True Change is an Inside Job
Blending personal growth with a deepening purpose is where the magic happens
Deepening our sense of purpose, individually and professionally, is key to the change we seek. Surface changes like our appearance, more money, fulfilling relationships, or maybe a larger home or nicer car are those things which we unconsciously feel will make us feel better. But true change is an inside job.
This is not new or revolutionary thinking. Anyone who has engaged in even a small amount of personal development work has heard it before — we seek outside things to make us feel better when the way to feel better comes from within.
Lately I’ve been contemplating a popular twelve-step slogan, that we have a God-shaped hole in our hearts. I find this to be one of the most useful slogans that helps us better understand the nature of addiction. But there is a lot to unpack with it. For one, what is our concept of God. If we see God as an anthropomorphic image, then the slogan might not be so useful. But if we see God as something beyond a human-like image, then it makes sense.
If we see God as an essence, a presence, a connecting energy, or even the entirety of the Universe, then seeking to fill the hole in our hearts with more of it is a perfect remedy to feeling unfulfilled in life.
Doing purpose work is key to filling the hole, because if we look within (personally and professionally) and constantly explore the essence of who we are, then we will naturally want to align our lives around things, activities, and people that align with our purpose. And as we do this, the God-shaped hole will gradually fill.
But if we know this, if we understand this self-evident truth — that our happiness doesn’t come from outside things — then why is it so hard to put into practice?
I believe I have discovered the answer to this question from years of spiritual practice and doing purpose work in a business environment. Yet I fear if I were to just say it that it would fall flat or seem overly simplistic. Or it might seem too grandiose that you might be inclined to dismiss it outright.
In either case, the answer, the reason, is that living in alignment with our true purpose is incredibly scary. In fact, it’s so scary that we live our entire lives running from this truth. It’s not intellectual. It’s not rational. It’s something very deep. The feeling of God coming into our being is like what a person terrified of heights would feel jumping out of an airplane with a parachute.
I’m one of those fear-of-heights kind of people. Just watching Alex Honnold free solo videos turns my stomach. I’ve never gone sky diving and don’t think I ever will. But when I have opportunities to explore my fear of heights in a safe way I do it, like climbing on a roof or up an observation tower. I breath into the fear and allow it, and as I face the fear it lessens over time.
Trying new things tends to bring fear — new relationships, new jobs, new business ventures. It’s the fear of the unknown. The fear of what if. But the more we do it, the easier it gets. We can attune ourselves to the risk and build tolerance.
The fear of filling the God-shaped hole in our hearts is a different kind of fear. When the energy of God comes into our being it stimulates our soul, and it moves us toward alignment with our deeper purpose, which is what generates the fear response. The less we’ve lived our lives in alignment with our purpose the greater the fear, because we haven’t attuned ourselves to the energy of God flowing through us.
Imagine trying to charge a 6-volt battery with a 12-volt charge. It will burn the battery out. Or if we try and charge a 12-volt battery with a 6-volt charge it will weaken the battery over time. Now imagine that the energy of living our lives in alignment with purpose is like becoming a 12-volt battery, which means we need a higher volt charge to keep us going — the higher voltage of alignment with purpose.
But if we’ve lived our lives out of alignment with our purpose then we’re likely attuned to a 6-volt charge, and if we try and charge ourselves with a 12-volt charge we won’t be able to handle it, which manifests as a feeling of fear. So instead, we try a 7-volt charge and get used to a higher energy of purpose and begin to move our lives and our businesses in the direction of a deeper purpose — not all at once, but in steps.
Over time we become attuned to 7-volts, and then we can take the next step by upping the voltage to 8, and then 9, and so on.
When Maria and I work with clients on their brands we usually see their visions much bigger than they do. We can do that because we’re on the outside looking in, prompting them with open ended questions that gets them talking deeply about their vision. When we reflect back to our clients what we see, they usually feel inspired. But once in a while they will feel fear, because it’s so much bigger than they imagined.
Hanging out in life as a 6-volt battery is stagnation. It feels uncomfortable in a different way. We feel restless and discontent and seek to fill the God shaped hole with external things. But external things will only assuage the feeling for a moment, then we move on to the next shinny object or new life accomplishment to feel better — trying to fill the hole with things that aren’t God shaped.
The answer is internal — to attune ourselves to a higher energy of purpose by gradually stepping up our capacity to hold a higher God energy. We can do this through meditation and prayer, through ceremony, or any modality that enables us to grow emotionally and spiritually. Then we seek to align our lives with a deeper purpose — to discover what seeks to emerge from within us and then embrace it.
If we do the deeper emotional and spiritual healing work, but we don’t make changes in our lives to align with a deeper purpose then we may settle back down into a lower voltage — like trying to charge a 12-volt battery with a 6-volt charge — we will eventually become the 6-volt battery.
Deepening purpose is key. It must accompany our growth work.
When we grow emotionally and spiritually and align with a deeper purpose — when we merge the two as a practice — that’s when the magic happens.