Bruce Elkin 

Life Design Services for Finding Life's Purpose and Creating What Matters Most

Finding Purpose in Life:
More About Me-How I Create What Matters Most

 

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"Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comesfrom squandering ourselves for a purpose."

- William Cowper

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I'd like to share with you how I found (or rather, created) my purpose in life, committed to it, and then created what matters most to me-and how that helps me help you find your purpose in life and create what matters most to you.

From the time I was 17, I was concerned with finding life's purpose and work that supported it. As I grew older and more experienced, I realized that if my life was to be purpose driven, I might have to create my life's purpose for myself.

My Interest in Prevention and Empowerment

I started professional life as a Criminologist. I thought I would find my life's purpose in prison reform and rehabilitation. But a job as Court Counselor in Juvenile and Family Court convinced me that the purpose my life would be found more in prevention than remediation.

I wanted to focus on positive approaches, not negatives. I soon learned that working with delinquents and criminals was not my purpose in life. So I went back to school, got another degree, and became a high school teacher.

My Joy and Frustration in Teaching School
The next step on my journey to find life's purpose was teaching.

I loved teaching. I loved kids. I loved the challenge. However, the system wanted me to teach school more than teach kids. I felt that system had a powerful, narrow and not so healthy influence on my young charges. I feared they were not learning to live healthy, productive, and creative lives.

Wanting to help kids create successful, purpose-filled lives, I enrolled in a Master's of Education at the University of Calgary. Later, I taught high school again. That was when the debilitating depression described in my eBook Emotional Mastery set in. Still later, I taught and supervised practicing teachers at Simon Fraser University.

Gradually, I realized the system was not easily changed. Finding my purpose in life was not going to be as easy as I'd hoped it would be. During this time, depression and anxiety plagued my life, causing my to question the very purpose of life itself.


Experiences in Personal and Environmental Exploration

Success in finding life's purpose took a leap forward when I lucked into a job designing environmental education programs for the Rocky Mountain YMCA. I later became Director of the Y's Leadership Camp.

I met and befriended Steve Van Matre, founder of the Institute for Earth Education (IEE). Steve taught me to design and develop high standard programs that were fun, engaging, and based on solid science and engaging experiential learning principles. Eventually I became IEE's Senior Trainer.

Shifting from institutional to experiential education opened new worlds. I found I could have a more powerful learning effect in a 3-week wilderness program than in a year of high school. Just as I thought I was finally finding my purpose in life in environmental education, I met Ken Low, Director of the Action Studies Institute (ASI) in Calgary.

As an Associate of ASI, I added self-empowerment to environmental education. I designed experiential learning programs such as Earthways: Experiences in Personal and Environmental Exploration that combined ASI's character-building approach with IEE's ecological understanding. Earthways was a huge success and creating it was one of the highlights of my life.

I also helped design Freedom Skills programs that helped people move from "freedom from." to "freedom to." by developing self-empowerment and self-management skills such as initiative, purpose, patience, perseverance, and creativity. This is when I began to suspect that finding life's purpose was really more a case of creating my own purpose in life.


Creating and the Path of Least Resistance Researching the skills and principles of creating, I came across the work of Robert Fritz, author of The Path of Least Resistance, and my ability to create my purpose in life took an even greater leap forward. Robert was to become my main mentor in creating the kind and quality of life I truly wanted.

Understanding the creative process offered a radically different approach to producing results than did problem solving. I trained and worked with Robert Fritz and with his wife Rosalind for nine years, developing mastery in creating what matters most.

I became a top trainer of personal and organizational creativity. I did workshops for start-ups and Fortune 500 giants. I coached executive teams, professionals, and single moms. I helped individuals master their own creative process and create purpose driven lives work, and relationships. Working with Fritz, I learned finding purpose is not the only route to a purpose filled life.


Creating Purpose in Life – What Matters Most to Me

Creating what matters most in life, work, and relationships now seemed to me to be the best way of finding life's purpose. Or, rather, I should say creating my own life purpose!

Along the way to sorting out the purpose of life, I started to write. Slowly, I realized writing and teaching people how to create were what mattered most to me. I was glad to be clarifying the true purpose of life but something was still missing.

I wanted to empower individuals to create simple, rich and successful lives. And I wanted to write about that process as well as do, teach and coach folks in it. But there was more. The deeper I got into both writing and creating, I saw I'd traveled full circle.

As T.S. Elliot said in The Four Quartets, "At the end of all our exploration, we shall arrive at where we started, and know that place for the first time."

Connecting the circle that started with the Y, Steve Van Matre, and Earth Education, I realized I wanted to write and coach in a way that helped people create rich yet simple and successful lives in harmony with the basic ecological systems on which life-and all health, wealth, success, and well being-are based.

I've been blessed with the opportunity to find something I love and live a life that shows it. I take advantage of that opportunity and try my best to practice what I preach. I look out for ways to improve what I do. I learn; I grow.

I'm deeply grateful I've been able to create my own purpose in life. I'm grateful that I'm able to create what matters most to me and to live a simple yet rich and successful life in harmony with the Earth's systems. I'm deeply grateful that I'm able to coach other people in creating what mattes most to them.

And I'm most grateful that others appreciate what I do.