path coach, and energy healer practising in Sydney’s Northern Beaches and remotely online. Formally trained in Mental Health Social Work (MSW) and Psychology (BA), Rachel integrates spiritual awareness into psychotherapy and inner work. This enables her to practice in tune to your soul and provide healing facilitation multi-dimensionally.