What if the process of discovering our purpose in life was actually much easier than we’ve ever made it out to be?
What if we just need to be able to recognize something very simple and basic about ourselves? And that is: how it is we express ourselves in the world at our most core and visceral level. Or put another way: what’s that one thing you do in life no matter what?
For example, if I was to apply that simple filter to Laura Sutphen, a recent guest on the Our Authentic Careers podcast, the answer becomes pretty obvious: Laura expresses herself as a teacher. Meaning: Laura is seemingly called to teach in the exact same way she is called to breathe.
As you can hear, Laura has so far had an amazing career in which she’s done a whole bunch of teaching. Today, Laura heads up the Social Purpose Practice at the Golin Public Relations agency – a job through which she effectively teaches Fortune 500 companies what it means to actually have a conscience; a teaching job she’s had for the past 20+ years both as an intrapreneur in large agencies and as an entrepreneur, having built and run a social purpose agency of her own.
And for nearly as long, Laura has also been a practicing Jivamukti yoga instructor. And, just over the past 5 years, Laura has added parenting to the mix, a role in which – not surprisingly – she actively sees herself as a teacher and guiding light for her little boy.
So, what about you? Do you have that most basic urge to teach? Tell stories? Draw? Build? Organize? What’s that one way you continually and most authentically express yourself in the world – no matter what?
To help shed a bit more light on how you might go about recognizing your core expression, to get a feel for what it truly sounds like, I invite you to listen in on this recent conversation I had with Laura.
(This post originally appeared on Our Authentic Careers.)
