What Ignited My Purpose & Can Set Yours On Fire Too!

posted on : March 14, 2024

I didn’t take pictures once we officially entered the Bombay slum. I was too focused on trying to step one foot in front of the other to keep moving forward.

I volunteered in the favelas of Salvador, Brazil, after college, where inhabitants had built “homes” on stilts in the water.

I visited the tiny rural village of Talanga, Honduras, where my brother volunteered for a year. It had only dirt roads and zero hotels or restaurants that would show up on Trip Advisor.

I used to pick my nine-year-old Dominican mentee up each month from a tiny apartment on the bustling, littered streets of Washington Heights, New York City. Her mother was incarcerated for selling drugs and her father was not in the picture.

I traveled through five of Vietnam’s war-wrecked cities with my husband on our honeymoon, and have visited many parts of Mexico, Europe, and Central America.

Never ever had I witnessed the amount of poverty and pollution that I saw in that slum in Mumbai, India in 2017. My heart was broken open.

The city where I live has perfectly manicured medians… The Arabian Sea’s wave crests were brown with garbage, rather than white with salt. I had so much… many in India had so little.

This is not to say that our way of living in the West is right. Or that any of the people I met on my travels feel less joy than we Americans with all our stuff do.

The point I’m trying to make is it took this stark difference between a Mumbai slum and my life to realize that I have been given a lot in this lifetime. How dare I not use my unique gifts to make this world a better place?

On the flight home from Mumbai, I purchased the URL joydiscovered.com and finally started the blog that had been swimming around my mind for years. Not long after, this blog turned into my coaching business which later turned into a speaking and training business which later launched my now multi-bestselling book, The Balanced Life Blueprint.

We don’t need to travel far from our roots to find our purpose. My purpose had always been there, right inside of me whispering to me all along, but I needed that heart-breaking trip to India to light a fire under my a$$ to finally take action.

Taking action on the blog led me on a breadcrumb trail to where I am today – and that I continue to follow.

What excites you? What whispers do you hear from within? What’s your WHY?

When I ask this question in the leadership workshops I facilitate and we go a few levels deeper to uncover it, most senior leaders express wanting to leave a legacy and make a positive impact on others.

Can you relate? If so, what are you waiting for?

You don’t need to buy the URL today, but I implore you to take one teeny-tiny baby step toward what lights you up, then follow the breadcrumbs.

At a minimum, make a positive impact on the person standing right in front of you right now, even if you aren’t 100% certain what your purpose is.

Your energy will have an exponential effect on your team, your family, and our community.