Years ago, through a series of mismatched educational and professional pursuits, I realized that the traditional route of fulfillment through working for someone else just might not be for me.

At every job that I couldn’t stand and every educational path that didn’t quite fit, I couldn’t help but think, what is wrong with me?

What was wrong with me was that I was misaligned.

It would be years before I recognized and addressed that misalignment for what it was.

Recognizing misalignment is the first step in finding your greater purpose and living life on your own terms.
Recognizing misalignment is the first step in finding your purpose and living on your own terms Click To Tweet

For me, the misalignments took on many different forms and spanned years of searching for all the wrong paths that ultimately led me to the right one.

Until I made the decision to correct the misalignments in my life, I knew I would struggle to find my joy.

The changes I went through in my career (and my personal life) were extremely painful, but they were absolutely necessary for me to grow and develop into the person I was to become.

I had to deal with each and every misalignment in my life in order to get to the place where I could truly experience that growth in an authentic way.

If you are reading this and feeling like you may have some misalignment in your life, take courage. Half the battle is identifying the misalignments; the other half is dealing with them, however uncomfortable the process may become.

Misalignment just simply means that something is outta whack in your life where you experience unhappiness. It could be in your job, your relationships, your family, your friends, your priorities, or something else.

When your life is misaligned, you will have no choice but to be unhappy.

Misalignment will always be in the background, waiting to rear its ugly head, making you question who you are spending your time with, what you are doing, and why you are doing it.

As I look back on all my misadventures and the twists and turns in my education, career paths and relationships, the times when I was most miserable were when I was experiencing misalignment. Once I found my “juice” in helping people reach their business and personal goals, BAM!

I felt more aligned than I ever had before.

And you will feel the same way when you begin to deal with your undiagnosed misalignments.

The longer you go on living with a misalignment, the harder it will be to identify and then eradicate it. They are like bad habits that need serious attention to overcome.

When you find a misalignment, address it. Don’t wait for the “right time” or the “right place.” If it means changing jobs, do it. If it means gracefully bowing out of a toxic relationship, do it. If it means being more disciplined with your time and energy, do it.

Your very potential and search for meaning in your life is directly tied to your healthy alignments.

Dealing with misalignments is hard work. You are going to want to give up. But don’t. Remember that some things need to fall apart for better things to come together.

Think about cleaning out a closet. When you imagine pulling all of your life out and really looking at it, what are the outdated things that don’t fit you, or don’t serve a worthwhile purpose for you anymore that you could easily purge?

Try to identify possible misalignments in your life. What can you do right now to correct some of them?

Imagine what your life would look like in five years if you just left things as they are.

Now imagine what your life could look like if you corrected the misalignments.

How do these two visions of your life differ?

I promise, there is something bigger and better out there for you.

Doing this work is where it begins.

P.S. Correcting your “misalignments” is something I dive deep into in my book, There’s More to Life Than This. If this resonates with you, check it out here.