Who am I? What is my purpose? I have wrestled with these questions and it wasn’t until I had the distance of perspective before I could begin to answer them. Perspective that has been full of dead ends, uninspired moments and outright suffering. I did finally discover it and it is much clearer to me now. And as I have both reflected on my journey and talked with many people about identity and purpose–the young who are impatient and frustrated, the old who are tired and full of regret, the in-between who regardless of age are called by something they cannot decipher–following is what I have learned:

• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Nothing is learned by running away from discomfort, but rather it only ensures more will come. Get used to being uncomfortable and meditating in the moment. Ask, what you are learning? Discomfort is a muse. Learn from her.
• Repeated experiences in the uninspiring are informing you of who you are not. Until you experience who you are not, you will not discover who you are.
• When you discover who you are, you will also realize the answer has been there all along. Ask the Creator for forgiveness, and then forgive yourself. This shit ain’t easy.
• It took Edison 10,000 tries to find a filament for the light bulb that worked. Get on with it.
• Who you are does not define what you do. But it does create alignment and a tighter bell curve (forgive me, I am a recovering engineer…)
• Discovering who you are leads to discovering your purpose in life, and that will transform the people around you. It is not enough to just know it, however. Do something with it. Living to your purpose transforms people beyond you, in ways you will never know.