As a child were you ever asked “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” You probably responded with enough enthusiasm and energy to bowl someone over! Now that you are grown up, has anything changed? If so, what is it? Who did you want to be? Can you remember what relative, famous person or imaginary character you wanted to be like? Can you remember why?

One of the ways we help people to discover their Personal Purpose, or the ‘energy of their spirit’ is to explore who influenced them in their early lives. It can be a clue helping them find what their true nature might be or what inspires them. What magnetic attributes did that person have? Was it their courage, strength, creative spirit, or attitude that was an inspiration? Perhaps how they served others touched your heart. Perhaps how they overcame some adversity in their life moved you. The characteristics of the people you aspired to be, or who you really admired, can sometimes be a clue to your innate characteristics, even though they might have become hidden or suppressed through the process of ‘growing up’. It is possible that even as an adult, you still love the way these personalities make you feel when you think about them.

In coaching sessions, clients have sometimes described looking in a mirror only to see a stranger looking back at them. (One client would not even look in a mirror, and she was a very attractive woman!) Somewhere in their life journey it seems that they have lost who they are. For some reason like a crisis, a wake up call, growing older, an illness or an addiction, they find themselves asking questions like: Who am I? Why am I here? What have I become? Is this what I really want? Have I taken a wrong turn somewhere and lost myself in the process? If you’ve had such ‘Who am I?’ thoughts, you are not alone.

“No one man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.” ~Hawthorne

Which is the true face? Many of us honestly do not know! In our journey through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, we often become confused by what others want – our parents, teachers, bosses, husbands, wives to name but a few. We try to become what that person wants, admires or needs, only to find that it really does not work. We try to please, only to find we cannot please everyone. Even if 90% of our acquaintances think we are pretty good, we tend to focus on the 10% who don’t like us! In the face of this, some people lose their way, give up, try to escape, or become bitter. At the extreme end of this, they would become very cynical and say that life has no meaning, and there is no hope.

If we wake up to our own capacity to identify our own uniquely personal true face, we can find meaning and hope. Discovering our unique and personal Purpose is one way of becoming comfortable ‘in our own skin’, or becoming ‘authentic’ rather than conforming to cloned images of what others around us want. When we know who were are being it informs what we end up doing and the choices we make. There is a positive alignment of energy and life flow as a result. Life might not necessarily become easy, but you can learn to navigate through the issues life throws at you by intention and not by accident.