How to Find Your 'Something More'

Whether you call it purpose, impact, or living a life that matters, I'm showing you mine and would love for you to show me yours.

Source: Dovapi on Depositphotos

Hi and welcome to ‘Something More’. For our new members who’ve joined us recently, I’m glad you found us. I’m Caroline Ferguson, mindset trainer, speaker and therapist. Join us as we have fun exploring mindset, self-leadership and a life that matters. Thank you for reading this free post. For just £80 a year you can join my monthly, live group-coaching sessions and receive extra mindset tools in your inbox.

The idea of “something more” underpins everything I do.

If you’ve been tuning in for a while, you may know that this newsletter was initially called “Born for Something More”. That seemed a bit unwieldy as a title so after a few months I jettisoned the first two words. The ethos remains the same, though.

The reason why I gave it that name was because, from my earliest years, I lived with the nagging feeling that there was ‘something more’ out there for me – a deep, instinctive sense of knowing that I had value to offer, and satisfaction to gain from delivering that value.

I know many of you feel that way too. Some call it purpose. Others talk about impact. I thought of it as the something more we were born not just to do, but to be.

Problem was, I hadn’t a clue what my “something more” actually was, and it caused me no end of frustration and soul-searching. For the longest time I assumed it was a creative itch, specifically around writing. I thought being a professional writer, a legitimate, recognised story-teller of some kind, would clear up that nagging feeling of unexplored potential.

“Yes,” I thought. “The creative fulfilment I’ll get from being a real writer will be MY something more.”

Then this thing happened that (in a very protracted way!) knocked my theory on the head.

In my mid teens, I picked up a copy of Vogue and saw an advert for a watch. Made by Swiss brand Ebel, it was solid gold, unfussy, and managed to be at once luxurious and discreet.

I wasn’t an especially materialistic girl but I was utterly seduced by this watch. I promised myself that one day I would buy it for myself as an acknowledgement that I was finally a ‘real’ writer, earning a living through my pen. I didn’t have the language at the time to articulate it, but the watch would effectively be my reward for finally living my something more.

After university I got trapped in an accidental career for a while, then moved into freelancing so that I could take time off to write. Years became decades. My stories began to receive attention but success was always one step ahead of me. Close, but no (Swiss movement, 18 karat gold) cigar.

I have a friend – let’s call him Jamie – who lives in the South of France. He knows his watches and I mentioned my dream Ebel to him (by now a rare, vintage classic.)
“Ooh, good choice,” said Jamie.

One day he called me, properly excited. “I’ve found your Ebel!” he almost yelled in my ear. “Lorenzo’s got one and he’s selling it because one of his polo ponies needs a ligament operation and he’s strapped for cash. It’s a bargain, you have to buy it!” (Jamie lives a different life to me.)

It sounded a tad bonkers that a glamorous young Argentinian polo trainer, who I’d briefly met (and yes, he was straight out of a Jilly Cooper novel), was selling a woman’s watch – MY watch. Most people with a 25-year-long Ebel yearning might have been excited at the opportunity, but I felt sick.

“Jamie, I can’t possibly buy it,” I said. “I haven’t earned it.”

“What?!” he screamed? “Don’t be ridiculous. The watch you’ve lusted after for 30 years just fell into your lap. It’s meant to be!”

“But I haven’t had a book published,” I said. “I’m not a professional writer. That watch was meant to be my reward. It would be cheating to buy it like this.”

Jamie sighed and then said, as if speaking to a child, “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a freelance business communications consultant for companies going through change.”

“That sounds so boring it makes me want to chew my tongue off,” he said. “What does it involve? What do you physically do?”

“Go to lots of meetings. Come up with messaging and create communications campaigns to educate employees and persuade them to adopt new behaviours to meet the company’s objectives.” It sounded less than compelling.

“Do you write the messaging and campaigns?”

“Um, yes…” I was starting to see where this was heading.

“So you spend all day writing stuff that would melt my brain, and you get paid for it.”

“I suppose so…” I said, watching my integrity preparing to take its own life, and feeling helpless to prevent it.

“Well, if every penny of your income comes from writing stuff, and that’s what people hire you for, at what point are you going to get over yourself, admit you’re a professional writer and buy the damned watch?”

Gotcha.

“Well when you put it like that…”

Of course I bought the damned watch.

You knew I would, didn’t you?

