There comes a point in everyone’s life, whether we are ready for it or not, when our soul starts to search for more. The day-to-day brainwashing, patterns, cycles, and routines; the social hypnosis, and same meaningless worldly pursuit of money, fame, and aesthetics isn’t enough anymore.
You see it in the rich, famous, and high-achievers, and wonder what the heck happens to them.
They have money, looks, and plenty of material things. Their social media posts make them look like they don’t have a care in the world.
Why do they lose their sh*t out of nowhere?
Did they ignore imminent soul searching?
What makes someone that outwardly appears to have it all together, lose it in the worst of ways?
What causes us to finally feel the need to transform our dated culturescape of beliefs that society conditioned us to abide by our own definition of happiness, fulfillment, and success?
We’ve inherited many of the ideas we have about careers and time from previous generations. They come from a culturescape that tries to condition us abiding limiting rules.
— Vishen Lakhiani
In this article, I will provide the answers to these questions, as well as provide 5 powerful indicators that you have indeed begun soul searching.
What Is the Soul?
Most people assume that the soul is specifically related to religion, spirituality, or the woo community, but the fact is that the soul goes much deeper than any box or strict set of parameters religion or even spirituality could place on it.
Your soul is working on your character. Where you can re-access your authenticity, your bravery, your decency and your higher purpose for your life.
— Robin Sharma
Additionally, whether you believe in God, energy, the universe, or something else, there will come a point on your journey when you will find yourself undeniably soul searching.
That’s when you’ll have no other choice but to admit to yourself that there is something bigger than you, inside of you.
We are not a body living in a soul, we are a soul living in a body.
Realizing this is yet another facet of our removal from the culturescape.
Your soul knows when you’re playing small, settling, and gagging on the only thing that makes you feel special: your authenticity.
It’s something that’s simply wanting to guide you, protect you, awaken you and remind you of who you really are despite how noisy your world may be.
How many times have you ignored this soul-searching voice and then regretted it?
Better yet, how many times have you felt the relief and safety of listening to its messages and warnings?
That is your soul.
Why Do We Start Soul-Searching?
The fact is that we were not created to wake up, work our butts off, worry about money 24/7, and numb ourselves to soften the worries.
And then what, repeat it all the next day? That’s not living or thriving. That’s surviving.
Everyone has their own definition of happiness.
But it doesn’t matter if you are an artist, a world leader, an entrepreneur, or a school teacher – we all have a higher purpose.
We all eventually feel a calling to do more with our existence than just pay bills and die.
That’s because everyone has a soul, a soulmate, and a soul-searching experience.
When we are not living that higher purpose, or actively pursuing it in all ways, it manifests itself as a search to find harmony and congruence.
This search stops at nothing to help us get there.
I know from personal experience, working with hundreds of leaders around the world that when our souls start to search, we can’t ignore it.
It’ll start raining tests, trials, and signs to wake us up and get our attention.
This is the point where many of us start to wonder what else can go wrong. The weight of troubles can feel heavy during soul-searching.
We feel derailed and as if we are trying everything, but that is really a crossroads for many.
It’s like getting the tires of your car aligned.
It’s a push, a sometimes not-so-gentle nudge, depending on how long you’ve been ignoring it; it urges you to get back on track and stay the course your soul wants to continue on.
Where we get lost
See, the problem is that we have become masters of distraction. Most individuals can’t sit still for 2 minutes to visualize or 10 minutes to meditate.
We have been hypnotized by society to believe soul-searching is weird. By catchy motivational speeches that want us to believe that if we are not busy, doing, doing, doing, we are not accomplishing anything – those are good.
But in that very nature of busyness and distraction, all of our inner voices become louder than the only one that matters: our soul’s voice.
This is when we settle for thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors that are the total opposite of what we truly want.
We then get results to match, and this is when we suffer.
Soul searching is the way home; the way back to yourself.
How to Know When You Are Soul-Searching
How do we know when the emptiness and total lack of satisfaction in life is really a call to stretch ourselves beyond everything that’s known to us?
Everyone reaches the point of rock bottom during their lives. Whether it’s emotional, mental, physical, or spiritual, we all reach a point where we question our own existence and purpose.
Here are just five powerful indicators that are not in any kind of specific order.
