An excerpt from Money, Manifestation & Miracles by Meriflor Toneatto
When women are empowered with money, they become “difference makers.” They transform not only their own lives but also those of their children, their families, and their communities at large. In her new book Money, Manifestation & Miracles: A Guide to Transforming Women's Relationships with Money, award-winning leadership and coaching executive Meriflor Toneatto empowers women to extend their limits so they can create the life of their dreams. We hope you’ll enjoy this short excerpt from the book.
Your life’s purpose is unique to you, as singular as your fingerprint. Some refer to their life’s purpose as their calling or even their destiny. Essentially, your life’s purpose is the reason you are here. Since your life’s purpose is about accomplishing what gives you meaning and fulfillment, it naturally affects you on other important levels of your existence:
Soul: Your whole heart and being are deeply connected to your purpose. As such, you must nurture, protect, and cherish it at all times.
Spiritual: As the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Spirituality is a broader concept than religion, although religion can be one expression of it. Other expressions of spirituality include prayer, meditation, spending time in nature, generosity to causes, and more. Essentially, spirituality is a deep, soulful connection to God — or however you choose to identify God: Divine Source, Higher Power, Source Energy, Spirit, or Infinite Intelligence. You are connected to Divine Source Energy at all times. Therefore, your life’s purpose is also a manifestation of your spirituality.
Emotional: Since your life’s purpose impacts your heart, soul, and spirit on a deeper level, your emotions and feelings are also naturally impacted. The main emotion that your life’s purpose can bring you is love, including love for your purpose, love for your passion, and love for how you can affect others and the world.
Psychological: Your mind-set plays a major role in helping you nurture and accomplish your life’s purpose. Having the right strategies and tools at hand will be a source of support for you. When you do encounter obstacles and experience limited states of mind, know that these represent only temporary clouds (your thoughts) that eclipse the sun (your true state of being).
Physical: Accomplishing your purpose on the physical level means taking consistent and intentional actions to make it a reality, since without action, the best plans will not bear fruit. Taking intentional actions also includes trusting your intuition, leveraging the various Universal Laws and Spiritual Laws, and not letting opportunities pass you by.
We need to distinguish life purpose from vision and mission since the three are sometimes used interchangeably. Simply, your mission is the way you choose to fulfill your purpose, and your vision is a compelling image of the future.
Your life’s purpose, however, is what Paulo Coelho calls your “Personal Legend.” He describes it in his book The Alchemist as “what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”
As we grow older, it becomes easier to get disconnected from our authentic and innermost dreams of what we really wish to accomplish. Our fears and doubts begin to surface, as well as the fact that society, and even our family, does not always help us to nurture these dreams. As a result, we tend not to honor our dreams for fear of failure, fear of hearing those dreaded words “I told you so,” or fear of getting it wrong. Often what happens is that people become resigned to what they think they “should” be and do, and they move forward in their lives by just existing. In other words, they settle, accepting less than what they originally sought and felt they truly deserved.
When I work with clients, I am amazed at how often they become tearful when they start reconnecting with their real purpose and dust off their innermost dreams. The truth is that life happens, and we simply do not take the time to check in with ourselves and nurture what really brings us joy, meaning, and fulfillment.
As for myself, my life’s purpose did not automatically surface for me, and it did take some soul-searching to reconnect with it. As I shared earlier, my life’s purpose is to understand and create wealth — in all its forms — and to help others do the same. As my path unfolded, I realized a more meaningful way to express my purpose by empowering women to claim their wealth and to thrive — living lives of purpose, wealth, and significance while being a force of good in the world.
Let me ask you this:
What is your life’s purpose?
Are you living it?
What gives you fulfillment and meaning?
How are you expressing your life’s purpose through your life’s work?
Each of us has a wonderful opportunity to express our passions and achieve our goals and dreams through our life’s work. In fact, when you are aligned with your purpose, your work becomes an expression of your passions and of the contribution that you want to make to the world.
The three best ways to discover your purpose and align it with your life’s work are, first, tapping into your passion, because your passion leaves clues as to what really fulfills you; second, reconnecting with your greater “why” and purpose with money, which will act as a motivator for why you are doing what you are doing; and third, creating your purpose and impact statement.
Meriflor Toneatto is the author of Money, Manifestation & Miracles. As the CEO and founder of Power With Soul, she specializes in helping ambitious women entrepreneurs, professionals and leaders reach financial prosperity and success while fulfilling their social promise to the world. Her work has been featured internationally in media outlets like Yahoo! Finance, Washington Post, International Business Times, Los Angeles Times, and more. Visit her online at www.meriflor.com.
Click here to purchase Money, Manifestation & Miracles at Amazon.com.
Excerpted from the book Money, Manifestation & Miracles. Copyright ©2018 by Meriflor Toneatto. Printed with permission from New World Library.