I had a revelation a while ago that the purpose of my art is really about helping people who have lost their true childhood spirit come back to themselves through nature and through art.
It came to me in a flash after doing an exercise at the end of Martha Beck’s awesome book, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World. She helped me to realize how I was best suited to help other people.
Don’t have enough time to read the whole book?
Skip straight to this exercise for Divining Your True Life’s Purpose:
- First, you list 10 of the most tragic experiences of your life. (feel honest and safe, you don’t have to tell anyone else what they are!)
- Then, make a list of 10 life skills you’ve got at least 10,000 hours of experience doing. (the equivalent of working at the same skill for 5 years of working 8-hour days. These skills are often the things that really turn you on, mine included noticing things in nature, finding interesting color combinations in the world around me, making natural jewelry and harvesting vegetables. That one doesn’t turn me on, but I’ve DEFINITELY spent 10,000 hours doing it!)
- Finally, mull over what connections there are between how those life skills have helped you overcome those deep tragedies. You might be surprised at what you come up with!
I hope this exercise gave you some flashes of insight, it sure gave me a ton!
Next week, I’ll share how this exercise unraveled a big karmic cycle in my life that I hadn’t even been aware of before. The magical thing about my own insights from this exercise was how they connected so many threads of my life together and helped a whole lot of what didn’t make sense before really come into focus.
My insight might have been so dramatic because I read Martha Beck’s whole book first.
It’s really an amazing book and I highly recommend that you pick it up if you found this exercise usefull!