Picture this scenario if you will… you’re a baby. Your mum has just fed you spaghetti hoops, most of which can be found slathered into your tufts of hair, and she is changing your implausibly full nappy.

Somewhere along the way in life, you’ve decided (wisely) to trade in those nappies for a corporate costume. Your alarm goes off at 5am, but today, you want to get out of bed even less than yesterday. And we both know that you really, really didn’t want to yesterday. You see the proverbial prison bars come down around you. Trapped,you think. I’m trapped. I have bills, I have children, I have a mortgage.

You look out the train window and see the same crusty-edged poster you’ve noticed every day for the past six months. It advertises a natural sleep aid. You rewind the last twenty or more years in your head and find… nothing. You don’t dare peer forwards into the future for fear that Death would stare back into your spectacled eyes; tired from staring at computer screens. You are searching for something inside. But what?

You reach work and settle into a meeting with the team you lead, sipping coffee as if the energy it provides is your life force. As you give a presentation, the boss’ secretary knocks on the door and interrupts your flow of speech. You lash out. You’ve been doing that a lot recently: feeling cranky, yelling at colleagues. But why?

You are missing purpose.

An important thing to note: this is not to dismiss the value of work. Perhaps rather, work once held a purpose for you. Perhaps your focus used to be to raise a family, and that was the reason for your hard work. Now, they have grown up, and maybe even started their own families. The work seems pointless without that cause. Perhaps you did bury yourself in building a career and find yourself creating value for others when you could do it for yourself. Perhaps you did bury yourself in building a career and it’s lost its appeal for some reason you can’t quite put your finger on. But there is no question, your motivation has deserted the scene.

This is a familiar scenario to many of us. We wake up one morning to a realisation that has long been bubbling up in the cauldron of our soul. Life is passing us by.

‘We live as if we were immortal and die not having lived a life’.

Sometimes when we live without thought, we can take things for granted. It is easy to slip into patterns of assumption. This experience will still be there for me tomorrow, that person will still be around for a few years.

There is no guarantee of a tomorrow for any of us. This does not have to be a morbid thought. Instead, it can serve as a prod in the direction of more conscious living; a chance to be more present and take the opportunities that life presents us with.

Achievement plays an important part in this functionality. In a workplace setting, this is represented by praise from our boss, a raise, or a promotion. However strongly this may serve as a pseudo feeling of purpose, over time it can seem hollow and futile.

A change of focus is vital. Drive should come from within yourself; from your sense of purpose. No more working as a means to an end.

This inner conflict you feel — a life of two halves — tears you up inside. A tug of war between obligations and the need to truly know yourself. This manifests itself in anger, lack of sleep, anxiety, or perhaps a feeling of emptiness.

To relieve these stresses you must take the other path; find your purpose. If this story resonates with you in any way, get in touch. We will provide you with space for transformation; guide you in opening yourself up to your purpose; free you to ask yourself perhaps the most important question of all: ‘Who am I’?