That beautiful thing sat in my jewellery box for nearly two decades, costing me a fortune in servicing and insurance. I think I wore it five times. I couldn’t get past the feeling that it had cheated its way into my life. I now understand, having done the work, that the whole episode challenged one of my core values, HONOUR. No wonder my decision to buy the watch was so triggering.

Plus it was supposed to be the symbol of me finding the something more I was born to be – and that was emphatically NOT a business comms person.

I carried on writing and finally things began to shift.

A co-writer and I optioned several screenplays that had household-name talent attached. I won and placed in several contests, and also attracted a reputable literary agent, who almost sold a novel another partner and I co-wrote.

I screamed for about an hour when I heard about this win.

Proof was arriving that at last I could think of myself as a ‘real writer’.

So why then was the old itch still there?

I had to confront the fact that, however much I loved telling stories – and still do – being a writer was not my something more. It was crushing to be approaching life’s midpoint and still be clueless about what kind of impact I wanted to make.

If writing wasn’t it, then how on earth was I ever going to find my something more?

In the end it happened through a combination of circumstances and intention.

I’ve written before about being in the front carriage of a crowded train that ran over and killed a person lying on the track, and how the three hours I spent waiting to get off that train changed the course of my life.

During those awful hours I made a commitment to live a life that matters and to explore what that might look like for me.

I figured out that my something more needed to:

• Make a measurable difference to others

• Bring me satisfaction and fulfilment.

• Provide scope to earn a living.

• Be something I could do well into old age.

• Be doable from anywhere in the world.

Making that commitment and coming up with those criteria started a process that therapists and computer programmers call a trans-derivational search (yuk) and I call brain-mining. It’s one of the most miraculous processes we can harness – I’ll walk you through how to do it in a future post.

It worked. Two months later I knew what and who I was meant to be.

My something more turned out to be helping others to stop self-sabotaging and develop the mindset, self-awareness and self-leadership skills to discover and live their something more.

How meta is that!

That clarity didn’t come straight away, though. It took a while for my something more to fully reveal itself. My initial desire was to become a therapist and help people deal with mental health issues, and I was all in.

I went back to college and trained in cognitive behavioural therapy and hypnosis. It was only gradually that I progressed onto mindset coaching, teaching people how to think in a healthy, flexible and resilient way, and that evolution shaped the process and methods I share with you here.

What I do know is the instant I made the decision to train as a therapist, 12 years ago now, the unscratchable itch I’d had all my life disappeared – for good. Every one of the criteria I set on the train that awful day has been met, except the old age one, and I’ve no intention of giving up for the foreseeable future. I’ve never felt this heart-led, happy and fulfilled.

Writing and storytelling are still passions (including this newsletter) and they enable and enhance the impact I deliver.

Have you felt, it, the itch?

It may be that you’ve found your something more and if so, heartfelt congratulations to you. Absolutely nothing beats the feeling that you’re living on purpose and genuinely making a difference.

But, if “I know I was born for something more than this” has been a drum beat in your life, rising and falling in the background, sometimes thunderous, sometimes whispering but never fully silenced, then you may want to try this play.

Seed your something more

Give yourself time and space, grab a pencil and that gorgeous notebook you’ve been saving for best, and run through these questions, one by one. Don’t over-think them or strive for Pulitzer quality answers. Scribble down whatever comes to mind – bullet points and doodles are equally valid:

1. What have you done, recently or in the past, that’s brought you a deep sense of satisfaction?

2. What positive impact(s) would you like to make, and on whom?

3. What values are important to you?

4. What do you do effortlessly that others struggle with?

5. What activity/ies do you get so engrossed in that time disappears (aside from reading, TV or video games)?

6. What world problem would you love to solve?

7. What would you never do again, if you had your way?

8. What would you like your eulogy to say about you? (Be specific about skills and achievements, not just “X was a great friend”.)

9. What does the phrase “live a life that matters” conjure up for you?

10. What activities would be a key part of your life that matters?

Ideally give yourself an hour, though even a minute spent reflecting on each of these questions can help stimulate your mind to go deep and start coming up with ideas. If even one thing hits home, it could lead to clearer focus and bring your something more within reach.

If you repeat the exercise again in a week, and then the week after, you may start to find shapes and patterns emerging that bring excitement and energy with them.

Try it and let me know in the comments how you get on.

What happened to the watch?

Last summer I decided it was time to let go of the Ebel. I put it in a fine jewellery auction and it sold for nearly three times what I bought it for. One month later the boiler in my little rental property self-destructed. The watch almost exactly covered the cost of installing a new one.

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Take care and see you next time,