Much is talked in personal development circles about, “life purpose” and “abundance”. And yet, in both cases, answers can be given which are so over-simplistic as to be unhelpful. Eg. “Just love yourself ” or ” You are already abundant, but have yet to realise it.” (?!)
The other day though, a thought struck me which links together both, and could simplify matters for anyone currently thinking about life purpose or abundance.

If a certain interest, concern, or way of being is part of our life purpose, we’re likely to do it a lot, and with enthusiasm. And by doing things a great deal, any of us can accumulate expertise and skill in a given area. Yet precisely because we are enthusiastic about it and precisely because we have become skilled enough at it to find it easy, we may not value that skill as highly as others who don’t possess it. Hence, our life purpose naturally yields an abundance of something, but we may need to recognise it for what it is.

Taking examples of this may make the matter more concrete. As a talkative, communicative person, I learnt a long time ago that others sometimes prefer you to keep quiet…and so labelled myself internally as talking to excess. In fact, it’s an excess that can be turned into abundance (eg when the words are used in trainings, to help clients, or to write).

To take another example: my Long Suffering Spouse loves to fix computers (so much so that, on the rare days when he isn’t fixing other peoples’ computers, he wanders round our house looking for devices and problems to fix). People pay him gladly to exercise a skill that he has in abundance.

So, in  a sense, people perhaps haven’t changed that much over the centuries. Just as the miller used to barter an excess of flour for the farmer’s excess of apples, so today, we trade more abstract skills: conversation, fixing, a helping hand, the ability to make things beautiful, and so forth. But with our modern world comes a degree of complication and stress that can make these true skills harder to see in all their glory.

My question to you therefore, is simple:

What do you do, naturally, and in such easy abundance that it creates an excess that others will value?

Therein may lie, not just abundance, but a lot of information about your current life purpose as well.