Reconnecting with Your Inborn Purpose

This past month, my husband Graham and I spent three weeks in South Africa before making our move back to California, the first of which we spent on safari.

Living for a week in the animal kingdom, rising and resting with the sun and observing wild animals in their natural habitat, invoked a deep sense of awe within me. We spent six hours a day on game drives, watching the natural world operate, each animal relying on its instincts to stay safe, find food, and fulfill their role in the broader ecosystem.

The perfect harmony of everything felt miraculous and humbling, especially in our modern world where very little feels in equilibrium. It got me reflecting on how, despite how disconnected we may feel from it in the modern world, human beings are of and part of nature. And that just like every other animal, we also have natural instincts we can trust and an inborn purpose to fulfill.

So many of the women that I coach (and myself not so long ago!) struggle with self-trust. Especially as the good girls we were raised to be, we learned from a young age to follow the rules and do things the “right” way, rather than learning to trust ourselves to know what that is.

Additionally, in our Western patriarchal culture, feminine qualities such as intuition and instinctual intelligence have been devalued, while more masculine qualities such as analytical judgment and willpower have been prized.

Add to that living in cities and in the digital age where we’re constantly inundated with endless stimuli from car horns, email pings, bright lights, and social media feeds, we’ve become so disconnected from ourselves.

Yet we human beings are simply highly-intelligent animals who still have a place in the natural order of things. And as individuals, we each have individual natures and unique gifts as distinct as our fingerprints.

Just like other animals, we too have an internal guidance system nudging us on how to lead our lives. For we each have a role to fulfill within the greater ecosystem which, uninterrupted, operates in perfect balance.

At some point, my clients typically struggle with the question of, “What is my purpose?”

The Eastern religion of Taoism teaches that what you are is already built-in. Self-actualization begins not with choice but with self-discovery and self-realization.

Just like the leopard doesn’t look at the elephant and think, “Am I doing this right? Should I be eating grass instead of stalking impala?,” we too must stop looking outward and start turning inward. It’s not about looking externally for our purpose or some abstract notion of what we ought to be doing, it’s instead about honoring our inner knowing.

The question isn’t, “What should I be?” The question is: “Am I being what I am?” 

It took me finally honestly answering this question to step into my purpose as a coach. And in my work with clients, we work together to chip away at anything getting in the way of them being and honoring who they innately are.

We reconnect them to their bodies and intuitive intelligence, and show them how to let go of thinking and instead tap into knowing. We build the internal safety to honor the answers that arise, and in doing so, they naturally connect with their inborn purpose, embrace their natural gifts, and begin to leverage them in their work.

When we reconnect with our deepest nature and learn to trust ourselves, we begin to lead lives that feel easeful rather than effortful, energizing rather than depleting, purposeful rather than obligatory.

We find ourselves flowing instead of pushing, magnetizing instead of chasing, and living the lives we were always meant to lead.

So if you too are ready to reconnect with your natural instincts, inborn gifts, and innate purpose, apply to work with me above.

With you on the journey,

Emma x