healthmedicinet

I recognized I had a void in my life when I turned 25. Even though I couldn’t understand why it was there, it felt like a weight on my chest constricting my breath from fully escaping. The more I focused on it, the more I suspected something was missing from my life became.

But what was missing? I spent five years and countless dollars on that very question. I call that five-year span of life my “possible void-fillers” phase.

I felt like I was running from day to day with my arms out grabbing onto anything that moved me. Thinking, “Maybe this will make the whole in my heart go away.”

I had two different full-time jobs during that phase. I was a content developer for a website and a public relations specialist at a marketing firm. They both presented me with new challenges. And while I’m able to recognize that they both play a role in who I am today and how I run Severson Sisters, neither one of them really filled the void in my life.

At some point I realized that the void was related to the fact that I didn’t know what my true calling was in life. Since I didn’t know how to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life, I set out on a mission to test out new hobbies.

I made a deal with myself during those five years. I would try anything once. And if I loved it, I’d continue exploring it and let whatever was supposed to unfold… unfold.

I hoped that a new hobby would spark something deep within my soul and lead me to my true calling. I had no idea what I was looking for. I just knew something had to change in order to make that void disappear.

I started this phase of my life in the most logical place I could think of — the bookstore. I visited a new bookstore every weekend. I would walk the aisles starring at colorful covers and wait for something — ANYTHING — to catch my eye. For some reason, I didn’t turn to self-help books. I turned to DIY, hobby, travel or biographies. I felt like I had to experience a shift in my life by doing things.

The problem with my action plan was me. I’m an all-or-nothing kinda lady. If I like something, I become obsessed with it and it becomes my everything. When something hooked onto me, I didn’t just jump on the bandwagon, I became the captain for the wagon. (This is why I’m actually really good at public relations!)

To sum up my five-year possible void-fillers experiment, here is a list of hobbies I picked up along the way to finding my true calling:

• Horse-back riding.
• Painting.
• Non-fiction writing.
• Scrapbooking.
• Feng Shui.
• Event planning.
• Interior designing.
• A raw food diet.
• Hot yoga.

All of these hobbies brought me happiness. And every one of those bandwagons brought me closer to finding my true calling because they introduced me to new people and beautiful moments.

Right before my 30th birthday a friend of mine I met at hot yoga asked me if I doing yoga for spiritual reasons. It took me a while to answer because I didn’t really understand it.

“Well, I’m searching for answers to my life so, yeah I guess I’m here for spiritual reasons,” I said.

That one simple conversation stayed with me the entire day. I ended up at a bookstore for hours that night. I dug into books. I researched teachers.

Like everything else in my life, my quest to understanding my own spirituality became my everything!

I stopped moving, doing, or forcing, my life to unfold. I learned how to meditate. I changed the way I spoke about everything. I stopped using words like need or want. I created dream boards for the things I welcomed into my life.

I was in meditation one morning and something shifted deep within my soul. That was the morning I came face-to-face with my void.

In meditation I heard, “There was never anything missing from my life to begin with.”

I remember that meditation session vividly because it was the first time I felt totally whole. And to be honest, a little electric!

I just had to learn how unleash my own light and let it pour out onto my own path.

Bandwagons are fun. All of mine introduced me to great people and opened me up to new experiences.

It took me many bandwagons to understand that answers to my life are within and nowhere else.

Allowing my own light to shine is a practice I commit to every day. And I know the day I find a “shine your light” bandwagon, I’ll totally take on the captain position.