Finding Purpose in the Pandemic

I recently found an excellent article by Margie Warrell, author and leadership coach, all about using this quarantine as an opportunity to rethink your life. 
You can find the full article here, but one of the most helpful moments in the article was a very simple exercise you can do today to help you reevaluate your life. 

She says: 
"Albert Einstein once advised that we should not aim to be a person of success but a person of value. Being a person of value requires anchoring ourselves to values that transcend our ego and compel us to reset our ‘life compass’ on the highest and holiest vision for our lives. One that aligns to the deeper truth of who we are, harnesses the best we have to give, and calls on us to step into our lives, and into the world in a wholly new way...

...Living purposefully requires constantly resetting our attention on the things that matter most. Yet ironically enough, things that matter most are rarely things at all. Rather they’re the values upon which we want to build our lives; they’re the attributes of the person we aspire to be; they’re the mark that, in our heart of hearts, we feel most called to make...
...If you’ve often felt tired or yearned for some spark of life to be ignited within you, then perhaps it’s not that you’ve been too busy, doing too much. Perhaps it’s really because you’ve not been doing enough of what your deepest self wants.
So take seize the opportunity to seize this quiet hour in the long arch of your life. Take yourself somewhere quiet and, whether on a keyboard or with old fashioned pen and paper, reflect upon your unexamined answers and the deeper questions we too rarely take time to ponder:

What values do I want my life to stand for?
What mark do I wish to make?
What kind of person do I want to be others?
As life’s end, how do I want to measure success?

I hope that answering these questions posited by Margie will either affirm that you are on the right path or help you course correct your current path to one that is more fulfilling and more aligned with your values. 

At the end of the day, how we define success for ourselves, I believe, is intrinsically tied to our why. Our whys are linked with our values. As artists, we are constantly told by others what success should look like for our own careers--fame being the most common marker. But only YOU can define what success means. 
Tomorrow, I'll do a deeper post on finding your creative why.