Pursuing 'soulcraft'

Unpacking your purpose — part 3, "the solution (in practice)"

This is part three of a three-part series. If you’re a new reader or missed the first two parts, here is part one, and here is part two.

Your mind understands that your soul has the answers. You’re eager to find out what they are. But you don’t know how.

Moving from ego- to heart-led living is neither easy nor natural. No one educates you on how to do it. In contrast, society grooms you to cultivate intellect and pursue paths that strengthen your egoic structure.

The task becomes not to dismantle it but to convince your ego to surrender to the heart. This transition requires patience and practice, but over time, it will give rise to the force within you that will guide you to purpose.

In this final chapter, we’ll talk about managing the tension between the ego and the heart and how you can move from contemplation to action.

Your heart is your compass (and your ego your frenemy)

Discomfort arises in the liminal space between identities. You’re no longer who you once were but are still in the process of becoming. This period can be isolating and enduring. Soul discovery is a slow path for which no map exists.

Your ego will rebel. It will grasp for control, certainty, and safety. Your task for these times of transition is to learn to move at the speed of trust. The heart’s pace will not suffice for the ego. Your work lies in navigating the dance between the two.

The ego will seek safety in black-and-white thinking. It will trap you in the delusion that there’s one big thing to uncover — once you’ve found it, you’ll have clarity. It may be one big thing, but it’s more likely to be a mosaic of multitudes.

Your ego will judge, compare, and grow impatient. Don’t try to argue with it. It doesn’t work. The ego always wins in battles of reason. Soulcraft is not about doing what makes sense, it’s about doing what we must. What the mind deems unrealistic has simply not been made real yet. Soulcraft creates new realities.

Learn to spot when your ego flares up. Become a compassionate witness. Remind yourself that you’re walking the path of the heart. Your senses and intuition will always guide you to the next step. But it will only ever be the next step.

The heart doesn’t make five-year plans because it couldn’t possibly know what it wants five years from now. You can fabricate the future in your mind, but you can’t fabricate future feelings. Feelings only ever occur in the present moment. The plan is no plan. Your heart will tell you moment-to-moment whether you’re on track. If you only ever choose what feels aligned at the moment, you’ll always be in alignment.

You will rely on your mind to make sense of your heart’s desires and to figure out how to execute them. Two emotions in particular are a guiding force: envy and fear.

Envy shows you what you want

Envy is often tainted by your ego — you envy your neighbor’s fancy car, your friend’s cushy bank account, or your trainer’s toned body. All emotions communicate the needs of the heart. Envy about material possessions communicates not the heart’s need for that possession, but its need for what the ego believes possession will result in (in this example, validation and acceptance).

The best way to work with envy is to note where it’s showing up and initiate a compassionate inquiry. Rather than letting your ego swing into self-pity (“I will never have what they have”), let envy inspire you. You’ll find some prompts below.

Fear shows you care

We’re not talking about the primal survival fear that prevents you from jumping out of a flying plane but fear that’s unique to you. Fear that originates from your ego.

The ego is a trickster. It will sabotage your heart’s desires by overlaying fear so strong it paralyzes you. Your heart always trusts but your ego will try to control, over and over again, in an attempt to manage its fears.

The places that feel most terrifying are the places that will unearth your gifts. When I quit my corporate job I had an inkling to work with people. I began coaching and holding space in ceremonies. When I got a job offer to apply my corporate skills to the psychedelics space, I took it eagerly, excited to expand my impact. And, I was relieved. It was a neat way out. I wouldn’t have to confront my fears about working with people and forging an unconventional path. Two years in, the whispers of my soul haven’t disappeared (“this isn’t all, there’s more for you”).

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell

6 steps to guide you into soulcraft

It’s time to get concrete. Let’s dive into how you can move from contemplation to action and make soulcraft not merely a concept but your lived reality.

Here are five steps to guide the process.

1. Inner work

At the risk of turning into a broken record, your inner work is the first and foremost effort that will reveal your purpose. It’s the foundation of soulcraft. Individuation will, over time, bring you clarity.

Here are your tools for your work: consciousness-altering journeys (with and without psychedelics), contemplation and reflection, silence, journaling, somatic therapies, parts work, shadow work, any trauma healing modalities. In short, integration.

“The work we do on ourselves is the work we do on the world."— George Leonard

2. Stability

Transition in the eyes of the ego equals chaos and uncertainty. Cultivating stability where you can is critical.

Don’t quit your job before you know what’s next. Only do so if you have enough savings to bridge you at least six months (ideally up to a year). Reduce your hours or switch to freelancing if you can. For now, you’re better off untangling monetary considerations from your endeavors. You’ll want to relieve your soulcraft of the responsibility to sustain you financially. That’s not to say it won’t. It very well may. But you don’t want expectations to constrict you. You want to be open to all possibilities. Don’t let your ego’s nagging doubts kill your dreams before you’ve even tried to materialize them.

Finally, with so much in flux, routines are a much-needed anchor. Commit to consistently doing a handful of things every day or week. Routines ground you and create comfort. Whether you meditate, read, journal, walk, exercise, do yoga, have standing social commitments, or pursue any other hobby — make it regular. A simple morning routine can work magic.

3. Inquiry

You will use your heart as a sensing organ and your mind to make sense of your senses. Here are some questions to guide your inquiry:

• Where and when do you feel most alive? Which activities get you into a flow state? (Review activities both in your current career and in life outside of it. Give yourself time for these observations.)

• What gives you energy and what drains you?

• Who do you envy and what do they have? Why do you want what they have? How do you believe it will make you feel?

• What are you most afraid of doing? What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

4. Consistency

Throughout this process, you’ll have many insights, some of which may feel revelatory in the moment. A few months ago, I had a dream about starting a brand for bougie women’s nightgowns and robes. The whole concept came to me in a flash of insight. It would be called Rever, french for dreaming, and all the branding would revolve around women pursuing their dreams. I thought it was brilliant.

But, I’m not meant to run a sleepwear brand. What you’re looking for is not revelation but rather emotional consistency. What are the inklings that won’t let you go, no matter how hard you try to ignore them? What passes the test of time?

5. Prototyping

You cannot contemplate your way into your purpose because you cannot predict how things will make you feel. It’s easy to romanticize life paths without knowing what the reality of the day-to-day feels like in your body.

You’ll have to try to see how your body and heart react. The best way to do this is through prototyping. In short, you’ll want to sketch out all the different paths you could envision and begin prototyping activities from each. Your heart will let you know what feels aligned. This book goes into this approach in depth with lots of helpful reflections and exercises.

6. Alignment

Once your path begins shaping up, your ego will want to make plans — let it. This is where it excels. You’ll need a plan to make sure you acquire the skills you need, the network, and the resources.

But don’t forget, when you commit to the path of the heart you commit to alignment over convenience. Your only loyalty is to alignment. Through the heart, you align with your soul, and through the soul you align with forces beyond you.

Once you embark on this path, the universe steps into dialogue with you. It will leave you hints and clues and reward you with serendipities. Pay attention and accept invitations as they come. The moment you surrender to the force of creation, you open up the realms of possibility and step into the life that’s been waiting for you.

〰️ Bill Plotkin coined the term soulcraft in this book

〰️ Two Stanford professors apply design thinking to careers in this brilliant guide

〰️ Robert Greene helps you what it takes to achieve Mastery

〰️ A 20-minute podcast on letting the heart lead the ego

〰️ This newsletter on slow living has a wealth of resources on purpose

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Paul Millerd

writes extensively about the intricacies of the “pathless path”

“The courage to ask becomes the willingness to receive.” - Brianna West