purpose Archives - Everyday Integrity

October 12, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 10.12.20 | Owning What You Want: Part 2

The next turning point came in late August, right before my birthday, when I spent a sunny day on the porch and finished getting out of my own way.

It was the first time I had the house to myself and was actually in Portland all summer. My headspace was as clear as the cloudless blue sky. As I savored my bright yellow over-easy eggs and lemon water, I started to feel the curiosity brewing. I had submitted another job application the day before and the headhunter was quite optimistic. I wasn’t sure yet if it was right for me, but I was intrigued.

I knew I wanted to level up, to reach more of my potential. I knew what called to me and what was achievable right now. Even though I couldn’t perfectly imagine my next job, my home, my partner, my kids etc. it didn’t matter. In fact those expectations narrowed the vision instead of staying open-minded.

I started to wonder how it could all work. “Hmmm, if I make this much income from that full-time job, then what kind of housing can I afford?”

The more questions I asked, the more answers I found, the more notes I took, the more clarity I gained.

How come? Reality is reassuring, even when it’s hard. That’s because it’s real. I wasn’t problem solving, I was solution finding. I was in the zone.

The wants started pouring out. I sat on that hard plastic chair in the sun for hours.

I wanted:

work/life balance,
to work remotely,
to earn my market potential,
to live alone,
to be in a more diverse neighborhood,
a light-filled space,
to have access to the outdoors.

The checklist went on and on. It wasn’t a recipe, simply ingredients. I didn’t care what it made, so long as it tasted delicious.

Immediately, I got clearer on what is a yes and what is a no, what is a dealbreaker or dealmaker, what is a “must have” versus “nice to have,” what is realistic and what is a stretch.

It wasn’t greedy. It wasn’t selfish. That’s because the wants came from a place of need. From knowing myself and how I thrive. How I can best offer what the world needs most from me. And be open to receive the opportunities presented.

The momentum was building even though I felt stuck.

Over the last several weeks, I kept saying yes to anything that was a step in this direction, whether or not it “looked” like what I was expecting, until I said “heck yes!” to a job and a new home that matched almost everything I wanted (and a bit more!). It all came together just like that in a 24-hour period about a week ago. That is, after a summer-long journey of finding my way and finally owning my wants.

Life is leveling up, indeed:

Today, I moved into a new studio with a cute little built-in writing desk at the Arlo Apartments off Interstate Ave. in North Portland,
This week, I start a new job working remotely as the Learning & Development Manager for LegitScript, a growing software as a service startup in the Pearl district.

Keeping this newsletter going while working full-time and continuing to train for summiting Mt. Hood next year as well as finding my partner-in-crime will provide plenty of inspiration for sharing my learnings about balance and maintaining integrity—a state of wholeness—everyday.

So don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere! In fact, I could use your help*.

May getting grounded in reality actually give you wings this week.

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights!

September 29, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 09.28.20 | You Keep Going

Teachers come into our lives in all forms. Sometimes they guide us through a series of insights, sometimes it’s a just-in-time encounter. That right person at that right time for that lesson. If we’re paying attention, we’ll always find the guidance we need.

Over 15 years of practice and too many moves, I’ve collected favorite yoga teachers all over Portland. I stay in touch with many of them on Instagram — liking, tagging, sharing inspiration. I recently sent an article about how Fall is So Yin: Embracing Autumn Energy to one of my favorite yin yoga teachers in a direct message. Inspired, we set the intention to actually meet up in person around the Fall Equinox and learn what the harvest might have in store.

If the rains came, if the smoke cleared, if the fates aligned.

Apparently the fates were very aligned.

When we met up at the beach in Hood River, we were excited to be outside and together. Chatting about our week so far, we realized that the day before (on the actual Equinox) we both did the very same hike — within 30 minutes of each other!

Clearly we were meant to be in the same place at the same time.

Giggling about the synchronicity and the muck between our toes, we launched the rental Stand-Up Paddleboards into the murky waters of the Columbia River, then both awkwardly stood up and started to paddle. This was her second time, my sixth.

