This is How You Know You’re Living Your Life Purpose…

Have you ever took a leap of faith and tried something new in your life? If you’ve been reading my articles lately you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been writing lately about dreams, goals, visions for our future and doing the work you love.

I guess it’s a theme lately for my life.

What about you? Are you thinking about starting your own project, business or maybe even your own product line? Everybody has dreams of “what they want to be when they grow up.”

Do you have dreams that reach far beyond your current state of employment? Do you have aspirations for much more than what you’re currently experiencing? Your talents are lying within you like a seed that’s unable to sprout and reach its full potential. I’m sure you feel it, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article I’m writing.

I’d like to give you a little background about me and this website.

Ever since I was a kid I always knew I wanted my own business. I was just never sure what it should be. I used to paint addresses on curbs as a kid. I’d knock on all the doors in my neighborhood and charge them 10 bucks to paint (or sometimes repaint) their address on their curb for them. It would take me about 10 minutes and for a while I was doing about 3 curbs an hour.

I’d be making $30 an hour and working for 6 or 8 hours per day a couple days a week. All my friends were doing horrible service related jobs they hated and I was doing pretty well for myself. I don’t know why I didn’t keep that up…

Then my friend started a computer business in 1996 and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Work for yourself with no boss. Who wouldn’t be into that?

Around about the same time I learned how to build websites and thought I’d get into doing that for people. I ended up working for a company that does this and further honed my skills in social media management and search engine optimization (SEO).

Have you ever searched Google for a certain phrase and you always ended up clicking on the first 2 or 3 results? How did those sites get there? Well, that was what I did.

Then I learned that people were building websites about the craziest niche topics and making tons of money from them. An example of this type of niche site was something like beta fish care.

I was learning about people building websites like these and making 10 or 15 thousand dollars a month from them. I did that for a while and realized that there were massive problems with it.

First of all…

• I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing (even though I worked for myself)
• I was hiding behind my websites
• All I cared about was how many people visited my site and how many people bought what I was promoting
• I wasn’t focused on helping people

I’m kind of ashamed to say that I got into this for a while. It didn’t take me long though to get out of it really quickly. It wasn’t my life’s work. I felt like I was always struggling and fighting to earn money from them.

If you feel like your current endeavor is a fight and a struggle, perhaps it’s not the line of work you should be doing.

All the while I was very much into raw food nutrition and alternative healing. Perhaps as I was getting cleaner and cleaner in my body, that’s why I could no longer do this type of soulless work which only focuses on making money and not on helping people.

So when I was doing this I was listening to health lectures on my iPod 3 or 4 hours a day. I still do by the way. 🙂

After I gave up those websites I started an online health store called shoprawfoods.com. That was a lot of fun but I realized once again it was all about selling. I had to manage product prices, do promotions and do the graphic design, program the shopping cart software, build the website, write content for it, market it and the list went on and on.

Again having a store is all about selling products, dealing with credit card transactions, product returns and all the while making sure the customers were always happy.

I just didn’t like the idea of products being what my life was about.

After I stopped doing that store, I considered getting a degree and becoming a nutritionist. After thinking about it, that would require quite a bit of money for schooling, then it would require a few years of time before I could get out and work with people.

Actually I preferred the idea of becoming a nutritionist more than selling products in a store, but aside from the upfront costs and time it would take to complete the degree, I would also be responsible for building a clientele, marketing, and in the end be responsible for people’s health successes or failures.

I couldn’t live with myself if somebody came to me with stage 3 cancer, took my advice and didn’t make it. So that idea was out.

Then I considered becoming a nutrition or raw food “expert”. I could give speeches, travel around and teach people how to make green smoothies and really motivate them. I loved that idea but there was one catch…

I didn’t like being the “authority” or “expert”.

This would require me constantly take a position and having an answer for each objection for my position. Talk about stress. Then the idea of giving lectures didn’t sound fun to me either. I don’t feel like that’s my gift.

what was there to do? I knew I wanted to help people, I’m not into selling products, I don’t want to be an expert so how can I give back to people and still inspire them without all of the responsibility?

The idea of Extreme Health Radio was born…

I figured I could ask somewhat intelligent questions. I could build a website. I could sell products without carrying inventory and I could inspire people without being an expert, giving speeches or spending thousands of dollars and 4 years on a degree!

Wow was I excited.

This is how you know you’re doing the work you’re supposed to be doing…

You get emails every day from people telling you how much the work you’re doing is changing their lives. People purchase through your website because they want to support you and your work.

I can’t tell you how blessed I am. The community here is amazing, inspiring and tons of fun.

Recently we’ve had to upgrade some of our equipment and buy some new software and I was at that point where I wasn’t sure if we should spend the money since we don’t have that much in our account.

I took a leap of faith and as nervous as I was to spend money on our little venture, I did it anyway.

The next day we received some donations that basically covered what we spent.

Talk about knowing you’re doing the right thing.

So I ask you do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels? Are you working on a side project but feel like you have to work and fight really hard to make just a little bit of progress?

That’s how I felt so I know how you’re feeling.

When you’re doing the work you love and that’s helping others in some way, it should always come easy. Struggling and fighting only happens when we resist the calling we all know that’s inside of us. We resist the work we know we’re supposed to be doing.

How can you give back? How can you help others? What problems can you solve? How can you help people overcome obstacles in their lives? How can you inspire them to be a better version of themselves?

These are all questions that if answered and acted upon will eventually turn into a “right livelihood” for you. We now live in The Thank You Economy as Gary Vaynerchuk says. We live in the relationship economy and the helpfulness economy. When you can build genuine relationships with people because you actually care about them, they will thank you by supporting you.

It’s all about helping people and wanting to improve their lives in some way and being there for them. If you build your business model around that, you’ll succeed. Every. Single. Time. 🙂

As the old quote goes…

When all the work you do is play, you’ll never work another day.

Question Of The Day:

How are you going to help people overcome their problems?