💚 What You Want to Do is What You’re Meant To Do

👀 So What Do You Mean?

Literally that. The thing you want to do is what you’ve been put on this earth to do. Whatever you daydream about doing, whatever gives you energy and puts you in a flow state. What you would do if money wasn’t an issue and you didn’t care what anyone thought. That. That’s the thing you’re meant to do.

If your reaction to this is “that’s just straight up not possible for me”, consider if that is a limiting belief. (Up until recently, I was right there with you.)

💚 My story

I went into business, and specialized in accounting, because that’s what I thought I needed to do to be valuable in the world. I felt it was a jumping off point to make money to have all the things, and ultimately be happy, safe and accepted in society.

When I was in high school and wondering what to take in university, I figured business made sense because I got good marks in math, English, and accounting classes. I also had parents who were CPAs and entrepreneurs. Growing up I learned that a respectable career kept our family safe and provided a great life including a cottage, travel, and education funds.   

My parents also advised me that a business background would be wise because everyone needs business and accounting skills. If you get training in those areas, then your skills will be needed in whatever area is most interesting to you - sports, fashion, whatever. Which is true. Every company does need business, accounting, and finance skills. 

What I came to realize after finishing my business degree, accounting diploma, CPA designation and three years at a professional accounting firm, was that I didn’t intrinsically enjoy accounting and finance. 

When I made the leap to start building The GIST full-time, I was SO happy. I was fully lit up by being an entrepreneur, getting to focus on innovation and strategy, and bring something new and impactful into the world that solved a problem for people and society.

But as the company grew, so did the responsibility of maintaining the finances and operations of a multi-million dollar, 25+ person organization. As the Head of Finance, Operations & Growth, I felt so weighed down by a part of my role that I never even liked in the first place, but that I’d come to believe was the main way I contributed value.

Ultimately, the fact that a major part of my role became something that wasn’t intrinsically energy giving for me was a not insignificant contributor to my ultimate burnout. 

And that’s why I’ve been determined to figure out what it is I actually DO enjoy over these last several months. 

I have tried to open myself up to the possibility that the things that I want to spend my time on, that I used to think were cringy, or not financially rewarding, ARE the things I’m meant to do. 

And it’s my job to figure out how to do them. Because that’s the way in which I’ll have the most impact on this world.

The same is true for you.

✍️ Explain That

In her eye-opening book The Way of Integrity, Martha Beck talks about integrity as being “one thing, whole and undivided”. She talks about when your heart, mind, body and spirit are in unison, that’s when you experience true integrity. Beck explains that when you’re not in integrity, at best you feel something is off. At worst, your body eventually breaks down.

Beck writes: “When you experience unity of intention, fascination, and purpose, you live like a bloodhound on a scent, joyfully doing what feels truest in each moment. Your daily work, whether it’s writing computer code, gardening, or building houses, is so absorbing that at the end of the day you don’t really want to stop. But when you do, you enjoy hanging out with loved ones so much, and sleep is so delicious you can’t imagine anything sweeter. And when you wake up the next morning, the day ahead seems so enticing you practically bound out of bed”.

When I read that, I had my doubts if the description was even possible for me. But I was willing to listen because I’d just burned out after building my life based on what I thought society wanted of me versus what I genuinely wanted.

I now know this way of being and living kept me from being able to contribute as meaningfully as I’d like to in the world. 

How can you expect to impact the world in a positive way if you’re burned out and don’t have anything to give from? Finding your way to be in integrity is ultimately what gives you the energy to be of service to the world. The thing you most want to do is actually the way that you’re meant to uniquely contribute.

You will never feel 100% right until you do that thing. 

💚 Figuring Out Your Thing

Once I’d realized I wasn’t in integrity with my true self, but that I wanted to be, I was ready to do the work discovering what that thing is.

Here are the three steps I took to start to uncover my ‘things’.

1) Believing that this concept is true in the first place. 

2) Rediscovering what gives you energy.

3) Starting to do the things (and allow yourself to open to the potential of these things growing).

1. Believing

If you’re someone, like me, who didn’t grow up learning this concept, it might be hard to even buy into it in the first place. Here are a few resources you can refer to to dive a little deeper.

• The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck. I read this book towards the beginning of my burnout recovery and it changed everything for me. It helped me understand how I’d gotten to where I had and the changes I’d need to make if I wanted to live a life that was more true to me and more full of joy, love and success. 

