Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty, Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called

Five Paths to Your Purpose. Probably the most common question I get from people is, how do I find my purpose?

Why don't I feel that I'm on purpose? Well, it turns out there are certain things you have to do to find your purpose, and I broke

them down into five, and I made a little masterclass about it. So if you'd like to see it, just go to

marthabeck.com slash purpose, and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all.

Welcome to the Gathering Room podcast, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck. Today, my topic is actually one of my favorite ones.

As you probably know, I was raised Mormon. And there are some things about Mormonism that I

don't agree with, but there are things I very much do agree with. And one of them is that

there is a Mormon saying that the reason for existing, men are that

they might have joy, it says. And it means humans, of course, but it says men because that's what they

say. Humans are that they might have joy. I remember thinking as a teenager when I'd lost all belief in everything, I think I'm

willing to throw in my lot with that statement because joy like beauty is its own excuse for being.

And if I can experience it, I'm good. I'm good to go. And so I always try to live that way, but recently I kind of lost

my joy. I misplaced it, really. It's not like something terrible happened. What happened

was really simple. I was doing a lot of things that brought me joy and I thought, well, this is

the way to joy,

so I did them harder. And if you do things too much, you go, a strength becomes a weakness.

A strength exaggerated becomes a weakness. So I was, I loved going out and walking in the woods, and I loved painting cityscapes and I loved

working on this community and on the coaching that we do and oh yeah I took on a few new coaching

people that I just absolutely adore and I thought this is the way to happiness. I'll do it more. And I got tired because the point of joy is not to give you a mechanism and just have you ride that thing as fast as it goes. The point of joy is that it's a balancing place for the psyche, for the soul,

for the body, and finding that place of balance and following it wherever it goes is the way

to stay in a place where life feels deeply, deeply meaningful. So let me define this. Joy is not the same

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