I was the youngest person seated at the table for a 7 p.m. meet up at a cafe.
Altogether, we were an odd group. There was Alex from IT, Christoph the entrepreneur, Fernando who works with nonprofits and Julie Chan, the host of the meeting and founder of Being My Purpose (www.beingmypurpose.com), an enterprise dedicated to helping people find their purpose.
The event, titled “Explore Your Purpose,” had somehow brought us all together on a random Tuesday night. Chan kicked off the discussion with an interesting statement.
“The last thing I thought I’d be is a psychic,” she said. “I had a rational mind, a rational trajectory.”
It sounded familiar to me, being rational. It’s what my mom, out of good intention, begged me to be when I told her I didn’t want to go to pharmacy school.
Chan, like many confused college freshmen, felt the same pressures growing up. She consequently decided to work in the field of urban development after graduating with a BA from Yale University and a Masters from MIT.
This eventually led to a busy career. She worked across multiple sectors and became involved in several industries, from biotech to education, in order to help improve the lives of people.
Although, the work was largely impactful, Chan still felt like something was missing. While she was helping kids at low-income schools, she began to realize how much economic development was founded on numbers. What it didn’t consider was everyone’s individual passions, ambitions or purposes.
Around this time, and in the midst of mounting work pressure, an odd spiritual experience caused her to rethink her life trajectory. She began consuming books on spirituality and learned how to consciously tap into her intuition.
“I’m blessed to have strong intuitive abilities and all of you do to some extent — think of the last time you had a "gut feeling" or followed your "intuition," she writes on her website.
“I like to say it's like a muscle. The more you exercise it and intentionally strengthen it, the easier it becomes.”
The turning point in her career came when she actually began tuning into what her heart desired like an antenna tuning into invisible radio waves. She wanted to sing so she started to volunteer at hospitals, singing from bedside to bedside. She also became involved in singing meditation.
Chan then decided she wanted to help others find their purpose through her newfound intuitive (psychic) guidance, purpose coaching and inner empowerment education.
She began officially pursing this six months ago. In that time, she has helped creative professionals, senior corporate execs and retirees define their goals and express their purpose everyday with “confidence, creativity and courage.”
The meet up I attended was specifically designed to help participants engage in individual reflection and group discussion. Chan holds similar events once a month, with each focused around a theme.
May's theme was “Manifesting the Life You Want.”
Chan handed each of us a short worksheet filled with open-ended questions. This exercise was particularly interesting for me because I had never taken the time to sit down and actively outline what I wanted from my life. Most of the time, my head is so convoluted with obscure ideas that it’s hard for me to stay focused on one thing. I tend to lose thoughts like I lose change.
----------------- A mini intuitive reading given to me by Julie during the meeting. ------------------
With practice, Chan has learned how to tame her own mind chatter. She now uses her commuting time to mentally envision her goals.
“The more time you spend finding your purpose, the more opportunities will begin to flow,” she stated.
She couldn’t be more right, too. Writing my life purpose down on paper made everything seem more tangible. One question even told us to draw out what our dreams would look like with exacting detail. Naturally, I found myself wanting to invest in a vision board.
It was also refreshing to be surrounded by a seemingly random collective of people. Superficially, we could not be more different, yet we were all gathered for the same purpose. How often do you get to witness people chasing their dreams despite their age or background?
That day I learned that have I a lot more in common with a middle-aged man in IT than I would ever think.
