In case you missed it, I highly recommend that you go and read the first part of this post here before you read this one.
We laid some important foundations for what we are going to cover today, so please do read that one first!
Now we are going to dive into a little road-map you can use to help you determine exactly HOW you are going to go out into the world and help.
I’m going to help you reduce down exactly what your skills are, where you are most going to be helpful and most importantly, how to set up a lifestyle that will support you in the LONG TERM when you are wanting to be a help or support in this world so you don’t miss the forest for the trees and so you don’t end up burning yourself out before you reach your potential for help.
Let’s dive in!
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Setting Up YOUR Day
Once you’ve established a foundational mindset about what a reasonable path of helping looks like, you can start to do the work of figuring out where YOU fit in the grand scheme of things when it comes to offering something of benefit to this world.
Knowing that it’s not all up to you, knowing you can’t heal/fix anyone but rather can simply offer tools, knowing that burning yourself out isn’t the goal and knowing that figuring out how you can sustainably serve is the way to go - you might be thinking ‘ok! What do I DO now?’
And my answer for you may be a little different than what you’re expecting.
From this place of grounded awareness, the very first step I encourage you to take in terms of finding your path of service is to focus on your day to day life.
The reason for this is simple:
Your GREATEST impact is the impact you are making with your simple, every day choices.
Because you are going to spend the MAJORITY of your time in this life just living out your day.
The time you spend in sessions, writing a book, speaking, volunteering, working or doing whatever it is you do ‘out there’ that is supportive of others is going to pale in comparison to the time you are spending feeding yourself, clothing yourself, interacting with your loved ones, engaging in leisure activities and self care, transporting yourself and so on.
The time you spend living out your life NOT in service to others in some obvious way, is actually your BIGGEST contribution to the world around you.
Many, many people have worked themselves into a place where they are GREAT at offering advice, great at doing their jobs, great at writing those books and delivering that key-note - but when you peek into their personal lives, we see that there is actually a big mess.
We see a general lack of awareness around how their actions on a daily basis are impacting people and the world at large. We see a general lack of awareness around how they are participating in systems of oppression, exploitation and harm without even being aware that they’re doing so. We see a general lack of awareness around their own conditioning and how this is coloring the way they buy, sell, speak and live.
We have all heard stories about great gurus and teachers who share deeply profound wisdom, and then in their personal lives are abusing others, are perpetuating harmful relationship patterns, are deeply depressed or otherwise mentally and physically unwell - and THIS my friends, is exactly what we want to avoid becoming and doing.
We don’t want to be the kind of people who are really good at talking the talk, but who don’t actually walk the walk in our own lives - because at the end of the day, again, the walk that we walk in our daily life IS our biggest contribution to the world. It’s what we offer the most. It’s the thing we spend the most time doing.
There is no point in getting yourself to a place of profound teaching if your own life is in shambles.
Now, this isn’t to say that we have to be in a state of transcended perfection before we can be helpful to others. Not at all. ALL of us are going to have our flaws. All of us our blindspots and triggers. All of us are going to be participating in systems of harm no matter how hard we try not to - this is just a reality of life and trying to fully perfect ourselves before we feel ready to serve is of course, not at all the message here.
Rather, we want to make sure that we are creating a solid foundation for ourselves upon which to serve, so that we aren’t running the risk of our ‘stuff’ counteracting what we are trying to accomplish in the world or our stuff taking OVER and bleeding INTO our work as we serve others.
So what does this mean practically?
Generally speaking, this means taking a step back from trying to figure out what we need to do ‘out there’ to make the world a better place, and begin by focusing on what our impact is through our daily choices.
- How do we treat people?
- How do we obtain food and what systems are we participating in in order to feed ourselves?
- How do we clothe ourselves and what industries are benefiting from this?
- How do we think and feel about ourselves? What is our self talk like? What are our belief systems around our worth and value and how are those impacting the way that we move through the world?
- Are we working on ‘our stuff’ in a way that’s sustainable and honest? Or are we using our desire to serve as a distraction from ourselves and our own pain and process?
- Are we mindful of how our actions are contributing to the world we want to see in general?
- Are we allowing ourselves to take time away from the constant need to ‘do and be’ so that we can focus on our humanity?
- Are we creating connections and community, working to combat the hyper-independence that is running our world?
Are we questioning our own conditioning, values and beliefs - making sure that we aren’t living in a state of self rejection or helping from a place of trying to earn our worth and goodness?
- Are we doing things that nourish and nurture us for no other reason than the fact that we enjoy them?
- Are we cultivating a life of peace for ourselves to the best of our ability? Seeing where we have a mess in our own back-yard so that we are able to tend to that before we go around telling others what to be and do?
- And most importantly - are WE taking the time to make sure that WE are practicing what we are preaching to an extent that we have real, long term experience with it? Are we making sure we aren’t simply jumping on a bandwagon of something we ‘think’ should work or ‘hope’ will change things - when really we don’t yet have the requisite experience to KNOW for sure?
- Are we receiving adequate training in the areas we want to serve in - either in some sort of formal setting or through the school of life and experience?
- Are we able to separate our own experience from the experience of those we are looking to work with so that we aren’t projecting ourselves onto them?
Are we secure in ourselves enough that we can give others space to have THEIR experience and to go on THEIR journey without projecting expectations on them, or feeling like they need to make some sort of ‘progress’ otherwise WE get triggered?
- Are we looking to our path of service to fulfill us instead of looking to be fulfilled and THEN working our path for service from THAT place?
These are all questions we want to be asking ourselves.
These are all things we want to be working on, continually, as we go out into the world and look to support and serve others.
Because if we are drowning, eventually this is going to leak into what we offer and in that situation, no one wins.
