What if the career you’ve built isn’t wrong—but it also isn’t the fullest expression of what you’re here to do?
In this episode of The Collected Identity, Michelle explores the idea of your Soul Path / Soul Pull—the unique collection of experiences, skills, challenges, relationships, and lessons that may be guiding you toward your deeper purpose.
We often assume that feeling uninspired by our work means we’re burned out or that it’s time to completely change careers. But burnout isn’t always about the job itself. Sometimes we’re asking our careers to provide the fulfillment that’s missing from other areas of our lives. And sometimes, the deeper issue is that we’ve outgrown the way we’re currently using our gifts.
Michelle shares how her own decades-long career in makeup ultimately became a breadcrumb. The makeup mattered—but underneath it was something even more important: connecting with people, intuitively understanding them, helping them feel confident, and supporting them as they stepped into important moments in their lives.
Those were clues.
Because your purpose may not be found simply by looking at your résumé. It may be hiding in the experiences that never made it onto the résumé at all.
The challenges you overcame.
The things you taught yourself.
The patterns you broke.
The people you naturally know how to help.
The skills that seem almost effortless to you.
When you begin looking at your entire life as experience—not just your professional accomplishments—you may start seeing the breadcrumbs that have been pointing toward your Soul Path all along.
In this episode, we explore:
- The difference between career burnout and deeper misalignment
- Why fulfillment can’t come from your career alone
- The eight areas of life and how imbalance in one can affect another
- What Michelle means by Soul Path / Soul Pull
- Why your lived experiences may matter just as much as your professional experience
- How challenges, relationships and circumstances become breadcrumbs
- Why the things you’ve mastered personally may become something you’re meant to share
- Michelle’s realization that makeup was never really just about makeup
- How to recognize when your gifts may be underutilized
- Why your purpose doesn’t necessarily require reaching millions of people
- Questions to help you identify what makes your contribution uniquely yours
- How following the breadcrumbs can begin moving you closer to the work you’re here to do
Questions to sit with after this episode
Is what I’m doing right now original?
How could I make what I do more me?
What have my lived experiences uniquely prepared me to do?
Is there something about the way I do this that only I can do?
How could what I’ve learned change someone else’s life?
Your Soul Path may not require throwing away everything you’ve already built.
The career, relationships, hardships, successes, mistakes, interests and seemingly unrelated experiences you’ve collected may be the very things preparing you for it.
Sometimes you’re not starting over.
You’re finally beginning to understand what all the breadcrumbs were leading you toward.
Have a question about Soul Path / Soul Pull?
Send it to [email protected] or connect with Michelle on Instagram.
If this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who may be questioning their purpose, career or next chapter.
@michelleclarkmakeup on IG
