056 - How Purpose Evolves

Portals of Perception

What is the power of a motivating purpose in one’s life?

What happens when our chosen purpose seems to run out? What do we do when the expected fulfillment at the high point of a career or other life quest feels empty, less thrilling, than anticipated? How do you recalibrate when the change you worked so hard to catalyze has a timeline that doesn’t match our expectations?

For example, consider what we call the corporate refugees, executives who ticked all the right boxes, made the money, but still find something missing; or veteran change makers and leaders, who might wonder if their driving energy has been used up or burned out. How can any one of us, at any stage in our lives, discover a sense of renewal that propels us forward in harmony with an evolving world and universe?

In this conversation, Aviv Shahar explores the many levels and expressions of human purpose with Holly Woods, author, consultant, transformation leader and founder of the Emergence Institute. Holly works directly with people from all paths and levels of accomplishment to discover and re-enliven their purpose and passion. She generously uses her own journey of success and shadow to illuminate a life of self-discovery and change.

Among their insights:

• Living ‘on purpose’ is to look squarely at your greatest sorrows and joys, find the connection between them over time, and see they are flip sides of the same coin. Neither is right or wrong; both illuminate who you really are.
• Many leaders in the transformational arena spend their lives looking, unconsciously, for the next inspiration but are afraid to move out of their existing structures.
• Enlightenment isn’t a destination. We are in an epochal shift with an evolving story; we are forever pushing the void, the frontier, in an on-the-move realization.
• A form of burnout is doing something in a similar way consistently over time; when the world shifts and it no longer works, we don't know how to adapt.
• Veteran changemakers will struggle in a transition as their world shifts: they've gained perspective, but their capacity hasn't expanded; another version of themselves wants to emerge.
• Next-gen leaders can grow impatient with the pace of change, and the impatience can be externalized as righteousness. It’s also the impatience of a person with themselves.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

TWEETABLE QUOTES

“It's the belief that has haunted us: that we are individuals making our way through work and effort, and that sort of linear cause-and-effect mechanistic version of life separates us from the whole and limits our ability to work with on behalf of and in receipt of the energy that's available to us.” (Holly)

“Very important point, and the fulfillment that comes earlier in life when in earlier stages of human development is more concrete, more real-world material world items, and then we move into more intellectual social expectations, and then at some point as we're developing as humans, we gain capacity to see beyond those things, and it becomes more about the internal fulfillment. So earlier fulfillment is usually related being externally oriented, with their family culture, community, corporate, and peer group expectations about what success looks like, and generally, we think of being fulfilled when I've achieved those expectations, so it is a very different kind of fulfillment, and when we wake up to what's inside of us, our internal milieu, we say, ‘ Oh, there's something I'm missing; I'm maybe happy sometimes, but I don't have joy. I don't have a life force; it's missing from me, ’ and when people wake up, they really have a deep desire and longing for that, and I can speak more about what the longing actually is, but it's really at a later stage of development.” (Holly)

“Sometimes they have successful businesses, sometimes not, and sometimes they come to me after they've been struggling for a long time. But not always; sometimes they're in the middle of their business and it's going well, and they scaled, and they're like, "Oh, I have all these things going, but it doesn't mean anything to me anymore.” They're kind of a mix of the other two categories. They often have figured out how to be successful in the material world.” (Holly )

“I used to tell my clients, ‘ We're going to do these things, we're going to discover your purpose, we're going to do shadow work, and then it's going to be like magic. ’ I didn't even know how to explain it. I don't know what happens, but it just does, and it is magic. It shows up a lot, and now I understand it more fully. So, synchronicity is a huge part of my work, and I now understand it, and it really is alignment, which means that discovery through the shadow work helps resolve become clearer and more free of those limitations and constrictions, and then taking small steps into the world to invite in opportunities and, boom, it shows up. It still feels like magic. But I now understand fully how to create that opportunity for my clients. So, it is synchronistic for the vast majority of my clients. We get to a place, and there's usually a session where something happens there, like all kinds of awareness has happened, and then people in other places start showing up.” (Holly)

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