1. You unplug from the matrix
Who doesn’t love a good Matrix analogy? That movie was ahead of its time!
The first sign that you are soul-searching is that you notice things you didn’t before about your environment, circle of friends and family, and your habits.
And they all start to bother you on one or more levels.
You feel like part of a herd, following the crowd. You see the pits society falls into just before they throw their hands up and ask why they’re not happy.
This is the beginning of your awakening.
It all starts with realizing how comfortable you’ve been living blindly, followed by the undying need to break free from it.
2. Material things no longer hold such significance
When you are soul searching, clarity follows you everywhere you go, and with that comes countless mindset shifts.
You start to realize more and more just how meaningless material things are in the grand scheme of things.
You begin to lose interest in making money and material things your number one source of validation, purpose, and success.
Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you have money magically falling from the sky to pay for your commitments and live life the way you want.
Nor is it bad to want to have nice things and a nice life even as you are soul searching. But the meaning behind money shifts because you see it for what it truly is and nothing more: energy.
It means that energetically, you release the want, and the constant feeling of the lack of money because you no longer look to the measure it for success or happiness.
3. You develop an intolerance for negativity, gossip, and hate
When a soul searches, it looks for purpose, wholeness, and harmony. It’s almost like an instant negativity repellent spray comes over you and you want no part of the things that don’t feel good to you.
Another great confirmation of soul-searching is a complete and total disdain for anything that doesn’t serve the search, journey, or path; or that doesn’t bring you love and peace.
Our souls are not here to judge us or anyone else. They are not here to help us compete in the world.
When your soul is searching for a bigger cause and a higher purpose, it will refuse to focus even a fraction of your energy on anything that doesn’t help you on that journey.
You’ll find yourself no longer wanting to engage in negative conversations or hang around certain people.
You start changing the language you use and shifting your perspectives because soul alignment becomes the priority.
Your energy for anything other than soul-aligned tasks or relationships becomes scarce as you focus on making space for what you do want in life.
4. You start to question everything and crave meaning and purpose
When you’re soul-searching, conversations seem shallow, and topics that the world, Facebook, or some other social media platform can’t shut up about seem pointless and counter-intuitive.
You begin to question all your traditions, your rituals, and even your family’s passed-down ways of doing things.
A soul that is searching isn’t concerned with fitting in the crowd or pleasing anyone anymore.
Its primary focus is to lead you back to you – whatever it takes.
You crave freedom from addictions and toxicity.
You no longer want to make space for meaningless tasks, activities, relationships, and situations that don’t feel 100% in harmony when you are soul searching.
5. You cut people off and out
What starts off as you avoiding friends, family members, and acquaintances because you no longer feel they are on your vibe, grows stronger until the need to release them all together is unavoidable.
Your soul knows all your tricks, reasons, and excuses. It knows if and when you’ve used a relationship, job, or situation to hide from it or sit in fear of your power.
It helps you access the part of yourself that is able to see when a person no longer belongs in your space and needs to go.
When you are soul searching, it will reject anyone and anything that doesn’t belong on your journey. Sometimes, you’ll be the one doing the cutting-off.
Other times, it will work itself out to where that person is completely cut out of your life. Like magic.
Your soul knows that for you to reach the next level, space must be made.
It will stop at nothing and no one to help you reach it.
6. You feel lost, out of place, and unrest continuing in the known
When we feel lost, it’s because we are doing the wrong work.
Not realizing or acknowledging our soul searching journey ends in a typical culturescape cycle.
We focus on the wrong things, and end up living a life we don’t really want.
When our souls begin to search, one of the first things we feel is a sense of being lost. For some, it feels like they need to run as far as possible from everything and everyone.
For others, it becomes a daily practice of tuning in, increasing self-awareness and finding the things that need to be released so we can make space for the new coming our way.
From my own personal experience, I can tell you that this is one that most people don’t typically relate to soul searching.
But it is an unmistakable sign that you are no longer comfortable being the old you, because your soul isn’t going to stop until you remember the real you.
There are countless ways to know that you are going through an awakening and your soul is searching for deeper meaning.
As many as there are specific characteristics for each human being on the planet – there are endless possibilities.
It’s up to us to do the work that disconnects us from the current culturescape, including our own self-sabotaging voices and reunites us with our true selves.
Our paths are all different, so our exact methods of soul-searching will be too.
