Melissa Reddick

Before you can start dreaming about your life’s purpose, it is important to identify what you want to achieve that makes life worth living.

Is it feasible to dream of making the world a better place while you are living in a cardboard box? How can you consider pursuing a higher purpose in life while you are afraid of ending up on the streets?

You can’t!

So before we start looking at the bigger picture, I want us to first take a look at our foundation.

What are your fears around not having an income?

Let’s say it takes 20 years for your life’s purpose to start producing a feasible paycheck. That is because it takes 10 years of training, and 10 years of building up a reputation as someone who can actually do the thing you desire to do. (This is just an example).

Just because you feel called to do something doesn’t mean you will naturally be an expert on how to do it. You will likely require serious training, guidance, and support in order to succeed.

Life purposes aren’t something that we just happen upon. They come from deep within us.

If our parents and the adults in our lives were trained to believe in these things, they could have supported us from a young age. They could have taught us how to pursue the steps necessary to build a foundation in alignment with the things that called us forward most in life.

Unfortunately, the way of the past was “don’t dream so big that it hurts your chances of success in the real world”. That is not the way of the future, if I have anything to say about it.

So we not only have to contend with the fact that our purpose is something very few people have been able to help us hone in on, we also have to do a lot of work in unlearning all of the limitations that people (our parents and family, mostly) have imposed upon our ability to dream under the guise of “keeping us safe and secure” aka small.

We also have to accept the reality that, unlike Harry Potter, we are not born knowing how to do the thing we feel called to spend our lives doing.

If we have a big mission to undertake in this world, as all humans do once we are ready and willing to accept ours, we are going to need someone who can help us learn how to do it.

But even before that, I want you to identify some things:

What are the things that you believe are necessary for living a good life? What are the key items you have been taught to focus on in order to feel stable and fulfilled?

The big ones mainly are typically

• a steady, reliable, healthy paycheck, which for most people means a good job
• a place to live and the ability to pay rent every month
• health insurance
• a mode of transportation, which could also include automotive insurance, fuel, repairs, and a monthly payment to a lender
• dental insurance
• copays for visits to the doctor/dentist
• money for medicine when you’re sick
• maybe even an emergency fund, if you can afford to build one
• food on the table
• fun money
• running water, electricity, gas
• paying off student loans and/or credit card bills, personal loans, etc.
• paying all kinds of bills that will only get worse if you cannot afford to pay them

This list only covers if you are living for yourself. If you are dating, married, and/or have one or more children to take care of, the list of foundational requirements is even greater.

It is important to identify these things for several reasons. One is because it helps you identify the value system that has been installed within you.

Another is because if any of these things appear to be threatened by your pursuit of a higher purpose, that could essentially deter you from pursuing your own path in life.

Especially if you are surrounded by seagulls. Lobsters. People who will incite panic and fear at the mere mention of pursuing a path that doesn’t align with what they have envisioned for your life. They will immediately tug on those strings, and push the buttons they likely installed or had installed within them too. “But how will you afford to eat?” “Who is going to pay your rent? I’M definitely not going to help you if you fall behind.”

So today, write a list. Maybe the one I provided above is exactly what you would write down. Maybe you have more things to add, maybe you don’t have as many as I have provided. Either way, write down all the things you need in order to survive as a human and live a good life, regardless of how the money comes in.

If it helps, you can imagine this one of four ways:

1. Imaginge you have a $0 income all of a sudden. You lost your job, the working conditions suddenly became deplorable and you quit in order to protect your pride, dignity, and/or reputation. What are the things you would be scrambling to find a way to make money to cover?
2. Imagine you have a billion dollar a year salary. What are you using that income to cover?
3. Imagine you take home a modest paycheck. How much is it, and what are you able to afford with it? What would you prioritize when it came to how you spent your limited paycheck?
4. If the first three options don’t help you answer this question thoroughly, come up with your own scenario that can help you figure out your basic financial requirements and necessities.

Write your list in it’s entirety.

Pretend you are letting God or a Higher Power know the basic requirements you need to be fulfilled in order to move forward with your own life purpose.

