What If “What Is My Purpose?” Is the Wrong Question?

What if the question “What is my purpose?” is the wrong place to start?

In this episode of Mystic in Training, Melissa explores the deeper truth beneath purpose, fulfilment, and the roles we play in life.

Because purpose is not just about what you do for work, or whether you are a parent, healer, leader or entrepreneur.

It is about who you are becoming.

In this episode, Melissa explores:

• why “What is my purpose?” may be the wrong question
• the difference between role and purpose
• how discomfort can point you towards truth
• why expression became part of her own purpose path
• what it means to bring more of yourself into your life

Melissa shares reflections from her own journey - from working in the motor industry to following the path that eventually led her into psychotherapy, Reiki, Akashic work and teaching - and why discomfort, expression, and self-knowing all hold clues to purpose.

This is an episode about alignment, identity, growth, and asking a better question.

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired. 

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Mystic in Training podcast. With me, your host, Melissa Amos. I want to talk today about a subject that I probably get asked about the most as both a psychotherapist and uh I would say especially through my work in the Akashic Records and spiritual mentorship. And this is the question. Tell me if you've ever asked this. What is my purpose? Ah, and the amount of people that I've had come for readings to ask me that question. And I sometimes wonder what they're expecting the answer to be, whether they're expecting the answer to come in, well, your purpose is to be a parent or to do this job or to become a healer or to, you know, change the world or whatever it is. And while sometimes that might have a fragment of truth in it, and whilst I do believe that all of those things can serve part of our purpose, it's actually, I think, the wrong question that we're asking. Because I think what society really leads us into is that we're here to do a job, right? That we go to school and we maybe go to uni, we go and do some form of apprenticeship, we go and get ourselves in a job, and our value is based on who on what it is that we do, or we go into parenthood and our value is as our mother or a father, a caregiver. And so I think it kind of trains our minds into our purposes, like how we're showing up in the world and who we're showing up as. But the more I delve into the actual truth of this, like the actual patterns that sit underneath all of this, the more I realize that that's a farce. There's so much more to the purpose story than what it is that I'm doing. Now, if you know my story, you know that in my 20s, I was working for a prestige car showroom. I was very much in the motor industry, and I did feel in many ways purposeful, right? I had I had a path laid out for me. I could see the career progression and I was pretty ambitious and you know, I loved the vehicles and the uh, you know, and and the the glamour and everything that went with that. But I soon realized that it almost didn't matter how much I did or how well I was doing, that that sense of fulfillment that I'm glad that I feel now was never there. And I realized that the more I began to follow what everyone else's idea of progression was, the further away I came from myself, from who I truly was. And it came up in these kind of little ways where I would deny certain things, or you know, the things that gave me pleasure or that that really intrigued me, the things that I wanted to do and spend my time on came second to the work that I was doing. Um, that there'd be times where I would want to explore certain topics or go to certain seminars or read certain books, but that all came after. It was like if I could fit if I could fit it in. Also, aspects of my personality and my desires would just turn down in case I was a bit weird. Like you know me by now, right? I have I definitely have quite a unique way of looking at the world. I can be pretty intense and deep, uh, which doesn't always go so well in a in the showroom. And I was doing well and I had the opportunity for progression, and all of these things were happening. But I think the real crux moment came one day when I was driving to work and I was just like, if these fancy breaks would just fail on me, then I could just stop. And actually it was quite, I mean, it was it was very sobering to feel that. And maybe it was the universe doing its magic and answering the questions that that I'd put out there, however, subconsciously. But it was around that time where I found Reiki, where I began to learn about the law of attraction, and that ultimately I left that job and and and retrained in in a lot of the work that I'm doing now. But when I look back, I realized that at that time it's not that I was off purpose, because when I look back now, I can really see how the skills that I developed whilst working and selling cars and the relationships that I developed and the people that I got to to serve in that in that job and who I became when I was when I was building the resilience and the strength and learning you know how to be a good car salesperson, right? All of those things, when I look back, serve me even today. Now, it wasn't obvious at the time, and that doesn't mean that my purpose was to sell cars, but my purpose right then was the same thing my purpose is now. And that is really getting to know myself. That is really beginning, beginning to understand like what is it that I really want? What is it that's really pushing me? What are my, you know, my breaking points and my stretch points? What is it that lights me up? What is it that stresses me out? What are the expansions and the contractions within me? And actually a lot of the discomfort that I felt whilst doing that job, the pressure that I felt, I used to sometimes go home crying just because like sometimes it was so much, were all clues to me as to where I was selling myself out, where I was incongruent with what it is that I really want to be to be doing. What I'm saying is the discomfort I felt was all part of this. And actually living in that discomfort gave me skills that I wouldn't have had had I have bypassed that and come straight to here. But what I've realized time and time again is that it's more about the lens that we see the world through rather than actually what is it, what it is that we're doing. Now, I say this all knowing that right now, with the work that I do, I like I know how blessed I am that my work serves into my purpose, and that part of who I am and what lights me up, which all were clues that I had growing up, and certainly in my early 20s, were showing me that this is the work that's really going to help serve my light, my life, my quirks, my strengths, my talents, my challenges. But my work isn't my purpose. My purpose is to discover that. My purpose is to go, you know what? Actually, I've had this thing about expression for so long, about not feeling I could stand up for myself, or uh not knowing how to speak in front of crowds, or you know, being the youngest child in my family and the the youngest