it is the intent behind buying the book that feels so forbidden: he wanted to become his own person in a way that his old life could not accommodate. Michael, the ultra-rational, data-based social scientist was responding to an inner call stronger than any professional peer pressure. After many years he was finally admitting his interest in spirituality. As a child Michael had thought deeply about God and had many questions about why people suffered. In high school he had daydreamed about becoming a minister and leading his own church. But since his college indoctrination into the social sciences, Michael had developed a contemptuous attitude toward religion. Michael also had learned early not to tell his parents too much about his religious inclinations. He knew his engineer father and accountant mother were steering him firmly down the path of practical realism. Research in the social sciences was a good compromise for Michael: it allowed him to ask all kinds of questions—except the ones that interested him the most.
As Michael stood in that bookstore, wavering between growth and fear, he was seized with the embarrassment and anxiety that can grip all of us when we take a step in public toward reclaiming our true self. His profound sense of exposure and self-consciousness revealed the highly meaningful nature of his act. As Michael paid for the book he desired, he was symbolically saying to the clerk (the gatekeeper, the authority figure) that he was intending to change the course of his life. Because this felt so taboo to Michael, he had a fit of indecision before taking that step. At a deep level there was a part of Michael that knew exactly what buying the book meant he was taking back a piece of himself that had been ransomed to family opinion years before.
Over the next couple of years, Michael began to attend a church that encouraged his searching, intellectual questions about God. He ultimately became a leader in his church, and has felt deeply rewarded by this new direction in his life.
Pivot Points
There may be more dramatic events in people’s lives than buying a book, but Michael’s example illustrates that the most ordinary act can become a watershed event when we are ready to change. At these moments, we become highly conscious that we have the power of choice. We no longer assume that who we have always been is who we will continue to be. A pivot point is formed when we have the freedom to turn in any direction, and we know it. Choosing rightly at these times is a striking experience, never to be forgotten. Many people can look back and cite just such moments when they first risked their allegiance to their deepest desires.
The amazing thing is that over and over life confronts us with such opportunities, such pivot points. To remain the same, you simply choose what you have always chosen. To discover your true purpose, you must experiment with choosing from your soul. These tiny choice points are easy to overlook, just as the tools of self-discovery seem unremarkable until you deliberately start using them. However, it does not matter how small the act or how inconsequential the decision. If you know what you want and finally do it, you are rearranging your universe.
Three Words to Remember
A quick overview of the whole process of recovering your life’s purpose may be found in just three words:
RESPECT ~ PROTECT ~ CONNECT
These will be your touchstone words, practical reminders of what is needed to set your course for the first time on finding your true purpose, or to recover from a temporary setback. These three words combine the attitudes and actions that will materialize fulfillment in whatever area you choose. They work together in a synergistic way, so that each sparks off both of the others to create the optimal conditions for your future.
1) Your first responsibility is to respect your own unique interests and needs. There is nothing you can do about what interests you or what energizes you. It is simply who you are. Trying to change this identity, not accepting this identity, will always result in a tiring struggle that can never succeed. You are not required to like your unique interests and needs, especially if they make you very different from other members of your family, but sooner or later you will have to grant them respect. The first step in finding your true self is to honor the primacy of your needs and interests in your life and then look for acceptable ways of expressing them, because they are not going away.
2) Your true self’s unique need is something that you must protect from other people’s opinions. If you do not protect yourself in this area, you will be molded to fit what makes other people or traditions more comfortable. It could be a family member, an employer, a cultural norm. These outside forces influence you into becoming who they need you to be in order to maintain a preferred view of the world. Everyone in your life has a part they would love you to play and if you do not shield yourself from this pressure, you will end up dominated by activities and roles that will whittle away at your resolve until your future is lost. No matter how much you love or admire these people, you must protect yourself against accepting everything they have to say and consequently losing your own values.
To connect with like-minded, supportive people is the next necessity. We all need to have contact with people who are interested in our ideas and who are energized by similar pursuits. This does not mean that you have to give up relationships with loved ones, your current job, or anything else in your life that may be less than energizing. It just means you need to add people to your life who will support your efforts at growth and change. Without this connection to a few supporters, it is easy to get frustrated and give up.
Taking a new step can be a fearful venture that stirs up anxieties, but it is even more frightening when you lack supportive people in your life. As we will see in the next chapter, taking new steps can be made even more difficult when the very people who should be most supportive try to hold you back.
Family members, with their deep needs and attachments, usually don’t give dependency on each other up without a fight.
For weeks Carol had trouble starting her therapy sessions. As soon as she sat down, she would nervously ask me, “What should I talk about today?” No amount of interpretation or encouragement could budge her from this ritual. Week after week she began our sessions the same way, always embarrassed to ask the question, but completely unable to start without voicing it She was coming to me to talk, and yet wanted me to pick the subject! As time went on and Carol confided more experiences of her past, we began to understand. Carol was showing me how she had related to authority figures her whole life. As a child, Carol had to ask permission for practically everything she did. Her behavior in our sessions was showing me the painful contortion of permission-seeking that she felt forced to do all her life.
It was no wonder Carol suffered from depression, at times even taking to her bed in fits of despondency. Although she lived a comfortable, financially secure life with her husband, Carol felt chronically overwhelmed and often sought social isolation to the point of not wanting to see anyone or answer her telephone. No matter how comfortable it looked from the outside, Carol’s life was an uphill battle every day. It was an ordeal for her to make even minor decisions, because she was so afraid her husband might not like what she did. Her husband was a strong, decisive man, but not a cruel one. His strong personality simply rushed in to fill the void created by Carol’s hesitation. He said what he thought, expressed his wishes and Carol folded. This was exactly the pattern Carol was unintentionally setting up in our sessions. She was so accustomed to doing what others wanted that it had become her main way of relating to other people. It became easy for me to see why she went so far as to even avoid answering the telephone; for Carol, any contact with other people meant being dominated into something to which she could not say no.
No overbearing character was taking charge and forcing her into a subservient role, but Carol was responding to our therapeutic relationship along the exact lines she had followed in her childhood and with her husband. This was a priceless moment in Carol’s