Finding Purpose and Happiness from the Inside Out — My Story

My story is a common one: of trying to find myself amidst layers of conditioning, of rebelling against my upbringing and beginning a journey to find out who I am.

It is a journey to find my purpose and place in the world, and has led me on a spiritual odyssey.

My story is not one of how I have arrived at a state of complete knowing or limitless creative flow. It is an ongoing journey that includes failure, stuckness and not knowing and of learning compassion for myself in these moments, because it is only by embracing hard bits can true clarity begin to emerge.

It begins at a turning point in my life when I hit rock bottom.

PART 1: Rock Bottom

On the surface, I was doing everything right. I was twenty-seven, with a well-paid career as a management consultant and a good education behind me. I shared a small flat with my long-term boyfriend in an upcoming part of London. I was pretty much on track with my life plan. Yet underneath I was crumbling. Each evening I would sink into the sofa with a glass of wine and watch TV to zone out. I felt flat about my relationship, unmotivated by my career and most of all I felt flat about myself. I dreamt of ditching it all to travel the world.

As the months progressed I became more and more apathetic. I drank more and put on weight, and I began crying. I cried when I woke up, I cried when I got back from work, I cried myself to sleep. I found myself in the depths of despair, and clueless as to why. Amidst all the not knowing, what I did know was that I couldn’t work this out on my own. I always wanted to be strong, to cope, to do well, to never fail. But now I needed help. One Saturday morning, with tears flowing, I picked up the Yellow Pages and looked up the ‘Counsellors and Psychotherapists’ section.

From Apathy to Anger

A week later, sat in front of Eve, a psychotherapist, I began to express all that was inside of me. To my amazement, she listened and did not judge me. I was not flat and apathetic here: I was angry, sad and disappointed and I found such relief in expressing this in the safe space that Eve held. Through my own words and feelings, I learnt that I had actually chosen to live a life according to what others wanted — family, society, school. I had sought approval from others above my own inner desires, and in doing so forgotten who I was.

As an adult, this addiction to approval had brought me to my knees. I liked pleasing people and I had become very good at that. So good, in fact, that I had lost the ability to know what it was that pleased me. The question seemed irrelevant. I knew from a young age that I needed to go to university, to get a respectable job, to have a relationship, get married, buy a house, to have children. That seemed to be written in stone and I thought I wanted that too. Yet there was something inside me, which I had edited out, that sought to question this.

I had come to a point where the short-term rewards of outward success did nothing to appease a deeper sense that I was not living a life that was authentic to me. But who was the authentic Sarah?

The Journey to Find Myself

It began with rebellion, wanting to get away from everyone who told me what I should be doing. I had a new-found anger and indignation that spurred me on, yet trembled a little bit at the horror in people’s faces as I told them I was ditching my career and all that I had been working towards.

I love travelling and followed my urge to live abroad, fascinated by new cultures and keen to learn new languages. I wanted to escape my own culture and be free. But even though the external voices had quietened, I experienced inner tension between wanting to rebel and needing approval. The pendulum swings both ways: what we resist is intrinsic to who we are. Much as I craved freedom, I could not escape from myself. What I had believed as a child and young adult about the rules of life and how I should be was part of me. The internal tension was distressing and I wondered how I could ever I find happiness.

Spiritual Seeking

I sought answers in spirituality, from Buddhism to Shamanism, learning from many spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie and Krishnamurti . It resonated deeply, even though it was in stark contrast to many of my existing beliefs about what was right and wrong and how I should be living my life. What I found were common themes: that only the present moment exists, only love is real and we create our lives through our thoughts. I learnt spiritual practices that taught me to become more conscious of who I am, an infinite, limitless and loving soul, and more aware of the voices of my ego, full of fear that tries to keep me safe, and in doing so, keeps me small. Grand words, but as with any journey, the learning is in the experiencing.

Embracing the shadow

My experience is that no one can fully live these teachings. I may have moments of enlightenment where I feel a sense of peace and oneness with all that is, but these moments pass as habitual patterns of thinking return. In the past, I have seen enlightenment as the ultimate goal. I wanted to be a being of pure light and love — where I am always benevolent, kind and generous. Often, though, the search for enlightenment can be part of our egoic need to prove our worth and be better than others, because actually we do not believe we are enough as we are, with all our flaws. I have let go of seeking enlightenment, but instead seek to embrace both the light and dark, and in doing so embrace all that I am.