• Human Design is an art and science based on the idea that each person on the planet has a unique purpose they came here to do. According to Jenna Zoe: “The most radical thing we can do and the secret to success in every area of our lives is to be exactly who we’re supposed to be.” Jenna Zoe’s Human Design website, Instagram content and interviews (she’s been on a bunch - my fave has been School of Greatness) have some great information on this concept. 

• If you’re not bought in, it might be worth examining what limiting beliefs you’ve developed that might be getting in the way for you. The thing that often holds us back from believing is our acculturation and limiting beliefs. You may have beliefs like “[X activity that brings me energy] is never something I could earn a sustainable income from” or “Hard work in [y job] is the only path to success. I’ve invested all of my time in it so I have to keep going”, or “How could this area of interest I have actually contribute to changing the world?”. These can really hold you back from aligning to your life’s purpose.

2. Rediscovering What You Love

Reflection & Journaling 

I found reflecting and journaling on the following questions were a great place to get started on rediscovering what I actually enjoy:

• What did you love to do when you were younger? Whatever this is doesn’t necessarily mean you’re meant to do this exact literal thing, but it can be a clue about what types of things give you energy and how you want to show up in the world. For instance, I used to love to invent dances and perform them. I don’t think I’m meant to be a dance choreographer now, but this reminds me that I do get so much energy from getting to be creative, expressing myself, and getting to share that with the world (like I’m doing right now!).

• What activities allow you to get lost in a flow state, where you lose track of time? Whether at work, in your spare time, in your relationships, in any area of life. Think of times where you come up from a session of whatever you were doing and are like ‘wow where did the afternoon go?!’. 

• If you could do anything and not have to worry about making money, what would you do? And if you didn’t have to worry about what other people thought? What would you spend your time on?

• Who do you look up to? Or even, who are you envious of? I think a lot of the time, especially as women, we see envy as a negative thing. But envy can be an amazing clue about what we most want for ourselves. Often we’re envious of people that are doing the thing we want to do that we’re not giving ourselves permission to do or don’t feel is possible for ourselves. So try to reframe envy as a clue. Who in your day-to-day life or who you follow on social media has you feeling envious? What do they have or what are they doing that you desire for yourself? 

• What content do you find yourself drawn to on social media? Has your TikTok mysteriously been showing you all of the home cooking content? Or sustainable fashion videos? What clues can you take from what you’re drawn to on social media to learn about your innermost desires and interests? 

Astrology & Human Design 

Astrology, Human Design, Numerology, and any personality tests can help you learn more about yourself.

Here are some of my recommendations if you want to go deeper on any of these:

• Astrology: Chani Nicholas (Instagram, App, podcast) creates incredible astrology content. If you want to go deeper and get a reading of your personal birth chart, I’d recommend Patty Yoon.

• Human Design: Jenna Zoe’s work.

• Numerology: The Teledipity App (I was personally blown away by what I learned about myself after downloading this app.)

Books

• Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck: Guides you to read your internal compass to lead you to your deepest desires. Lots of beautiful frameworks and prompts for reflecting.

• Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans: Uses design thinking to help you create a life that’s meaningful and fulfilling.

From the steps above, here are the three areas I discovered I was lit up by and felt were aligned to my life’s purpose:

• Coaching and personal growth - I’ve always loved deep and meaningful conversations, and was always very drawn to anything personal growth and spirituality-related. Ever since I discovered yoga at 19-years old, I was pulled in and felt like “there’s something here for me”. I enjoyed coaching conversations with employees at work. I always looked up to other coaches and people building personal growth platforms like Liz Tran’s Reset and Catie Fenn. My social feeds are full of therapists, coaches, and authors in the personal growth realm. Plus I’m a Cancer sun and rising, which means I’m naturally one of those people who’s intuitive and emotionally aware.

• Graphic Design - When I thought about what got me lost in a flow state, interestingly one of the activities I felt this way about was anything related to the design and brand identity work we did at The GIST. I LOVED collaborating on those things with our designers and even hopping in Canva and Figma myself to create a mockup or concept. Thinking back to when I was a kid I always really enjoyed art class (but sadly didn’t think I was talented enough to pursue it even as an elective in high school! Sad.).

• Writing - I’ve always been someone who expresses myself through words. I have a lot to say… but have had some blocks around expressing verbally. Writing has always made sense to me as a way of getting my thoughts down and organized. I enjoyed English class as a kid and teen. And I always took pleasure in writing when it came up in my work, even if it was just press releases or investor updates. My friends know me for the long cards I write for them on their special occasions. I’ve felt quite expanded recently by authors like Laura McKowen, Elizabeth Gilbert and Ruby Warrington. And my Human Design primary gift is Gift 56: Sharing Your Take on the Facts of Life. How perfect.

