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One year later, I finished my schooling and moved to Berlin, which was a big transition. I was accepted into one of the best art universities in Germany—a great privilege because at the time they only allowed about 30 people into their annual program out of more than one thousand applicants. I studied feverishly and soaked up everything—painting, sketching, black and white photography, all the classic arts—you name it, I did it! Ultimately, I graduated summa cum laude in both my master’s and bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication. 

My education encompassed everything from traditional art, such as portraits, nude chalk sketches, abstract painting, mixed media, comic illustration, silkscreen printing, etching, welding, and all the way through computer animation and graphics. In 1993, I created a virtual Internet art installation called “Fishing for the Heavenly Body” for my master’s work. The piece was way ahead of its time and anticipated the collective, collaborative, human interaction of the World Wide Web. It was through this innovative and visionary art installation that I was able to land a dream job at Wired magazine a year later and become one of the first web designers in the world.

This is an excerpt from my new book, Sole to Soul: How To Identify Your Soul Purpose and Monetize It, which is available now!  To download a free chapter and order, please click here.

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I’m originally from Germany, but I’ve been living in the United States since the mid-’90s when I came here in pursuit of a spiritual calling.

The first inkling I had of my life’s vision was around the age of six. I grew up in a small village in the Black Forest where life was rural, simple, and backwards. Therefore, I always looked forward to seeing Hollywood movies on TV, and I especially loved all the singing and dancing of the musicals. I was thoroughly convinced that this is how life should be.

It was then that I decided to become a famous actress or an artist—someone who goes out into the world and actually livesthe sort of life that others just watch on screen. My parents gave me permission to take over the entire attic, where I literally furnished an imaginary world that I would slip into on a daily basis after school and homework were done. We had lots of vintage clothes from at least three generations and various eras, which gave me plenty of ways to act out my fantasy plays. My envisioned world became so real that when I think back to my childhood today, I have vivid memories—if not sometimes even heightened memories—of my enacted daydreams, which are sometimes even brighter than factual reality. It was that little girl who, at an early age, had made up her mind and began living her dream in an attic full of possibilities.

This is an excerpt from my new book, Sole to Soul: How To Identify Your Soul Purpose and Monetize It, which is available now!  To download a free chapter and order, please click here.

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(An excerpt from Sole To Soul: How to Identify Your Soul Purpose and Monetize It. Publish date April 2011.)  The term sole purpose is one I use in the business world. When a company becomes totally focussed on how they can be of the utmost service, they become focussed on fulfilling their sole purpose. A company’s sole purpose can also be its soul purpose. Providing the utmost service as a company means providing the utmost service to each individual who buys the product or uses the service provided by the company.

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(An excerpt from Sole To Soul: How to Identify Your Soul Purpose and Monetize It. Publish date April 2011.)  Discovering your purpose is a journey but it’s a discovery that brings with it an enormous source of strength. Self love, self acceptance and an acceptance of your gifts gives you an inner confidence. Whatever the world throws at you, you are secure in the knowledge that you are loved and the power of that love surrounds you like a virtual suit of armour. You know there’s nothing that anyone can ever say or do to you that can take your gifts away from you. Your gifts have been given to you and they will lead you to your own source of inspiration which, in turn, will bring an understanding of what feeds your soul and what you need to do to live your purpose.

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The following is an excerpt from my book, Sole to Soul: How to Identify Your Soul Purpose and Monetize It, which will be published in April 2011.

Being very curious and asking a lot of questions are my natural gifts, they are who I am. They are gifts that were already showing up in my early life but they were not recognized as gifts of value. In fact, they were the very things I was encouraged not to do. The value of my natural gifts was not recognized and I was encouraged to play down my unique gifts.

 

I was brought up to value education and social standing and to value being successful in society but society doesn’t have all the answers. The answer to what truly inspires you; what your soul purpose really is, will always be found internally. The answer is already inside you.

 

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The term sole purpose is one I use in the business world. When a company is totally focused on how they can be of the utmost service, they become focused on fulfilling their sole purpose. A company’s sole purpose can also be its soul purpose. Providing the utmost service as a company means providing the utmost service to each individual who buys the product or uses the service provided by the company.

For example, when Bill Gates founded Microsoft, his sole purpose was to place a personal computer in every household in the world. His sole purpose was also his soul purpose as he recognized that personal computers would enhance the lives of everyone who had one in their home. He understood the value of his gift, not only because of what he stood to gain personally, but also because of the potential it created for others to gain too.

When you’re living your soul purpose, you feel passionate about what you do and you have an energy about you that radiates from you and let’s people know that you love what you do.

Things that might indicate that you’re not in your soul purpose and it’s time to move on include:

• Heart palpitations; a feeling of being anxious to move on.
• Feeling heavy every morning as you get up and get ready for work; hitting the snooze button on your alarm over and over!
• Dreading going to work.
• Little things at work that may normally have gone unnoticed begin to get on your nerves.
• You know there’s something missing and you know you have something more to give, you’re just not sure what that something is.

The amount of time you spend in a job and the energy you feel when you’re in that job can be likened to the changing seasons in nature. When seasons change, you feel a change of energy. When your energy changes in your job, it marks the end of your season there and it’s time to move on to the next one.

If you’re not in your zone; if you’re not meant to be there, it’s not something you should view as a bad thing but it’s something you must recognize and do something about. You must take steps to move on. When it feels like work, it’s not your soul purpose.

When you’re in your soul purpose, you will still be working but you’ll be so passionate about what you’re doing that it won’t feel like work. Moving on might mean setting up your own business and working for yourself. In most cases, someone working for themselves will work far harder than someone working for someone else, but they will feel energized by what they’re doing because they’re doing what they’re destined to do. When you’re working for someone else, especially in a large organization, you generally have only one aspect of the business to focus on, but when you’re starting your own business, you need to have an understanding of every aspect of your business. The demands can be greater yet you will feel charged by the experience.

When you’re living in your soul purpose, you’re passionate about it so you share your gifts with other people. You’re driven, but not in an egotistical way, to look for ways to help others. Your mind is divine and whatever your gifts are, the things you need to help you make use of those gifts and serve in your soul purpose will come to you. When you know that those things are coming your way, you’re open to receiving them and you’re also open to recognizing what you’re destined to do next at each stage in your journey. You recognize what it is you need to do and you work at it every day but it feels right.

When you love what you do, you will initiate getting the energy you need to do what you do really well, jump out of bed in the morning already thinking of other ways you might serve and anticipate what you need to do to make a difference. When you’re passionate about doing something, you become unstoppable.

 

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