If we aren’t doing our work first, if we aren’t taking care of our day first, if we aren’t making sure that the way we live is sustainable and if we aren’t working to make sure that we aren’t projecting ourselves onto others as much as we can - then the likelihood that our help is going to become harm is going to be much higher than we want it to be.
So focus on your day. Get yourself into a routine that works for you to the best of your ability. Be mindful of your day to day actions and the impact they are having on the world around you.
Many, many people choose NOT to start here - they find something that seems to work for them, and they are off to the races. Or they feel a deep sense of pressure to need to be fixing the world and in this they then neglect to look at their own. This almost always leads to problems and more chaos.
Again, this isn’t about perfecting yourself before you can serve - it’s about realizing that your biggest impact is how you live.
The Money Problem
Lastly, when it comes to financial stability and service - this is a big thing that can often get tangled and messy.
Many of us want to turn our service into a career on some level - and again there is NOTHING at all wrong with this. But we have to realize that in doing so, there are going to be many more complicating factors than if we are working from a place of service for the sake of service.
When we want to make our service our job, we first have to recognize that MANY of the places where there is TRUE need on our planet are NOT glamorous jobs that are going to give us big paychecks. This is a shitty reality around what we tend to value as a society - but it is a reality nonetheless.
Nurses, teachers, councilors, non-profit employees, clean-up crews, people who work to protect the environment - all of these roles are incredibly important and impactful - and often don’t pay very much. Which means learning how to care for yourself while doing these jobs is going to be a BIG part of your task. Giving in these sectors of society is a massive, massive benefit to society - much more than a lot of our so called self help gurus and famous spirituality teachers - and sometimes this means accepting that we are going to be doing something that doesn’t give us the big payout, but that DOES actually serve humanity.
We have to realize and recognize that again, our culture prioritizes wealth, luxury and glamor above actual wellness and health. We have a totally backwards value system and this means many of the MOST important people on our planet aren’t getting recognition for the work that they do and many of those who are doing things we really COULD easily live without are raking in millions. This is sad and unfair and also true.
We also have to realize that if we are going to be a practitioner of some sort in really ANY field of service or help, if we want to earn a sustainable income this is going to mean working with a WIDE net of people - not just the niche clients who really ‘get it’ and want to do deep work. This is going to mean spending time feeling like we aren’t really ‘doing anything’ because the people we are serving aren’t at a place where they can actually take in and absorb the depths of what we’re teaching.
We have to realize and recognize where there may be a desire in us to ‘raise our prices’ to a place where only those who are already in a place of privilege and access can afford our services - leaving those who are most in need out of the picture - and we have to balance that with what it is we need in order to be well cared for and supported in our own lives.
It’s a lot to consider. Because our systems aren’t set up to support people who are offering true support and our systems are set up in a way where those who need the most support often have the least access because of how our financial systems work.
So mixing our service with our current culture of capitalism is a doozie - and I want to encourage you to really take your time figuring out the balance that works for you.
This may mean having a job and doing your service on the side so you can be super selective with who you work with/don’t feel like you need to charge unaffordable rates so that only those who don’t really NEED the service and afford it.
It may mean advocating for better working conditions, wages and other support while you do your service based job.
It may mean going to school and getting training before you dive into teaching.
It may mean having to unpack your own ‘money stuff’ so you can figure out what is truly enough for you - outside of our system that tells us that luxury and wealth are what it means to be successful and good.
It may mean taking a step back from service so that you can get yourself to a place of stability first.
We must be mindful of this and if we aren’t we are likely going to end up in a precarious situation. Our systems aren’t service based - and that is a reality we have to work with.
Start from that foundation and work your way forward.
What Do YOU Care About? Let Go Of The Rest
Finally, we are at the point of looking for the actual ‘thing’ you are going to do ‘out there’ to make an impact.
Hopefully now that you have read the first post and are allowing yourself to let go of any ideas of perfect service or saving and fixing everyone, now that you are settling into focusing on your day and your practices so that you know you are working from a firm foundation and now that you are aware that you don’t want to jump straight into teaching/serving without having some sort of training or long-term experience - you’re seeing the pressure to GO OUT THERE AND DO IT relax and release a little.
Hopefully you are now able to be more centered on the reality that it’s what you do LONG TERM that matters, and that it’s not about trying to make the BIGGEST IMPACT in the shortest time frame possible.
You don’t have to become famous, you don’t have to write a best-seller, you don’t have to be recognized by the world - and in fact, if we are doing our service from a place of wanting that, again we may want to take a step back and really re-evaluate WHY we are doing what we are and if we are looking to build our own self esteem through our work or if we are genuinely wanting to help.
From here, we can start to ask ourselves:
- What drives me to want to help others?
- What was it about my life and lived experience that prompted me to want to support others in some way?
- Where do I have an interest to LEARN about people, systems, what is truly impacting people and where small changes can be made so that more people are accessing practical support?
- Where do I have experience that I can take and share with others?
- What could I spend all day learning about and never get bored?
- Where is there a NEED in my community? What patterns of pain am I seeing over and over again that I can start to study and get a better understanding of?
- Where do you feel passion to support others?
- Where can you engage with those who are struggling under our systems, and offer them support in a sustainable way?
- What do you need to feel supported and how can you work your service into that?
- Do you need to be doing anything in terms of a ‘job’, or can your service be based in how you LIVE?
- If it’s not about becoming ‘great’ or ‘saving the world’ what do you feel called to?
- Can you allow what you have to offer to be ENOUGH?
These are some questions to arrange your service around.
Know that you don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to help everyone. You don’t have to do anything perfectly.
What you are passionate about, where you have interest and a heart, where you can sustain yourself and offer from that full cup - THAT is where you want to focus.
I hope this series was helpful for you.
I would love to hear what you think about all of this, and if you have any other questions!
<3
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