From Wishbone to Backbone: Building a Life of Purpose

Reba McEntire's quotesays, "To succeed in life, you need a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone." He highlights the importance of ambition, resilience, and humor in personal and professional spheres. Fortunately, the three bones are prevalent in my professional and personal life. I have always consciously chosen to work in fields where I loved what I did. In my personal life, raising children, helping them meet their goals and ambitions, having fun with my grandkids, my life with my husband, global tours, and traveling seem much more beautiful.

I draw a parallel to Lucy Kellaway, who, when 57, left her journalism career to become a secondary school teacher. She addressed the teacher shortage in the U.K. and inspired others to do the same. I am no less. I left my Doordarshan job to work as a PRO in an NGO. I met a youngster in the U.S. recently who said that he passed through "entrepreneur infertility." He said it shattered him: "I had to adapt to new things, develop more skills, and take huge risks' and he calls this period a beautiful transformation and could emerge stronger with Perseverance.

Perseverance to me is Victor Frankyl and I read about his experiences in Nazi concentration camps frequently. Frankl said he could choose his attitude and response to the circumstances, beacuse h is inner freedom allowed him to persevere.

Have you realized that we all live in 2 worlds? The first is the physical world, the Absolute Truth, and the 2nd is the "culture scape," which is the Relative Truth. In the latter, the ideas we hold dear to ourselves were drilled into our heads by Society, and we ended up living and chasing a life others told us. I could identify this stronghold in my beliefs and feelings when I started exploring myself. Such patterns can never make us extraordinary.

My friend recently went for a divorce after 25 years. Because the Marriage was not in alignment with what she had expected. She was chasing the dream of a 'happy marriage 'by witnessing what her parents told her and did. But she failed to know she was chasing the dream others had laid out for her in Marriage. She now feels that her life is a vacuum. Because the marriage journey wasn’t “Her Marriage, It was the Marriage." When my friend ridicules me and says he has 40 years of experience in PR, I say, 'I am lucky because I don't stagnate like you.'

Joe Dispenzas's Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself has made me realize and practice that to create new realities, we need to think, feel, and act in new ways, becoming "someone else" in a new state of mind. If we are unhappy with our lives, we can break the parts we don't like and rebuild again. I teach my clients to rewire their brains through meditation and self-reflection and to break free from habitual thinking.

We are not stuck being who we are. A better version of us is available, provided we are willing to open our minds to possibilities.