Badassery Magazine Issue 11 April 2017 | Page 48

I Was Accidentally Ignoring My Life’s Purpose by Leanne Chesser I was known as the person who got HUGE amounts of shit done. And I was planner girl - - cra- zy-organized, nerdy about office supplies, and efficient with my time. Someone once described me by holding her index finger in the air and drawing circles around and around, starting big and getting smaller and smaller as she worked toward the center. Then she pointed her finger forcefully into the center and said, “That!” She explained it by saying that I take tons of information, sort it out, and get to the main point of it all. She was right. I loved that stuff. I was passionate about organi- zation, productivity and time management. So when it came to choosing the right business for me, I focused on this passion (and these skills). How could I go wrong? I was doing what I “should” do, right? 47 Build a business based on a topic you’re passionate about that solves a problem for people. Teach and share about that pas- sion. Grow an audience who wants to hear about that topic. Make a difference in their lives. This gives you purpose. Sound familiar? Lots of other women entrepre- neurs struggled with getting stuff done. They were overwhelmed and needed help with organization, time management, focus, and productivity. Everywhere I turned, they were asking me how I got so much done and how they could too. So I had some success . . . out- wardly. Inwardly? There was something missing. I wasn’t living my purpose. I wasn’t expressing my purpose through my business. That sense of purpose I felt, or was supposed to feel, at helping wom- en solve a problem I was passion- ate about? Felt empty. Because it was a sense of purpose. It wasn’t my purpose purpose (yes, purpose purpose is actually the term). I knew that my deeper purpose, or life purpose, was to help women know who they are, to know their worth, to know their purpose. And to express that. I even tried to fit that into what I was doing with time management (because, it turns out, overwhelm and lack of productivity can be connected to not knowing your purpose and to the fear of not being good enough). But I felt like something was missing. Like something else was calling to me (and sometimes screaming, but I wasn’t listening).