What I was seeing was the retarding effect of inner forces that existed solely to keep my clients stuck in a certain role in their family or a certain self-image in their own minds. Growth itself did not have to be so slow or hard. In fact, I often marveled at how quickly and totally clients could bloom with psychological health on a good day, making it seem that they had suddenly gotten it all together. And so they had. Their growth was real. However, on other days, because of these invisible negative forces, these bodyguards of the status quo, my clients often gave up the ground they had gained and the struggle started all over again.
As time went on I also became aware of the depth of my clients’ fears about growth, how frightened they were at times about getting in touch with their true selves. It was as though a vast space of complicated loyalties and terrors opened up before my eyes, and I saw like never before what these people were really up against. It was then I realized that there was a need for a special approach to living one’s life effectively without being sabotaged by past demons. An approach designed to deal not only with the hurts from the past, but also to address people’s profound anxieties about how their growth might affect their loved ones.
Around the time of this realization, I woke up from a sound sleep one night with the words “Who You Were Meant To Be” in the forefront of my mind. Immediately I knew that this was what my clients were really trying to figure out when they came to me for help. They suffered because they were sick of living an un fulfilling life, but had no idea how to live any differently. Not knowing who they were meant to be, they had no way of knowing what would make them truly happy.
Later that spring I started a Growth Group, subtitled “Who You Were Meant To Be.” Some of the most earnest people I have ever met came to that group, and continued to come over the next two years. My clients and the group members had one thing in common: they realized that they did not know what to do with their lives, but were terribly ready to find out.
Through a new understanding of their fears and family loyalties, my clients and group members began to recover their lost motivation. They began to express renewed creativity and an itch for accomplishment, as though some intrinsic energy had been released. However, this was often a challenging period in their lives, as these courageous people see-sawed between their new selves and their old self-doubts. Surprising ups and downs frequendy followed in their lives, and often my role was simply to educate them about the growth process, and to reassure them that they were on the right track. As my clients calmed down and grew steadily more sure of their new way of being in the world, the rest of their lives fell into place too, obedient now to a soul that knew where it was going.
Like the people I have helped in the past, this book is for people who want to discover their true purpose in life but have had trouble figuring it out, or who feel intimidated and overwhelmed when they get close to taking steps toward changing their lives, leading to feelings of disappointment or hopelessness. What you are about to read in this book honors the bravery that goes into real growth. It explains why so many people have had to unhitch from their dreams and from whom they were meant to be.
The approach I take gently and methodically takes apart the reasons why so many of us do not end up doing what brings us energy and joy. It will help you understand your conflicts, and feel compassion for what you have been struggling with all these years. You will see how your finest qualities of empathy, love, loyalty, and conscience have been turned against your best interests in favor of other people. The ideas in this book have worked for my clients, and they will work for you.
The first half of the book deals with why you have not been able to follow the dream of who you were meant to be. Until these psychological forces are uncovered and understood, they tend to keep exerting their influences unseen, remaining all the more powerful for their invisibility. When you read about the forces of family loyalties and the conflicts about becoming your own person, you will begin to understand why it has seemed so hard to get what you really want, and how you can stop standing in your own way.
The second half of the book provides you with a roadmap for how to go about answering the question of who you were meant to be, and thereby recover your life’s true purpose. It describes the process of growth and reassures you through the inevitable rough spots. It shows you how growth and success really occur, information that was not given to many of us when we were growing up. In far too many families, children are instead taught how to continue being their parents’ children, which is no preparation at all for a fulfilling adult life.
That is what this book is for: preparation for your new life. It will help you move aside the tangled debris of old loyalties and mistaken self-identities in order to find the part of you that is still green and growing. Because the process of becoming our true selves has a universal pattern, the steps toward growth can be clearly defined and predicted. I will help you recognize these steps for what they are. You will relax instantly from self-criticism and guilty fears when you understand the hidden agenda behind these awful feelings. I will help you gain compassion for yourself and your family, and when necessary I will encourage you to draw your line in the sand. When you need to escape or go backwards, we can deal with that too, because it is often hard. I promise you that you will not be left feeling that I don’t understand, or that no one knows how hard it is. Having practiced psychotherapy for over twenty years, I have a good idea what kind of work it takes.
No one on this earth is a 100 percent success story. It is easy to bring yourself down by holding unrealistic expectations about your ability to sustain feelings of success. Discouragement happens to everyone, but you may become unnecessarily demoralized by it if you do not realize it is a natural part of the growth process. That is the purpose of this book, not only to help you find or recover your life’s purpose, but to give you confidence for dealing with the dragons you may encounter along the way.
My belief is that we gain our strength and joy from the success moments in our lives, not whether or not our lives are turning out to be overall “success stories.” Just because we slip backwards at times does not mean we are not making progress. Often it actually means just the opposite. For most people who are trying to grow and do things differently, these disruptions of progress are the norm. As we will see later in the book, we are usually tempted to give up right at the moment of greatest potential change. That is because imminent change stirs up the frantic urge to return to some kind of familiar stability, something we know about—even when it is frustration or unhappiness!
If you are a serious self-builder you will find answers here. While there is an important place for self-help books that stress positive thinking and behavioral solutions, this book goes a little deeper. Relax and let us be honest together about the things that hold you back. When you want to move forward, read on. Use this book for inspiration and practical suggestions. When you feel discouraged and have been knocked back, go right to the chapters that catch your eye. You will know which ones to read.
There is no need to read the book in order. The chapters stand on their own. If you find yourself resisting some of the suggestions and ideas in the second half of the book, go back and check out the earlier chapters. The book is planned to deal with resistance first, then growth. Just as in a therapy session, we might have to explore what is holding you back before you can move forward.
In the pages to follow, you will be reading the stories of real people who have been actively engaged in discovering who they were meant to be. While I have changed all identifying data in order to preserve confidentiality, the underlying process and pattern of growth is faithfully reported. This invariable pattern of growth holds across many different stories, because it is an ancient human struggle, a challenge faced by all people who have ever outgrown their families and tribes and felt compelled