For me? Here is what I would write:

• My own place to live – rent, water, electric, gas, wifi, furniture, repairs, insurance – knowing I could live there without fear of not being able to pay rent year-to-year, or even a house that I can afford to own (not rent or mortgage).
• A car with all the necessary insurance, maintenance, and daily costs to operate it (tolls, gas, time to keep it clean) – again knowing I could pay for it year-to-year without fear of losing it, and even own it outright rather than buy it on credit.
• A place to keep my car that is safe and off the street, so wherever I live must have a driveway or private parking arrangement.
• Good, healthy food to eat that tastes delicious and keeps my body in excellent condition.
• Money to pay for hygiene supplies and update my wardrobe from time to time.
• The ability to travel for training multiple times a year to different states/countries.
• The ability to afford starting my own businesses, domestic and international, and maintain them in the years before they turn measurable profits that I can rely on for steady streams of income (however long that might take without forcing or pushing it).
• Self-care fund: money for massages, facials, spa days, money for healings.*
• Money to invest in new endeavors, to explore the world and expand my options with.
• Money for dating and building a relationship with someone.
• Money for fun hobbies, networking, and ways to meet new people.
• Money to spread my many messages.
• A good gym to work out in. A place to run, along with the right clothing and equipment to help me get stronger, faster, and healthier.
• A martial arts gym to be a part of that is a healthy place to train and helps me improve.

*The self-care and the wardrobe requirements might seem extraneous to someone who does not prioritize these things. They might end up at the bottom of the “basic requirements” list, or even in a separate section called “nice-to-haves”. This could be indicative of a limitation in the way that you view what is actually needed in order to live a life worth living. This could very well be a form of self-neglect. Maybe you learned to neglect yourself at a young age, ignoring everything except the basic necessities that would be covered if you were taken away by the state or put in a juvenile detention center. Eventually, after years of embodying this way of thinking about your own value, you started to direct it towards everyone else as a result. You formed dogma around it, and your way of thinking hardened into a cast, a hard and fast rule, a limitation. When you share that limitation as an indisputable fact, your children suffer more than you did when you were younger.

There are no rules here to follow in terms of what you want to write down. This is a thought exercise. Your mother and father aren’t going to be reading over your shoulder, criticizing your every move. If they are, whether in reality or simply in your awareness, then you have bigger problems to deal with. If that’s the case, may I recommend also adding something along the lines of: “Be free of Mom’s nagging, Dad’s never-ending criticism, and their inability to impart anything more than misery, abuse, self-neglect, a sense that my self-worth should be lower than the floor, and the desire for isolation from everything and everyone forever. Protection from them draining the life out of me instead of inspiring me to greater heights, like parents are supposed to do for their own children. Protect my children and I (if applicable) from their abusive ways since they show no desire to change, no matter what I do to try and show them a better way, and my family and I deserve better than what they are willing to give.” to the end of your list there? You deserve it.

Your list can contain whatever you want on it. Maybe you think life isn’t worth living if you can’t knit or sew or craft or grill, and so you include a section that covers what you need in order to have those things on it too.

This isn’t a “what do I need in order to survive prison” list. It’s a “what makes life worth living so that I can operate from a foundation of enjoying my life?” list.

Also ask yourself something: “Am I willing to hit Ground Zero in order to make a huge life change? Can I reorient my life to a higher purpose if I am unwilling to let the life I have been building already fall apart?” Why would it have to fall apart? Because it has been built on a foundation that won’t sustain you if you choose to change your direction. That is why this whole exercise is necessary from the start. So you can determine if your losses are worth it in order to upgrade your life later on.

This is where a lot of people shut down and stop moving closer to their purpose.

This is just a thought exercise. Just something to consider. It’s not a guarantee. You’re not signing a contract with God saying “if I sacrifice these things, you’ll give me this, this, and this.” You’re just taking stock, inventory of the unknown that is floating around in your subconscious. You are making the unknown, known. The value of this exercise will likely become more apparent as time goes by.

One more thing to consider, before calling it a night: it’s fascinating to me that no matter what we decide is our baseline standard of living, the Universe always meets us where we say our “bottom” is. Don’t be afraid to dream big even when it comes to basic necessities. No matter what you put on your list, there is a socialite with even higher requirements. It doesn’t even occur to him or her to ask for less, and the Universe always ends up providing a way for us to receive whatever we ask for. Just something to contemplate before calling it a night.