I remember re-entering my body and finding myself in a hospital with a stiff and overbearing neck brace. I had just spoken to a “council” of six shadow figures, who told me I had more work to do in the world and asked me if I wanted to do it. I said yes, and was returned back to earth.

Hours earlier, I had been wakeboarding and hit a near-fatal wave that sent me to the hospital unconscious. What transpired when I was unconscious would dramatically shape the course of my life.

I experienced what scientists refer to as a “Near-Death Experience,” in which thousands of case studies report sensations of leaving their bodies, spending time in an otherworldly realm, meeting spiritual beings, and feeling a sense of connectedness to all things.

After my NDE, my sense of what mattered most in life was turned upside down. I used to wake up most mornings with a nagging sense that there was more I was meant to be doing with my life, without having any idea of how to do it.

Maybe you can relate to this nagging feeling or are like the 50% of other Millennials that want more direction in their lives.

While most of us will never experience an NDE—statistically they affect just 5% of the population—we can all gain value and perspective from those who live to tell about one. If you’re unsure about what you want to do with your life, NDE survivors can help shed light on what might be the right next step for you.

Meet Cherie Aimée, a fellow “NDEr” whose story is a well-known medical miracle to the world’s leading cardiothoracic surgeons. After dying in her husband’s arms, she sustained no heart beat for 90 minutes. Since then, she’s been interviewed by major news and TV networks, is a #1 bestselling author and an international motivational speaker, and has built a six figure company around living life with no regrets: Live Big Be Happy.

This week on the Unconventional Life Podcast, I spoke with Aimée about her NDE and the lessons she learned from it.

Aimée’s story is particularly remarkable because of the resilience she demonstrated in the face of her circumstances. After receiving a bionic heart transplant and enduring a 3-month coma, Aimée went on to build a 6-figure brand.

“When I started my brand, I was in a wheelchair,” Aimée recounts. “I was thinking to myself, ‘how am I going to hold up to other experts in the field when I am here feeling broken?’”

In spite of her limitations, Aimée did everything in her power to share her story and spread a message of compassion, love, and hope. “I built my whole brand from my iPhone,” she says.

Below, Aimée shares three tips to help you find direction and meaning in your life.

Make A Commitment To Fall In Love With Yourself

First and foremost, Aimée says the foundation of a successful life is loving yourself. However, this isn’t necessarily an easy feat. Our culture values certain aspects of self and condemns others—it’s easy to love the aspects of yourself that get external approval, like being disciplined, courageous, compassionate, and assertive. But loving aspects like your laziness, your tendency to blame and resent, your anger, and your cowardice can be challenging.

The sense of stability and fearlessness you gain from loving all of yourself is worth the fight. “Make a commitment to fall in love with yourself, the way you did before you allowed all these rules and limitations to limit your greatness,” says Aimée. Say to yourself, I’m going to commit to do the work—whatever it’s going to take so I can fall in love with myself—because I have a big mission and it is my responsibility to shine my light in the unique way that I was born for.”

Journal Everyday

One practice to help you love yourself is to journal every day. Don’t worry about a time limit, or a length prescription. Write whatever comes to your mind. “Write your thoughts, as scary as they are. It’s a process of getting it out, and getting it out starts the process of healing,” Aimée says.

Studies by the University of Rochester found that keeping a journal helps you manage anxiety, reduce stress, and establish order when your world feels chaotic. Those who write their goals down in a journal are 42% more likely to accomplish them. Use your journal to help you let go of self-judgment, access clarity, and take action upon your deepest innermost yearnings.

Visualization… The word calls to mind images of sitting cross-legged on bohemian pillows and chanting nonsensical phrases as the scent of burning sage wafts through the air.

In our fast-paced culture of doing, visualization may seem like the last thing that will actually help you arrive at where you want to be. You can’t just visualize what you want to happen and expect a concrete result, can you?

Science shows you actually can. Neuroscientists at Harvard foundthat playing the piano and simply thinking about playing the piano produces the same change in our brains. In both cases, gray matter expands, proving that mere thought can affect physical matter equally as action.

In other domains, visualization has been shown to improve the performance of athletes, to heal the body of disease, and to increase the success rate of achieving goals.

If you’ve been feeling stuck or are lacking clarity in making your next career move, visualization may just be the missing link for you.

Carrie Green, the founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, says visualization is what helped her conquer a quarter-life crisis and access the clarity to create what is now a global network of 300,000 female entrepreneurs, and counting.

I caught up with Green about the power of visualization on the latest episode of the Unconventional Life podcast, “Visualization: The Secret to Finding Breakthrough Clarity.”

Green first learned about visualization from her father at the young age of 9. Growing up with a learning difficulty, Green was barred entry from prestigious schools and struggled with self-confidence.

What enabled her to persevere through these setbacks was visualizing a more empowering reality. “It really helped me to expand my vision of what was possible and what I could create,” Green says.

Visualization stayed with Green as she grew into adulthood. While studying law at the University of Birmingham, she was able to launch a profitable side business to pay for tuition as a result of her deep-rooted belief in her own abilities.

Though she knew nothing about online businesses, she scavenged the internet for free resources to build a website from scratch that ultimately began generating over $10k in monthly sales. “If I could make this happen from being someone absolutely clueless, than what more is possible?” she wondered.

Thus, the idea for the Female Entrepreneur Association was born. The FEA is a platform for women to come together and experience support and community in business. The site has become an authority for women to access inspirational and empowering content that serves as a beacon along their entrepreneurial journeys.

“I was consciously aware of the fact that my success is my responsibility and it’s not an accident, so if I wanted to create it I needed to create it on purpose with so much intention,” Green says.

