Patrick
Harbula Asks: Are you Living Your Passion?
by
Casandra Spencer
A screenwriter, a carpenter, a minister. A professor, an aspiring
florist, an office manager. Ranging in age from their early
20s to 80s, these people and more form an intimate circle
on a late Saturday morning, drawn together to discuss their
life purpose and careers. An artist runs a bookkeeping service
to pay her rent, but the bookkeeping takes up so much of her
time that she no longer paints. An editor charges his clients
far less than his services are worth. They are frustrated
and looking for answers, answers that they are discovering
in a new, rapidly expanding national movement, Live Your
Passion: Life Purpose in Career, which has brought this
diverse group of people together.
Patrick Harbula, Los Angeles-based author of the acclaimed
book, The Magic of the Soul, life coach for more than 20 years,
and founder of the Living Purpose Institute, created the Live
Your Passion: Life Purpose in Career workshop—and its
ongoing Life Purpose Network support group—to help people
discover ways to manifest their grandest dreams and create
financial success doing what they love to do. In fact, that
is how Harbula defines “purpose”: what we love
to do that creates a better world. The workshop is offered
several times each year.
Even in these times of economic challenges, of war—one
might say especially now—the pursuit of meaningful work
remains high on people’s wish lists. The key, Harbula
stresses, is for each person to define—and refine—his
or her purpose by focusing on the relationship between career
aspirations and service to others. At his all-day workshops
(held once every other month), a participant will move far
beyond talking about her personal dream of being a successful
actor. Through visualization techniques, discussions and written
exercises, she will work to uncover the seed of that desire
by explaining what she wants people to receive from her acting.
That seed—distilled in a small phrase or a word—represents
her purpose, her gift to others.
People
with vastly different careers—or career goals—may
share the same purpose: to create beauty, for instance. To
transform, to educate, to give joy. The life purpose lists
are long—and succinct. Somehow, by the end of the workshops,
each person has cut through the weeds of their career dilemmas
and carved out their word or phrase. Blind spots, emotional
wounds that often trace back to childhood, and blockages,
such as fear, are revealed. “I had been working on discovering
what was blocking me (in my job),” says Ava Coye, who
took the workshop in January 2004. “What I hadn’t
been able to do in several months was done in an instant”
at the workshop.
After taking the Life Purpose in Career workshop, members
become part of the Life Purpose Network, which meets once
a month. Those who are in the program report phenomenal successes—in
their corporate jobs and in their entrepreneurial endeavors.
A woman who had been unemployed for two years and had not
received one phone call on the many resumes she had sent out
got a fantastic job as a medical sales representative within
one week of doing the Life Purpose workshop. Within
six weeks of doing the workshop, a massage therapist’s
number of clients more than tripled.
Harbula
uses the life purpose phrases to show people how they can
begin implementing purpose in their careers and lives right
now. “Most people think, ‘If only I could get
out of this job or if I only had more money, I could do what
I really enjoy,’” Harbula says. “When we
learn to fulfill our purpose on a consistent basis, in the
here and now, in whatever situation we find ourselves, the
path to success in our dream career will become more and more
clear. As we touch people’s lives with our life purpose
in the present, the excitement that results will fuel our
creativity and ultimately our greatest success in whatever
career will be most rewarding.”
Harbula, who leads a plethora of workshops and seminars and
appears regularly on local and national radio and TV, has
fulfilled his life purpose through many careers: as an author,
as former Corporate Director of Sage Publications (a world-renowned
academic publisher), as founding publisher of Meditation
magazine, as a former tennis professional and as host
of the television show, The Next Step.
For more information on the workshops and other activities
of the Living Purpose Institute, interested parties can call
866-204-2261 or visit www.livingpurposeinstitute.com.
Toll
Free 866-204-2261
Living
Purpose Institute
2593
Young Avenue
Thousand
Oaks, CA 91360
patrick@magicofthesoul.com
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