How honoring our true design restores energy, clarity, and courage

I. The Dilemma

Imagine for a moment that the health of our soul is deeply entwined with the health of our body. Each reflecting the other in ways we rarely see. It might sound far-fetched—until you read what Steven Pressfield writes about Tom Laughlin’s work with terminal cancer patients. Laughlin, best known for his role in Billy Jack, discovered something that makes the idea impossible to ignore.

Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions are called into question. What does our life mean? Have we lived it right? Are there vital acts we’ve left unperformed, crucial words unspoken? Is it too late?

Other thoughts occur to the patient diagnosed as terminal. What about that gift he had for music? What became of the passion he once felt to work with the sick and the homeless? Why do these unlived lives return now with such power and poignancy?

What happens in that instant when we learn we may soon die, Tom Laughlin contends, is that the seat of our consciousness shifts.

It moves from the Ego to the Self. The world is entirely new, viewed from the Self. At once we discern what’s really important. Superficial concerns fall away, replaced by a deeper, more profoundly-grounded perspective.

This is how Tom Laughlin’s foundation battles cancer. He counsels his clients not just to make that shift mentally but to live it out in their lives. He supports the housewife in resuming her career in social work, urges the businessman to return to the violin, assists the Vietnam vet to write his novel. Miraculously, cancers go into remission. People recover. Is it possible, Tom Laughlin asks, that the disease itself evolved as a consequence of actions taken (or not taken) in our lives? Could our unlived lives have exacted their vengeance upon us in the form of cancer? And if they did, can we cure ourselves, now, by living these lives out?

—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.

If you lost someone to cancer, I can understand how this might be offensive. I lost my mother to cancer in just six weeks from diagnosis to death, and the thought that someone would argue that the outcome could have been different if she had lived her “unlived” life doesn’t sit well.

But when I dig into the research123, the correlation between people’s sense of purpose and their survival rates is hard to ignore. As they say, correlation isn’t causation. Yet, when I look at my mother’s life, I’m reminded of something she once told me: all she ever wanted was to stay home and raise her kids. Instead, she spent nearly forty years in a job she had no love for. Even after retirement—free to live as she wished—she struggled to break free from the inertia of too many deferred dreams.

She was gone before her sixty-fourth birthday.

Her story forced me to confront my own version of the same question: What was I losing by not living my authentic life? Which parts of myself had I left asleep? It took several more years pursuing false paths before I finally found some genuine answers. All the while, I continued to pay the toll of living out of sync.

What if our bodies are simply the clearest cost—the final warning after our minds, hearts, and souls have tried in vain to show us we’re not living the life meant for us? What if ignoring this signal slowly unravels our health, relationships, and sense of meaning?

II. The Discovery

I’ve always been a visionary and dreamer—quirky, with a different way of seeing the world that often set me apart from both my parents and peers. That difference became a wound, as I felt increasingly like an outcast. I found myself regularly questioning and challenging the status quo, but often ended up isolated as a result.

Trying to fit in, I pushed my vision aside and followed others’ rules, not realizing how deeply that suppression wore on my soul. I longed to follow my own rhythm, even if it felt impossible at the time. All these tensions and compromises led me to spend most of my adult life forcing a square peg into a round hole—trying to fit my true self into shapes that weren’t built for me. All the while, being told that no square holes existed.

In 2013, when my first marriage ended, all obligations fell away and, for the first time, I had freedom to shape my life according to my vision. I threw myself into photography, explored new places, connected with community almost daily despite my introverted nature, and served others. Something came alive in me—I felt bold, energized, and completely myself.

That season didn’t last. I tried to leave the traditional job behind and follow that path, but I lacked the confidence to fully commit or celebrate my progress. Ultimately, I chose comfort over risk.

But in that brief window, I discovered something crucial: my life wasn’t about what I was doing for a living, but about how I was doing it. When I moved through the world from my authentic design, creating, exploring, connecting, serving—I had supernatural energy for it all.

For twenty-five years, I lived trapped in a cage of my own making—built from beliefs and expectations I’d inherited from others. Driven by a quest for respectability and power, I pursued a lifestyle that looked fulfilling from the outside. Yet beneath the growth and enjoyable moments ran an exhausting friction that drained my energy every single day—for all the wrong reasons.

Once we see the true cost of not living the life meant for us, the need for a new path becomes obvious. But before we can move forward, we must understand what’s really happening—and how to respond.

III. The Definition

Living out of alignment creates disintegration—not a dramatic break, but an unraveling of wholeness. It’s the quiet exhaustion that no amount of rest can fix, the sense that you’re wearing clothes that don’t fit, the way your vitality drains faster than it should. This breakdown seeps into everything—work feels heavy, relationships require more effort, even small decisions become overwhelming. It’s not always obvious, yet something vital is leaking out of your life.

For years, I believed my lack of progress in life was a failure of will—that I simply wasn’t pushing hard enough. But as I’ve given myself permission to honor who I truly am, that same spirit from when I felt fully alive twelve years ago is returning. I can feel congruence settling in, though the parts of my life I’m still afraid to release keep creating a heaviness that saps my drive for what truly matters. Yet, I see now that the more I live as I’m meant to, the more lifeblood I have for the work I’m called to do.

When I lived true to myself, I didn’t have to manufacture the drive or courage—they simply emerged. The difference wasn’t what I was doing, but how easily the right actions flowed from who I was.

To live into our true nature means to move through the world in a way that is uniquely ours—a way of seeing, solving, creating, and connecting that feels natural and true. It’s not just about what we do for work or the roles we play. It’s the intricate pattern woven through everything: how we think, spend, give, and serve. Our blueprint shapes the rhythm and flow of our lives, like a unique fingerprint on our soul. Recognizing it is the first step; honoring it brings harmony, while ignoring it leads to fragmentation.

IV. The Dare

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.

Ultimately, the question isn’t whether you have a calling—it’s whether you’ll do the work to discover and honor it.

This work isn’t complicated, but it requires a deep honesty—the kind that lets you feel the difference between swimming with the current and fighting it. There’s an intuition that kicks in when we step into the rushing river that is our authentic life. It flows with joy, life, and unstoppable exuberance. But there’s also the opposite: the grinding, upstream swim against who we really are—the friction; the exhaustion that no amount of motivational TED talks can fix.

The choice is yours. You can keep wearing clothes that don’t fit, accepting the quiet exhaustion, and letting what matters most slowly slip away. Or you can honor the design that’s written into your bones by following the thread of what makes you come alive. One path leads to slow erosion and the sense that you’re living someone else’s life; the other leads to the natural flow, clarity, and action that emerges from deep knowing. Your body already knows which path is true—the rest is courage, and a willingness to follow.