Your Biggest Challenges Are Clues to Your Purpose

Finding your passion and purpose and reinventing your life aren’t always easy. In fact, often the keys to your purpose come not only from what delights you but from your life’s biggest challenges and painful experiences.

I’m going to get really personal today and tell you my story and how the amazing life I’m living right now was born of much struggle and pain…

I was raised in a loving but highly dysfunctional immigrant family to be “successful” in societal terms – do well in school, go to a top university, get a high-paying/high status job, get married, have kids, have a big house…yada, yada, yada.

I did what was expected of me, checked every box, and I WAS MISERABLE!

Even though I was always interested in psychology and art, I graduated with a degree in business and finance from a top business school (Wharton) due to family pressure and got a high-flying job at the World Bank.

At 22, I was traveling the world first class (I even sat, sipping champagne and eating caviar, right behind Robert De Niro on the Concord from Paris to New York once), working on multi-million dollar projects and meeting with heads of governments and captains of industry. I even had 5 weeks of annual vacation and a diplomatic passport to avoid immigration lines!

At around the same time, I also met the man who later became my husband and we had a hot-and-heavy soulmate relationship from the get go.

In the eyes of my friends and family and everybody that I knew, I had made it.

But I didn’t feel right. I wasn’t happy. I loved traveling and meeting people from different cultures but hated finance and felt like a fraud. While my colleagues read the Economist and Financial Times on our business trips, I found myself sneaking self- help books and People.

I also seriously struggled with my self-esteem, had major issues in my live-in relationship and wasn’t very kind to my body, using all kinds of substances to numb the pain.

A particularly crazy fight with my then boyfriend/now husband led me to therapy… which opened up Pandora’s box of trauma, abuse of every kind and pain.

I will spare you the details for now but what followed were years of intensive personal growth and healing work using almost every modality under the sun and many, many dark nights of the soul, in which literally, all I could do was curl up in fetal position and watch a candle burn in the dark as I cried.

It was really, really HARD and many times I wanted to give up and surrender to the darkness inside myself.

But I persevered. I stuck with the therapy. I healed. I learned to take care of my body, mind and spirit. I learned to set effective boundaries. I learned to communicate lovingly. I LEARNED TO LOVE MYSELF. I even learned to like myself.

And then (nearly 20 years ago! I can’t believe it!), after much doubt, many fears about winding up destitute and penniless not to mention my ego’s difficulty with losing status, I left my job at the World Bank to pursue my passions for personal growth, human potential, creative pursuits and WORKING WITH PEOPLE.

I WAS BORN FOR THIS!

Once I made the decision to follow my soul’s calling, everything started to fall into place.

I thought I wanted to be a therapist but after spending a couple of years running a program for homeless, drug addicted women while volunteering in domestic violence hotlines and safe houses in Washington DC, I realized that I was more passionate about human potential. About what can happen once we heal trauma and allow ourselves to truly live.

“HOW GREAT CAN OUR LIVES BE, IF WE LET IT HAPPEN?” I wondered. “HOW FAR CAN WE FLY IF WE LET OURSELVES SOAR?”

These questions led me not only to create my amazing life, complete with a soulful, loving marriage and 3 great kids and lots of travel and adventure, but to also get trained as a coach and hang up my shingle 16 years ago.

Although I have done tons of transformational leadership, executive and business coaching over the years, my not-so-secret sweet spot has always been to work with soulful, multi-passionate go-getters to help them figure out what they were put on this Earth to do and start doing it.

I know how painful it is to have all these talents and passions and feel like you could make a huge difference in the world, if only you knew what you were meant to do.

Or to have an idea of what you would like to do but be terrified that you won’t be able to support yourself or your family if you follow your dreams.

Or to fear losing the status and security you get from your “successful” career that doesn’t allow you to express the MAGNITUDE OF WHO YOU REALLY ARE.

I’ve been there and I know how hard it is.

I also know that with the right tools, support and inspiration, IT’S ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE AND DOABLE!

Here’s what I firmly believe: We are all given our particular interests, passions, gifts and talents as well as the difficulties and pain we have had to go through in our lives BECAUSE WE ARE MEANT TO USE ALL OF THIS TO SERVE THE WORLD.

It’s absolutely no accident that you love what you love and are good at what you’re good at and hate what you hate and have lived through what you have lived through.

IT’S WHAT MAKES YOU UNIQUELY YOU AND IT’S WHAT YOU NEED TO FULFILL YOUR MISSION IN THIS LIFETIME.

All it takes some times is a little help to see how it all fits together. That’s where I come in and I feel blessed to do the work that I do.

What about you? What do you believe in? How far can you fly if you allow yourself to soar?

I love to connect so feel free to hit reply and answer these questions. I’d love to hear from you!

xoxo,
Natalie

P.S. You can learn more about me and my work here. And if you feel called to uncover how your gifts, talents and life challenges are clues to your purpose, I invite you to apply for a Complimentary Passion & Purpose Coaching call here. Together, we will uncover the #1 thing that’s holding you back from doing what you are meant to do on this Earth and come up with a plan to overcome it. Sign up here.