of, or the second youngest actually, of 27 cousins. Like there was always this thing that I was like the underdog. Expression was one of those things that I really had to cultivate. And I remember when I first first working in the car showroom, I started off in the service department. And if anyone spoke to me, I'd go bright red. Can you believe it? And they really threw me in the deep at one point. Manage a group of 10 technicians, and I didn't know. I'd only been driving for a year, like I didn't know what I was doing. But all of these things were building something in me, they were helping me understand more about what my capabilities were, what my strengths were, and actually were showing me the importance of expression. And I realized a few years ago that actually unlocking that and the journey that I went through to be able to stand in front of a crowd or on a stage or here recording a podcast and just speaking was all part of my life's journey. And so it's no coincidence now that as I took that and I took that challenge and took in my strength, which was, you know, I I read a lot as a child. Somebody reflected back to me yesterday. They're like, oh Melissa, you're a wordsmith. What's the word from that? And I've never really considered it. But when I married these two things together, I realized that the struggles that I had when I was younger actually have made me a stronger speaker today. And so it was that discovery that's part of my purpose. And so starting a podcast and speaking on stages and running workshops all helped serve to strengthen my talents and help me move through my challenge. Can you see that? That my purpose in life isn't, well, I'm going to start a podcast. My purpose in life was to truly know myself and to understand like what it is that was stopping me from speaking up. That am I going to forever use that excuse of, oh well, I can't speak in front of crowds or I lose my train of thought, or I just go off on a tangent and go too deep. Story of my life. As a restriction, as a pattern, as like many of us, I learned quite quickly that if I was just quiet, people would stop asking me questions. So am I gonna live my life through being quiet when my inner world was going, I know the answer to this, somebody asked me. Or am I gonna move into that part of me that was telling me that it's okay and that there's there's something more? And what I realized, I would say it became quite obvious at one point, but especially when I began my psychotherapeutic studies, I really began to understand these different lenses that we see ourselves through. And the choice that we have of whether I am going to live my life through the lens of my patterns, the things that I've known, the things that I've taken on because they feel safer, or because they're what are expected of me, because that's what the collective are doing, or that's going to give me the most whatever it is, money or status or friendships or love or you know, insert the thing that you're looking for. Am I being guided by that, or am I being guided by this part of me that knows that I'm here for more? Am I being guided by this part of me that knows that evolution is the key here? Because they're very different parts to us. Like if we're honest, we're never gonna evolve if we just keep on doing the same thing that we've always done. Like we might do it better, but there has to be some courage where we break free into okay, now I'm willing to do things a bit differently. Now I'm willing to put more of myself into this. Working in the car showroom was the was the perfect example. I, you know, received a lot of training and there was definitely ways that we could do this work, and I learned all of those ways, and they were great. And the moment that I allowed myself, like the way that I spoke with my customers was very different to the other men in the showroom with me. I was very much in the business of getting to know my customers. I remember saying one time on a training course, like, my job is to help make people's dreams come true. And I genuinely, when I was in my flow, felt like that was my job there was to help marry up the dream that they had of having this beautiful car on their driveway with where the ones with the car, how how can we make this work? And when the month was ending and there weren't any numbers on the board, or you know, the you have however good your month was the month before, and it gets white clean, and then we start again and we've got our targets, we can really move into that fear of okay, well, now I've got to churn things out. And guess what? Things didn't work as well then. We can see this in so many different areas of our lives and so many different scenarios that we do have the choice very often of what lens am I acting from? Am I coming from this space of well, this is what's gonna keep me accepted, this is what's gonna keep me safe, this is what's going to appease the people in charge of me, which is all useful. Like we, you know, we're when we're not always just meant to be rebels for rebel's sake, yes. And what about that other thing? Like, how much time are we really giving in our life, in our everyday contemplations, in our everyday decisions, right? In all of the choices that we make? How many times are we actually moving into how is this moving me forward? Not for a means of an end sake, but how is this moving me more towards my desire? How is this moving me more towards my growth? How is this strengthening me as a human being? How is this letting me become more of me? That's the question. And I think that's the question, whether you run your own business, whether you're a healer, whether you're a parent, whether you're doing work for somebody else, it actually doesn't matter. I think the real thing is knowing that the things that we've always done are fine, and they're not always going to get you to where it is that you want to be. And if you're searching for purpose and searching for meaning in life, and right now there's this disparity of like I feel really lost, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I'm meant to be doing here. I think the answer to that question is how do I bring more of me into this conversation? Where am I in this? Where have I shut myself down or dimmed myself down a little or stopped myself from moving forward for the fear of being rejected? My story, it didn't end. It began with me making that choice and making a choice that made no sense on paper. But this part of me that I now know to be my soul, my blueprint, pushed me forward and went go and do this. And I left that job, which made zero sense on paper. But in here, it made the most sense. Was it perfect? No, but it eventually led me to this, and it came from not knowing what the right choice to make was, but really asking, like, what is who am I in this? What am I doing in this? That's the key, that's the difference. So next time you're feeling that am I lost? What's my purpose? Where am I in all of this? But just remind yourself it's not that you're lost. This is a clue that right now you're being guided by the wrong thing. And then just ask yourself how can I bring more of me into this conversation? And I'll see you next time.