PART 2: Creating Purpose and Happiness Instead of Searching for it

In order to be happy, I knew that I needed to do more things that I loved — but I didn’t really know what I loved doing. In the years of pleasing others, achieving and seeking approval, I had put my desires to one side and they were buried deep inside of me, in a place that I couldn’t even access, let alone prioritize.

Always drawn to pottery as a child, I felt the desire to begin working with clay again. I couldn’t have imagined how far this would take me in my journey of finding myself.

“There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.”

Thich Nhat Hahn

Opening to my creativity

I found a wonderful studio to work in, where Barbara, my teacher, held a deeply supportive space that encouraged playfulness and self-expression whilst offering guidance when needed. It was exactly what I needed.

I love the texture and feel of clay, but what struck me most, when I had a ball of clay in my hands, was the potential available in this piece of earth. Each moment I chose to move my hands, I changed the form of the clay. There were infinite shapes, forms and possibilities. But with clay, as opposed to how I experienced life, I could play and it didn’t matter if I made a wrong choice.

As I played with clay, I reconnected to myself. I began to love what I did, to love the clay, the colours of the glazes, the unpredictability of the firings. I began to realize that I was creative, and got a great sense of satisfaction and pride from what I was producing, gaining in confidence with each piece I made. The studio was my space where I could let go of judgement and seriousness and allow experimentation and curiosity.

It was also a space where I witnessed my own behaviour and conditioning: the belief that I needed to be producing and getting something done all the time. My desire to create a masterpiece out of everything I produced. My frustration when what I was producing didn’t go according to plan. My dismay when I saw someone else producing something so much more beautiful, and admired, than my pieces. The voices of my conditioned self.

The beginnings of finding purpose

After a while, the question dawned on me, ‘What if my life is like a piece of clay?’ Then, ‘What if the way I approach life is the same way I approach clay, and what if I could make my life into anything I want? What if having fun, being curious and not needing to produce all the time were just as valid in life as producing and achieving? What if I could make anything of my life and it was just down to me and my imagination? What if the things that block me from enjoying pottery and being in my creative flow are also what block me in life?’

I began allowing myself to see new possibilities everywhere. When working as a management consultant, I started to think of seemingly ridiculous solutions to client issues and to play with potential outcomes. Not all of them were voiced, and the ones that were were not taken seriously; however, what I had begun to do was look beyond what everyone else believed and hence saw.

The question of what to do with my life

With the new awareness that I could make anything I wanted of my life came the challenge of knowing exactly what that was. When we take away our need to do what others expect, to achieve, compete and prove our worth, what do we want to be doing? If we believe that we are already worthy and valuable just as we are, right now, then what would we do?

Without knowing what I wanted, I felt like I was standing at the beginning of a journey with hundreds of roads and I had no clue as to which one to take. This was overwhelming.

Learning to love the not knowing

A large part of my life has been concerned with wanting to know what my purpose is: I believed that I was not OK as I was, and that if I didn’t know what the purpose of my life was and I had no direction to go in, then I was worthless. As crafting and meditation revealed these previously unconscious beliefs, I also noticed that if I focused on myself where I was in that moment, then I did not know because I wasn’t ready to know. It was only when I realized that I was OK regardless of whether I knew or not that answers began to arise.

I began to realize that all I needed to do was to be me. The clues to who I was became clearer. Everything I did out of sheer curiosity and joy, out of a deep yearning, was telling me who I was. I am the lover of colour, of travelling to new lands and embracing new cultures. I am the spiritual enquirer, fascinated by our connection to all that is. I am the dancer, the deep thinker, the mother, the lover. I am connected to the earth, solid, and grounded. I am a joyful maker of beautiful things. I hold safe spaces for people to be real. And this is what I needed to nourish in myself to not only create a life that is joyful, but also one that is full of purpose.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

Fast forward to now…aged 49. I finally left dipping in and out of work as a management consultant 7 years ago. Since then I have made and sold jewellery, become a published author of two books (of which the above is an extract from), taught Mindfulness, trained in breathwork, trauma release and art therapy and now run programs for others who are trying to find their place and purpose in life. I still love travelling (my second book is all about this) and am continuously learning and following my curiosity and passion.

To find out more about what I do please visit my website and feel free to get in touch.

www.sarahsamuel.co.uk