On the FEA Facebook page, visualization and mindset-related quotes dominate the feed, garnering thousands of likes from purpose-driven women like Green who are applying her advice with massive success.

Below, Green shares five ways you can use visualization to pierce through the veil of uncertainty and harness the clarity you need to make your next big move.

1. Think about what you want to achieve or what you want to happen in your life. Don’t limit yourself here—hone in on what makes you feel the most excited or most inspired about living, regardless of “how” this might be possible. Are you lit up by contribution to others? Do you desire greater health and vitality? What is it that excites you?

2. Close your eyes and connect with what you want in your mind. “See a movie in your mind,” Green says. “Where are you, what’s going on around you, what can you see and feel and touch?” Visualize a vivid scene in which you have already attained what it is you want. Maybe you’ve just launched your dream business and are feeling the rush of excitement as sales flood into your account while you work remotely in a lush tropical location.

3. Commit to a daily practice. Make it a habit to visualize what you want and, most importantly, how it makes you feel for at least a few minutes each day.

4. Keep a goal jar. Write each your goals for the future on a tiny piece of paper and store them in a jar where you can pick them out and visualize them from time to time. This ensures your goals stay organized, on hand, and fresh and mind.

5. Have fun with it. Green jokes that the strangest opportunities have appeared in her life from visualization. “Either I’m producing them through visualization or it’s just a coincidence, but I really think it’s more than that,” she says. No matter what you attribute the cause of your success to, mind or matter, visualization is a fun way to connect with what you deeply desire in life while expanding your mind.

Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life you love here.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

According to a study by the American Psychological Association, 18 to 35 year olds are the most stressed out generation ever—earning ourselves the nickname “Generation Stress.”

Let’s face it, figuring out what you want to do with your life can be quite stressful. For many millennials, the single most importantfactor in the workplace is finding work that is purposeful.

Though the search for purpose is front and center,  it can also be the thing that is most elusive. In a culture that is perpetually focused on the “next” big thing—like the press feature or promotion we dream of—it’s nearly impossible to experience fulfillment today.

How are you supposed to know if you’re on the right path if what you want is always a few steps ahead of you?

One millennial thought-leader says the key is a simple shift in focus: it’s not about getting something or somewhere but rather about giving something.

Meet Peta Kelly, a speaker, self-made millionaire by age 25, and founder of a global movement empowering Gen Y to live radically fulfilling lives through contribution.

This week on Unconventional Life, Kelly shares how to align yourself with the career path that’s best for you.

Growing up as one of four kids with a single mom in Perth, Australia, Kelly says she developed a strong work ethic from an early age.

Work for Kelly initially looked very traditional, earning a bachelor’s and a master’s en route to a Ph.D. But midway through her Ph.D. program, she experienced a “big whack” from her intuition that sent her spinning in an entirely new direction: entrepreneurship.

“I began to feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction and misalignment. I had no choice but to listen,” says Kelly.

Since making that transition, Kelly has gone on to lead others who find themselves at a similar crossroads. Her event, The New Way Live, serves as an awakening ground for thousands to reroute themselves on their own creative career paths.

The access point to discovering the path that is right for you is what Kelly calls your “zone of genius.”

“We all have a zone of genius,” Kelly says. “Unique talents and abilities. We have this zone of bliss, creativity, productivity, effectiveness and efficiency that we can live in… But we can’t live there if we are only moving based on what’s practical and logical. Excitement is the compass.”

If you’re feeling uncertain about whether you’re on the right career path, tapping into your zone of genius could be the solution for you.

Below, Kelly shares 7 ways to know if you’re living from your zone of genius and are on the career path that’s right for you.

1. You’ve quieted the noise. You’ve quieted the external noise in your life that prevents you from doing you. The voices of other people—the expectations, the “shoulds,” the “what will they they thinks”—are no longer a factor for you. You are deeply connected to your innermost desires and often take quiet time to deliberately discern what your next move is.

2. You’re doing what excites you the most. You wake up in the morning and the first thought on your mind is how excited you are to do what you’re most passionate about. You can hardly call it “work” because it feels like play for you—you’d do it even if you weren’t being paid and weren’t on the clock.

3. You’re a master at what you do. The work you do is inspired from the gifts and abilities you were born with. You do what you do better than anyone you know, and it’s effortless for you. Forget the grind, the stress, the 10,000 hours—you’re simply playing your muse.

4. You don’t settle for mediocrity. You don’t have time for a thousand and one “side” projects. You are focused on what you do best and you aren’t watering the things you’re just mediocre at. “Was Steve Jobs a fashion icon? Was Albert Einstein a great cook? Was Nikola Tesla the world’s best tree lopper? No,” Kelly jokes.

5. You don’t work for your schedule, it works for you. Your work schedule is centered around the time your creativity is most active. If you thrive at 2:00 in the morning, you’re working then. You save the times you’re prone to feeling brain dead for things like responding to emails, and you’ve got at least a few hours each day reserved for play.

6. Everything in your life is “working.” You experience a deep sense of alignment in everything from the thoughts you think about yourself, to the opportunities that show up in your life at the right time, to the ample resources you have to do the things you love. You’re not crunched for time or money, and you no longer have limiting beliefs that put a cap on how good your life can become.

7. You’re committed to service. Your primary focus is on the impact of your work. You thrive on contribution and are aligned with a business that serves the needs of the planet. You don’t support businesses that are centered around one person, but rather that are centered around a collective. You are constantly looking for new ways to create solutions for humanity and positive change in the world.

Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life you love here.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com