What are You Made for?

All of us live with rules. Many of the rules are given to us by parents or by the communities where we live. Many of the rules are not examined until we are provoked by life events – a birth, an illness, a death, a marriage or a divorce, a hiring or as firing..

As my clients examine the rules they live by, I encourage them to answer a simple question: ‘What am I made for?’

Those of us who have dogs—or simply observe dogs —know that some dogs just love to dig. Those are the terriers. And there are other dogs that like to run almost at the speed of light. And there are dogs who love to retrieve. And so it goes on and on. Dogs seem to know what they’re made for.

So that’s really a good question: “What am I made for?” The challenge is to live into that answer day by day, year by year, decade by decade. As we do so, our answers will change and so will we. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” I agree with Rilke and encourage my clients to wrestle with their questions. In the course of our work, my clients learn what they are made for.