Having paddled on the Columbia before, I felt confident and quickly sliced the oar through the still water. I chatted for several minutes uninterrupted. No response. Odd.

I looked back and saw her way behind, swerving from side to side. I stopped to wait. Finally she caught up. I wondered out loud, “Which end of your board is in the front?”

“I don’t know,” she replied with a laugh.

Sure enough, we realized that the fin (the rudder) was in front. She was essentially going in circles. No wonder it was so hard and she wasn’t getting very far!!

I learned this was the way life had felt all year for her (and certainly so many others). A storyline I knew well, most recently from 2018, with many lessons learned about making one’s way through really tough questions:

If you’re following the calling, why don’t things work out?

How do you feed your body and feed your soul?

When do you give up?

You don’t give up. You keep going.

The goofy SUP mistake reinforced a lesson she had already learned: Listening to the call and faithfully following is important. But, it needs to be aligned to its purpose.

This is the way we keep moving, straight forward.

This was the first and the last time I would see her this year — I learned she was moving back home to Pennsylvania to regroup. To keep going.

Maybe one day we will practice together again. Until then we are on the journey together, in spirit and on Instagram.

May you show up as both the teacher and the student this week.

Love,
Jules

September 7, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 09.07.20 | Are We There Yet?

I debated about writing to you since it’s a holiday. Though it is a potentially significant week in the journey. So, it’ll keep it brief.

No, we are not there yet. I am not there yet.

But, we are making progress.

When I reframed my own unemployment as a Sabbatical, I gained a reason to Carpe Diem, instead of just being in limbo. It was not to create meaning, but infuse purpose. Writing is where I weave meaning into the process. These are the ways I cope, or deal effectively with something difficult.

I saw the vision, I set the goals and then off I went:

studying a career development book,
tackling my personal finance projects,
training aggressively toward my Timberline Trail trek around Mt. Hood, accomplished a couple weeks ago.

So, with many of these goals complete, I was surprised last week. I felt sad and a bit disoriented that I was not going back to work yet. Apparently, in claiming the Sabbatical mindset, I also subconsciously attached a timeframe of seven weeks: July 19 through Labor Day. I forgot that life is actually open-ended right now.

Tired of the persistence, of the optimism, of the journey itself. Ready for something better.

Just like a kid in the middle seat on a long road trip, I wondered out loud: Are we there yet?

Sound familiar? With COVID-19, with the Presidential Election, with systemic racism, with climate change. These are the biggies right now, but the list goes on for the whole and for each of us personally.

Unfortunately, I have no truths to tell about when we will be there. Or when I will be there.

I do know we are here and not there. We are making progress. We can get there.

And we need more snacks.

May you find simple ways to keep going this week.

Love,
Jules

September 1, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 08.31.20 | This Wild Ambition

I have a vague memory of a mouthful of thick, chalky dust. But, I was 4, just about to turn 5, that summer of 1987. So, the photos are much clearer than the memories.

After a week camping in the woods, I hiked 6 whole miles beside my Mom down from a lake in the Wallowa mountain range. My first hiking personal record. Of course, with those little legs, it probably took six hours, or more! And then in the home stretch, my tired legs tripped on a root. I face planted on the trail. In the photo, I am covered in dust from head to toe. No smile. Just a hardcore hiker’s stare.

As soon as I could hold my head up, I was in my parents’ pack and outside — rain or shine, hot or cold.

Growing up in the outdoors, I knew it wasn’t easy, it took work to be out there. Bugs, cuts, splinters, sunburns, fatigue, rain — a lot of it sucked. And then there were breathtaking rewards like lakes, wildflowers, mountains, fresh air, space. All together, it added up to adventure. Or so I thought. But, I was missing the point.

It wasn’t just about the adventure, the thrill and the challenge of outdoor recreation. I was being actively raised to have a relationship with nature. What I now see as one of the greatest gifts a parent can give, besides life, safety and love.

And in this relationship with nature a connection to my own spirit, and thus my own sense of spirituality.

