Right now it feels like we seem to be going through a questioning stage again. What is our purpose in being here on earth?  Is it to make it through the days hoping everything goes okay?  Is it to work towards being a great person and then we are done? Is it to keep taking schooling?  I often talk about how we can get caught up in ‘what is our purpose…what should we be doing with our lives?’  How can we live more purposefully?

Consider this…everyday people come and go, things show up and situations occur. What purpose do these serve us?  Have you ever thought about that? What purpose do the people, things and situations in our life serve?  How come sometimes we have not so nice people to work with…how come we get speeding tickets when we seem to have no money…how come the government raises the taxes?  Everything happens for a reason.  Everything offers us an opportunity to learn and grow. What we do with those opportunities makes all the difference.

How do we know we are growing?  How do we know we are changing inside?  We learn new things everyday in our daily experiences.  Allow me to share, from my experience, some of the key elements I feel are true indications of inner growth.

Think of moments of time when everything felt so great like we didn’t have a care in the world….life was wonderful.  Now think of moments of time when we felt like our world was not so fun.  Those no so fun moments included moments of reactions.  Our reactions show us we have inner conflict of some kind.  We don’t like something or we don’t care for it…whatever it is we are bothered in some way.  Reactions are about us and how we feel.  We know we have experienced inner growth when we no longer react like we did before.  The changes have to do with our ‘reactions’ to the situation. What bothered us before, no longer bothers us…indicating there was a change in how we feel.  

Once the reactions are out of the way…there are additional ways indicating a change inside: 

• The situation where we reacted before will not present itself again; or the next time it does, we will not react at all; 

• If we can talk about our issue and our tone changed or we’re not as emotional as we were (in other words we didn’t react like we did before); 

• If we learn from the experience and can see our role differently in how we can bring resolution, we are moving forward and there is change;

Change can also show up in the length of time our ‘reaction’ lasts.  If we used to get mad and stay mad for a week, we may now get mad and stay mad for a day or two.  Then one day the issue will be gone and we won’t even react. 

Changes are usually very subtle and we may even be the only ones noticing them which is why I share ways you can look for inner growth yourself!  Moments of inner peace transform into hours of inner peace.  This is one way of living more purposefully. 

Sheila Unique