Hi Alan,

My wife is a fan of yours. You have read for her several times and she says that you're the real deal. From your articles and what you've taught my wife, she says that life offers us lessons in the bad things that happen to us. I have lost my job. We have gone through nearly all of our savings and I wonder how I'm going to put food on the table. My question to you is what could possibly be the lesson in this? I'm all ears if I'm supposed to be learning.

Dan

Dear Dan,

It's always an honour to read for someone the first time who has been referred by a family member or friend. I am very fortunate to have a very loyal client base, which includes your wife. And I have to say that she's right. This is a lesson that life is trying to teach you. Moreover, it's a lesson that I predict within two years will be one that you will not only appreciate but will have learned.

But waiting isn't an option. You need some insights into how gold can be found in what seems to you to be something of a quagmire. Let's see what comes through.

As I connect with your energy, my first impression is that you've taken something of a right turn when you were supposed to go left. I won't say that it was a wrong turn. But it was certainly a detour. It's as if you've been delayed for what feels to me to be about fifteen years from doing what you are meant to do.

We all have ideas of what we want to do as children. Sometimes we end up in that profession and other times it's long forgotten. Sometimes we are right when we feel that we should be a doctor or a actress or a teacher or banker or truck driver . Other times we need to do something altogether different.

In your case, you went for the easy route. I'm not saying that what you did was easy and didn't require any effort. But you didn't really have to make it happen. It's as if this career fell in your lap. Again, it's wasn't wrong for you. It's provided more than a roof over your head and food on the table, as you say. It's given you valuable experience. But I sense that it was never what you were supposed to do.

What you were doing felt to me like a straightjacket. It was so strict, tight and formal. That might seem to sit nicely with the image that you now project. But I can sense that it's not you.

When I scan someone's energy, I allow an image to come forward that represents the part of you that hasn't been expressed enough and that is now preparing to step forward. With you, I get a very clear impression of someone who is cutting the chains that bind other people. I am seeing you in front of people who are shackled and you're freeing them. Of course, I don't believe that this is a literal vision of what you're meant to do. But it's very revealing nonetheless.

From a metaphorical or what you might call an archetypal perspective, you are a liberator. You have the energy of someone who releases people from that which prevents them from fulfilling their potential. While you don't have the energy pattern of a doctor or healer, you do need to be working with people who are suffering. And as a direct result of your interaction, their pain will be eased.

Will this kind of liberation be literal? Do I see you working with people who are incarcerated? No, I don't. Do I see you working with people who are in physical pain? Again, no, I don't. And yet, I see you helping people who are in some way imprisoned and you need to set them free.

To the world at large reading this column, this might sound a bit out there. But it's not going to sound out there to you because it's what you had intended to do. Perhaps you still wanted to be a truck driver as a little boy. But when you started university, I sense that you were something of a 'radical' – although I use that term in a very different sense than the way it's used today.

Before you went down the corporate route wearing your bespoke suit and silk tie, you wanted to right the wrongs of society. You wanted to level the playing fields. You wanted to give those who were less fortunate a fighting chance. But where you were, you couldn't do that. And until this recession came to pass, you were on schedule to become even more entrenched in that world.

Yours is a different world.

Your calling is one that if you will allow yourself to hear it will feel like coming home.

So, what's the next step for you? Well, I would recommend that you look back at who you were and what you believed in when you started university. Then, make a timeline and track yourself and your beliefs. Where and when did they change?

Take time to get to know this part of yourself that I'm calling the 'liberator' in you. Think about it from a symbolic perspective. Don't make it so literal that you cannot relate to it. Feel its connection to and within you. Look at how it has popped up again and again in your life. And notice how on far too many occasions you embraced its shadow by knocking it down and holding it back.

What's your lesson in all of this? It's to get to grips with bringing what you do in life in line with your liberator archetype. It's that simple and it's that complex.

Taking one's lesson in life or one's archetype and then identifying a congruent career path is something that I deal with in Career Readings. And with my Intuitive Life Coaching I work with clients on a one-on-one and intensive basis either to understand the lesson they are facing now or any other goal that they want support achieving.

I wish you all the best and just let me know if you want a Career Reading or would like to book an Intuitive Life Coaching session.

Good luck and please stay in touch!