Just as my parents had grown theirs after they uprooted from Boston and transplanted to Oregon in 1972. Immediately falling in love with Mt. Hood and everything at the next level, they spent the next six years before kids seeking their highest potential — physically, mentally and spiritually.

They may have felt the same awe as I do now:

Being dwarfed by giant Sequoias and Redwoods in old growth forests.
Seeing Mt. Rainier peaking out from the clouds in the distance.
Sitting beside the lapping waves, always ebbing and flowing as they touch the rocky shore.
Watching hermit crabs tickle an anemone while crawling around a tide pool.

This profound thought has echoed with me for weeks: Nature just knows. It just is. It just exists. None of it has an “identity.”

None of it is studying career and life discernment workbooks, wondering how to live out its calling. This “enlightened” human thing some of us do. It makes this thing we hold so sacred, our individual identity, seem well, mundane.

Yes, every part of nature has beauty, purpose, meaning of each its own, though its significance is not in simply being, but in contributing to the greater whole.

Today is my birthday. A day some cultures see as an opportunity for a fresh sense of identity. More than a marker of years, it represents a self-identified mastery of being. Just so, a few years ago I started using my favorite nickname, Jules, all the time.

Personal, loving, connected. It felt more “me” than Julie ever did.

I’ve spent my life seeking personal significance through my own self-expression. Ironically, as I’ve settled into being Jules “full-time,” I’ve released some of the need for a distinctive identity.

Today I am humbled by the bigger quest: Becoming one with all — mind, body and spirit aligned within. And without. Not just relating to nature, but being as an equal and raising our children to live this way from the start.

This is where my heart is at as I enter a new year: with wild ambitions of living more deeply in harmony with nature, with all others, and with my own nature. And intuiting how to make these truths more accessible to all.

May you feel peace this week by treating every day as a fresh start.

Love,
Jules

August 10, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 08.10.20 | Your Mission(s) in Life

Then, what exactly is the point of life?

The answer was so plain and simple, I remember stopping in my barefoot tracks and smiling as I turned to look out at the sea through the wind whipping my bangs and ponytail.

Our purpose is to live in harmony with nature.

Really? That’s it? I might have even said out loud. Then, what am I so distressed about?

The first time I truly posed that question to the universe was on a personal retreat to the Oregon coast after I was laid off from my “dream job.” I had just turned 28 years old. I had completed graduate school a year before, for exactly this type of job, based on the talents and skills I had thoroughly evaluated, and thus invested in. I thought I was following my calling and I felt like I had completely failed.

The HR person was right. There was a “lack of fit” — not just at that company, but in my life. My greatest failure back then was misalignment.

Since then, I’ve studied many books about finding your calling (here’s a list of my favorites) to figure it out. And, boy was I wrong.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the mind-blowing idea that Richard Nelson Bolles humbly tucked into the Epilogue of his classic job-hunting book, What Color is Your Parachute?. Here he describes our three missions in life in great detail. Wait, there’s not just one?!

He instructed readers to translate his Christian thought forms into their own. So, in my words, our three missions in life are:

Live in harmony with nature,
Live in harmony with other humans,
Live in harmony with our own nature.

Most of us, myself included, easily spend most of life doing it backwards: self first, then others, then nature (which is synonymous with “something greater” or “God” for me). I mean, it just sounds backwards, doesn’t it?

Greater, others, self.

Completing these missions—in that order—takes a lifetime of effort. Not just during one Sabbatical.

Easier said than done, for sure.

As I head back out on the trails in a few days, I’ll be attuning even more to the world around me to find my connection to everything that feeds my compassion for others and fuels my soul. Alignment starts from the center.

May you embrace the greater, others and yourself this week.

Love,
Jules

P.S. Listen to “A Missional Life: Your Calling” podcast episode for Suzy Silk’s reassuring pep talk about how far you’ve already come.

I I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights!

August 3, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 08.02.2020 | Follow Your Must

There really wasn’t any sound at all. Just the sun inching out from behind Mt. Hood and casting a dusky haze like a natural snooze button over the forest, the highway, the nearby town of Government Camp and tiny Mirror Lake right below me.

As I sat there listening, the nothingness slowly filled with answers. As it always does.You know these kinds of answers.