Your turn. What are your things?!

3. Doing The Things

Now that you hopefully have an idea of some of the things that give you the most energy, you can start to actually do them. This doesn’t mean changing everything overnight, but you can take some steps in the right direction.

Here are a few ideas: 

• Take a lesson or course (online or IRL) on your thing. Maybe it’s lessons in photography, digital marketing, DJing, interior design, public speaking, personal finance or coding. There is SO much out there and available for literally any and every interest.

• If you’re a founder, do a time audit to understand how much of your role lights you up versus drains you. My favorite framework for this is called the DRIP matrix from Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time. Talk to your co-founder or team about how you can shift more of your time into energy-giving and high impact work, and hire for, delegate, or minimize energy draining, low impact work.

• If you work at an organization, identify projects or areas of the business that feel really energizing to you and talk to your boss about opportunities in those areas. 

• Read a book or listen to a podcast by someone who expands what you think is possible in your area of interest. Maybe it’s an entrepreneur, a business executive, a producer, a scientist, a spiritual leader or an artist. Just hearing about how they got started and what they’ve been able to do or build can show us that it’s possible for us too. 

• Even better, meet an expander for a virtual or IRL coffee so you can hear first-hand how they got to where they did. 

• Find a community of people (online or in real life) that share your interest or passion. For example, if you’re getting started as an entrepreneur or side hustler, there are communities out there for you. Try Female Founder World for female founders or Amanda Goetz’s Office Hours for solopreneurs and creators.

• If you have kids, engage in play in the area that gives you energy - for example doing arts and crafts with them or taking them to a museum that feeds your interests too.

• If you’re looking to reawaken your creativity, try doing the Artist’s Way. 

You could start by redirecting 15-minutes of your day towards the thing you’re most excited about and even that will start to make a difference. 

It may not seem like enough to make a change but I promise even just bringing awareness to what your thing is and starting to imagine what it could be, is giving instructions to your subconscious to start figuring out how to make it a reality. 

Here’s what this looked like for me:

• Coaching/Personal Growth: After I burned out, I doubled down on my consumption of books, podcasts, and social content in the personal growth realm. I took an online manifestation course called To Be Magnetic. I worked with a coach. After a number of months, I felt quite called to explore what a career in this domain could look like. I actually eventually registered for a coaching certification, which I’m currently taking and absolutely loving.

• Graphic Design: I signed up for a graphic design course offered by ilovecreatives (the agency that created The GIST’s latest brand identity and designs). My first portfolio project is my own wedding’s brand identity and I’ve been having so much fun with it!

• Writing: I started to write everyday — even if it was just self reflection or things that I didn’t know whether I’d publish or not. Eventually I got up the courage to publish my first article on LinkedIn and have been writing and publishing since then. I even started putting it into a newsletter format.

Transparently, these are all things I didn’t think were worthy of being a career when I was younger due to my own limiting beliefs. But now that I'm giving myself permission to simply dedicate time to learning and doing them everyday, I’m starting to have these beautiful visions of how they can all come together (alongside my business/entrepreneurial experience) into my next career. It’s hard to describe how much hope and excitement that brings me. 

I’m not saying that if you start today your dreams will manifest overnight. But you don’t know how allowing yourself to believe your dreams are possible in the first place and taking those small steps will start to add up over time. So why not start?

💚 Takeaways

The thing that you want to do, is what you’re meant to do and will allow you to have the greatest impact on the world.

The three steps to discovering what you’re meant to do are:

1. Believing in this concept in the first place!

2. Rediscovering what gives you energy 

3. Starting to do the things that give you energy 

You don’t need to change everything overnight, but even allowing yourself to discover what you love and want to do and spending 15 minutes on it a day will start the domino effect to move you closer to that desire.

🪞 Self Reflection

If you’re ready to take the next steps to figure out what your thing is, you can start with any of these journal prompts:

• What did you love to do when you were younger? 

• What activities allow you to get lost in a flow state, where you lose track of time? 

• If you could do anything and not have to worry about making money, what would you do? 

• Who do you look up to or are you envious of? What do they have that you desire for yourself?

If you feel brave, reply to this email with your answer to one of the above!

Thank you so much for reading. I’d love to hear your feedback so I can improve and serve you better. Feel free to fill out my anonymous two-minute survey. 

Appreciate you!

With love,

Roslyn 💚