“I was hungry and it was your world”: How Shame About Your Ambitions Can Keep You From Finding Your Life Purpose

“And when we meet again

And introduced as friends

Please don’t let on that you knew me when

I was hungry and it was your world.” Bob Dylan, “Just Like A Woman”

In this verse from “Just Like A Woman”, Bob Dylan  describes a situation most of us have experienced at some time in our lives. We feel an intense desire for someone, wear our hearts on our sleeves and then feel humiliated when we’re rejected. Though Dylan describes this situation with particular eloquence, the world of popular music is filled with songs that express all the variations on the feelings of humiliation we can feel when we put ourselves out there in personal relationships only to be ignored or actively rejected.

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“One Step Up and Two Steps Back”: Obstacles to Finding Your Life Purpose

“Somewhere along the line I slipped off track/One step up and two steps back.”  Bruce Springsteen, “One Step Up”

In my previous blog posts, I’ve talked about how you can know if you’re on the right track to finding your life path. I’ve talked about the importance of doing what matters to you and not just what you’re good at. And I’ve talked about how you can know that something really matters to you.

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It Ain’t No Sin To Be Glad You’re Alive: How To Find Happiness In Your Life Purpose

“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive”.  (Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands”)

“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive” is one of my favorite lines from any song I know. I often quote it to people I see in my psychotherapy practice because it so accurately captures their struggle to find happiness and their life purpose.

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No Direction Home: How Do I Find My Purpose In Life?

In my post , “Don’t Write A Resume”, I talked about the five ways you can know that you’re doing something that matters to you. Those five ways are:

1) You’re willing to put in a lot more work than is actually required;

2) You’re willing to give up other things that are important to you—time with my friends, going out, free time—in order to do what matters to you;

3) You’re motivated primarily by internal satisfactions , not external ones;

4)   You’re willing to take risks;

5) You choose to do something that you would  not choose to do in another context .

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Crossroads: A Self Esteem Test

“Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down/ And they all led me straight back home to you.” Gram Parsons, Return of the Grievous Angel

No matter how many roads you’ve gone down in search of your life path, I believe you can find the one that’s right for you. But, when you’re feeling stuck, it can be very hard to have the faith that any of the roads you’ve taken is ever going to lead anywhere.

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Lost Highway Blues Rules Of The Road: BE A MISFIT (NOT A FAILURE)

I experienced writer’s block for the first time when I finished graduate school and started teaching at Indiana University. When I got to Indiana, I was expected to revise my dissertation for publication. After a year and a half of work, I had revised less than half of it. By the middle of my second year at IU, my senior colleagues were expressing concern that I was falling so far behind schedule that my chances of being recommended for tenure were in jeopardy. I began to feel like a failure.

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Lost Highway Blues Rules of the Road: DON’T WRITE A RESUME

In my first blog post, I talked about how I don’t like to write and how I discovered this when I took a creative writing class my freshman year in college. As is usually the case, the story is actually a little bit more complicated.

I very much enjoyed writing some of my college papers. In my junior year, for example, I took a class on the psychology of the unconscious. I didn’t particularly like the class but I loved writing the final paper. I was interested in how contemporary psychological theories understood an old religious question: Do we come to feel good about ourselves by doing good works or do we need more direct ways of transforming painful feelings like guilt and shame?

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Lost Highway Blues Rules of the Road: DON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT

For me, the most daunting challenge of starting a website was facing up to the fact that I’d have to write on a regular basis. I don’t like to write. I consider not having to write one of the perks of my work as a therapist.

I struggled for months over how to communicate regularly to my subscribers. I thought about a podcast. I thought about using other people’s articles. Neither of those alternatives felt right.

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