It’s more of a feeling than a thought. Like knowing a truth. And once known, can’t be unknown, just ignored.

Perhaps this moment was why it was an immediate “yes” when my friend texted about going backpacking, even though I had barely been off the mountain for 24 hours. Or why my body woke up as the first bird chirped and scooted me up the trail by myself, even though my phone only had 10 percent battery left.

It was what must felt like. Just like Elle Luna describes about her own journey at The Crossroads of Should and Must (and in her book that I’m currently rereading).

All the tough, real deep questions I’d considered over the past few weeks, even during the two miles up to the top of Tom, Dick & Harry Mountain that very morning, came back to what I had discerned many times before.

Nuts and bolts stuff like family, kids, nature, writing, teaching, retreating and ultimately, what I was put on earth to do in this lifetime — to make spirituality accessible to all*.

Even though I felt “off mission” at the moment, I realized how many of my choices have been actualizing the calling. I noticed how imaginary the hurdles of money, time, space and vulnerability that Elle mentions truly are. I saw how “close to the trail” I am (so close).

So, the real question: what needs to be different this time?

I have to own it. It has to be more important than all the shoulds.

Yes to must. And no to everything else.

I sat in my tank top, leggings and sandals basking in the warm, reassuring feeling beneath the rising sun for a lot longer than expected. It was alluring — savoring the truth in all its ease, all its perfection — part of me wanted to stay there forever. But, I had already been there long enough.

And, at that moment, I must return to the campsite before my friend started to worry and my stomach got hangry.

May you do exactly what you know you need to this week, no matter what.

Love,
Jules

*As poetically described by Tiff, one of my friends and kindred spirits, who I think of as a real-life Ms. Frizzle.

July 27, 2020February 12, 2022

News from Jules | 7.27.2020 | Get Fear Out of the Way

The first two weeks of this new interim state of unemployment, I did life maintenance: iPhone fixed, car detailed, checkbook balanced, direct deposit set up for unemployment benefits.

Last week, I started doing spiritual maintenance.

I retreated by myself to the woods.

I read 48 Days to the Work You Love in the hammock in the evenings, then reflected during my rigorous daily training hikes. Dang, this book goes real deep, real fast:

If your job changes, does your purpose change?
What have been the happiest, most fulfilling moments in your life?
If nothing changed in your life in the next five years, would that be okay?

No. It wouldn’t be okay.

How come? Because I’m off-mission.

Slightly, but enough to make life a lot harder than it needs to be. Sacrificing energy from my deepest needs to simply making do.

Take one of my hikes last week: I wanted to finally reach Barrett Spur, an 8,000 ft. rock outcropping on Mt. Hood’s north face, which I have camped below many times. About a mile or two in, the trail was completely obscured with snow. Options included: turn around and attempting a different time, go up the snow using crampons for the first time and follow GPS along the trail or bushwhacking the ridge along the basin. Even though there wasn’t a trail to follow, choosing the third option seemed less risky and less scary. It also took HOURS to cover a couple miles and depleted enough energy that I almost turned around at the trail junction, instead of proceeding to the Spur summit.

My fear was getting in the way of my goal. Not only achieving the goal, but in the simplest way possible, with energy to spare.

I only made it to the top because a kind, older man came along. He was also pooped, but way happy to lead the way having done the Spur many times before.

This is why I’m rereading this book. This is why I’m training to summit Mt. Hood. This is why I’m being intentional about this time-off as a Sabbatical instead of just “funemployment.” I sense I’m not fully delivering what I was put on earth to do in this lifetime yet, even though work – my job, career and even vocation – has taken up so much of my time. It has also taken a disproportionate amount of energy and sacrificed other parts of having and sharing a full, integrated life with a family of my own.

I want to level up. Not accomplish more things, but break through the fears. Learn balance, gain accountability, act selflessly.

It has been a beautiful life. Just harder than it needs to be.

I’m close to the trail, but not on it. That is what needs to change in my life over the next five years.

May you notice extra efforting this week, and adjust accordingly.

Love,
Jules