Writing Around the Table Using My Inner Purpose Feeling

Diana Reyers, Founder of Daring to Share Global™

I discovered the Inner Purpose Feeling after spending much time reflecting on my values, specifically on how I felt when I was fully leading and living in line with them. I had so much clarity about the emotions I experience, both comfortable when aligned with each value and uncomfortable when not, but I found there was a lot of information to process at any given moment and, in particular, when I had to process discomfort or inauthenticity with my way of being. I knew that if I experienced overwhelm within the process, my clients would most likely as well, so I created the IPF - the one overarching emotional feeling one experiences when leading, living, and writing aligned with all their values.

The most impactful piece of the Inner Purpose Feeling is that we find clarity about how we feel when we are not experiencing it to provide the awareness and opportunity to process the uncomfortableness and shift towards the comfort of our IPF - what we feel when showing up as our authentic self. Sometimes, it's as simple as being able to communicate the emotion you would like to feel most of the time if that was possible.

In the context of writing, the IPF guides us towards expressing ourselves in our most authentic and integral way, speaking our truth while honouring both ourselves and others in our story. It's a tricky thing to do, but being aware of how we feel somatically and emotionally while writing provides us with a measurement of how authentic we are presenting ourselves within what we are sharing or not. It gives us the chance to step back and really determine what, how, why, and who we want to share. This is the basis of the Daring to Share way of authentically writing and editing.

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I took full advantage of having clarity about what my Inner Purpose feeling is while writing this week. Most of my sharing was about discovering how valuable my suffering was as a young girl. Strange, I know, but having been bullied and having experienced the heightened feeling of not belonging through my childhood and well into adulthood, I used my IPF of connection and its opposite of disconnection to articulate how both served me in my quest to fit into this world of societal conformity. Early on, I learned to fight the discomfort of disconnection but later discovered that taking the time to move through it with the intention of learning from it was why suffering disconnection continuously presented to me throughout my life. The feeling of disconnection provided me with the suffering I needed to eventually experience deep and meaningful connection - this became the lesson of gratitude that comes with the duality of life. Sometimes, the comfort of connection can be fake, whereas the discomfort of disconnection is genuine. The question became whether I chose to live in the fantasy of artificial connection or the reality of true disconnection. In the end, I feel more connected to my truth, whether comfortable or not.

Excerpt from Around the Table: Daring to Share My Perception

"Feeling somewhat empowered within the discomfort that was my norm, my comfort became knowing I could survive it. So I took a step forward into familiar yet unwelcome territory. This would become one of many of what I now describe as a warrior memory. It was the first time I became aware of my ability to tap into the courage that sits patiently in my soul, begging me to utilize its power. At some point later in my life, I decided not to thank God for His strength but instead give myself full credit for my resilience.

I became grateful for my willingness to endure the discomfort of the reality of suffering because I discovered that, although sometimes painful beyond belief, each episode of suffering became a beautiful gift of an honest awakening that I eventually valued

more than the destruction of the fantasy of fake comfort.

I am now certain that a perception only became real for me when I believed it. As a little girl with squinty eyes, a long nose, a pixie haircut and scrawny body, I fed into the societal belief that how I looked determined the measurement of my value to my peers, and I was different than every girl within a ten-foot radius of anywhere I stood on that playground. In my mind, I saw groups of friends gathered together, with not one asking me to join them. I saw girl next door beautiful species with big brown and blue eyes, little curled up noses, and long dark brunette and glistening blonde hair tied up in ponytails. Boys congregated and taunted the less favourable children who clung to pieces of playground equipment as if representing the security of one of their parents. Every ounce of my being told me that this would end very badly with suffering prevailing. It was the beginning of a long journey living with a firm conviction that I was not good enough without the approval of others – acceptance equals love. My one saving grace was that I knew I could survive it. I knew this because my mother instilled that strength in me. I never understood it’ merit as much as I did on that first day of grade one."

For links to the DTS MasterClass Program and my TreeLinks page, go to www.daringtoshare.com/dianareyers