Living Life with Purpose on Purpose

This is the very first blog post for The Duncan Approach, “Learning to Live with Purpose”. A blog dedicated to helping others to live a life of purpose on purpose and ultimately to walk in their destiny.

My original intention was to post my first blog on June 1^st; however in honor of my mom, I decided to wait until today.  You see, one month ago today, my mother passed away.  It was hard for me because, I never really thought of my mother passing, now, I know that’s not reality, after all, we all will one day pass away.  But, it truly never crossed my mind, I mean it’s just not something I ever gave any thought to; that my mother would someday die.  I mean she was mom, she was always supposed to be, and yet, after a battle with cancer, it happened.   That reality left me dazed.

About ten years ago I started to have this nagging feeling that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing with my life, and, as time went on, I couldn’t shake the feeling.  I felt as if I was meant to do more with my life.  I started journaling to help me try to understand what I was feeling and my journaling evolved into my first book, titled “The Journey Back to You” which will be completed this fall.  The book is about discovering who you are and will help the reader to create a plan to walk in their destiny and live your life with purpose on purpose©.

My mother is a big part of the book; she resembled the Activist and former Black Panther member Angela Davis in so many ways.  In her early years, she wore her hair in a huge afro, similar to Angela’s’ and like a Black Panther member, mom was tough.  As a mother, she was determined that the future of her children would be bright, school was a must and there were hardly, if ever, any exceptions to that rule.

Mother was also one of the kindest people you could ever meet. If there was something, she knew you had need of, and if it was in her power, she would make sure that you had it.   That was her purpose while she lived on this earth.   She was a giver and she enjoyed giving.  She didn’t have to think twice about whether or not she was going to give, she only needed to know that there was a need, she then made a way for the need to be met.  In spite of the hard times and personal adversities she faced and endured in her life, she made the lives of others as pleasant as possible.

My mother lived on purpose, she never conformed, she was who she was and that was how she lived, even until the very end.  Cancer didn’t win, in fact, cancer really never had a chance, not against my mother.

Too often we allow circumstances, negative and sometimes even positive to cause us to lose sight of who we are and who we were meant to become.  I recently read about a survey completed by Dr. Gerald Bell, Founder and CEO of Bell Leadership Institute, about seventy-year-old executives who answered the question “If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?  The top answer was “I should have taken charge of my life and set my goals earlier”.  To me this implies that these executives had lived their lives in conformity, however now, deeply regretted.

In the past, I often pondered the phrases “Why am I here?”, and “What is my purpose?”   Every day, I did what I thought was expected of me; make everyone happy and make sure everyone was happy with me.  All the while, I pondered these questions “Why am I here?”, and “What is my purpose?”

What about you?   Life is not practice, it’s the real thing.  Are you living your life with purpose on purpose©  or, are you like the executives in the study, just going through life doing what everyone else is doing because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, conforming.  Or perhaps as stated in a recent blog post by Farnoosh Brock, founder of Prolific Living titled “Starting Over: It is Not Too Late for A New Career” “Sometimes, we climb the wrong ladder.  Sometimes, we get stuck in the wrong “successful” career… …It Happens.  And, it is NOT your fault”  ( http://www.prolificliving.com/blog/2012/06/05/starting-over-it-is-not-too-late-for-a-new-career/)

I’m here to tell you that you can start over.  Follow me on this journey and find your way back to the person you were meant to be!  Make a decision now and subscribe to receive weekly messages to live life with purpose on purpose©

Grace and Peace