How do we know when we’re living our best life? When we’re on a path to Soul growth, authenticity, peace and joy? You’d think it would be obvious and for some people it is, but it seems to me that many others are living lives of quiet desperation and just hoping that some day they’ll be happy.

I can only speak from my own experience, but I spent 5 decades living a life which didn’t fulfil me. In my early adulthood I pursued a career which stressed me out and made me miserable – I used to dread going in to work each day. I was part of a family which negatively affected my mental and emotional health and in which I was expected to be the giver and not the receiver of care. I was in romantic relationships which were disrespectful or lonely. Changing any of these things felt impossible and in any event I didn’t know what I wanted in its place.

Have you ever asked a Higher Power for guidance? “Please God I just want to be happy”🙏🏻 It’s a bit like ordering the perfect gift from Amazon and expecting a robot to choose that for you from the millions of items on Amazon’s shelves, even though you haven’t specified in your order a preference for any one particular thing. It’s how you end up with salt and not tequila.

To live a fulfilling life you first have to know what fulfils you and this will be different for everyone. “But I don’t know what fulfils me!” Yes you do. You do. I went to my Spiritual class on Tuesday night and driving home in the car I was giddy. I felt expanded, invigorated, joyful, relaxed and excited to go back the next week. Yesterday I was at the Wyrd lab at Broughton Sanctuary, had interesting and expanding conversations with a variety of people, felt like I could just be myself without pretence and sang to the radio for the entire journey home. I woke this morning at 6am, pulled open the curtains to see the sky still dark and a full moon shining down on me – “hello beautiful morning” I said aloud “I am so grateful to live here!” I talked on my photo blog about a walk I took this week after which I came back with a heart almost bursting with joy. This is how I know I am living my best life, quiet, unpretentious and unassuming as it may be.

Of course there are times where we have a choice of paths and may be unsure which one to take, but if we ask The Divine for guidance we then need to take heed of the answer. In my experience, these answers come in the form of signs and synchronicities. When I was younger I kept asking God for guidance. So I was chucked a pebble, which I ignored. Then I was chucked a rock, which I ignored. Then I was chucked a boulder, which I ignored. Eventually The Divine threw a brick at my head and my life was changed in ways I could never have imagined. In all honesty I so wish I’d acted after the first pebble was thrown but I was too busy trying to keep other people happy and living the life other people told me would bring me success, peace and joy that I was blinded.

Sometimes the answers we receive aren’t what we want to hear. They may involve work, effort, upheaval. They may be scary, challenging or even painful. Our life may not end up looking the way we’d imagined it would. Growth is not always easy but if the alternative is to live the rest of your days unfulfilled, lonely even though you may not be alone, stagnant, stressed, restless, bored or lacking joy you’re essentially dead on the inside anyway.

Recognising guidance from God/The Universe/Divine energy (descriptions differ but all refer to the same thing), however, is only the first step on your journey. You then have to put in the work, make the hard choices, instigate the changes and rise to the challenges. Deal with the pushback which will inevitably come from those people using your misery to make them happy. You have to live life with intention (there’s that word again!) and having created your best life you must never take it for granted.