Health & Wellness
What Is Your Soul’s Signature?

By Udhedhe Ojile
My soul signature or rather the unique rhythm of my life is soft.
Not soft in the lazy, passive sense. Soft like soil that holds roots. Soft like slow mornings. Like depth over speed. Before the “soft life” trend, softness was already my instinct, my resistance to unnecessary pressure and haste. Not because I fear ambition, but because I sense that what is meant for me doesn’t arrive through force. It flows.
I don’t move fast. I move deep.
That depth explains why I don’t take everything seriously, not in the cynical sense, but because I know I don’t have to grip life tightly to receive its gifts. I believe what’s mine will find me in divine timing, not societal timing.
But softness doesn’t mean smallness. My soul craves creativity and authenticity not just surface-level beauty, but the kind that explores the entire range of being human. My soul wants to feel all of it: grief, joy, heartbreak, elation. It’s drawn to the strange, beautiful complexity of human connection; across generations, cultures, and contradictions. I’m not interested in neat binaries. I want the grey. The nuance. The messy middle where truth lives.
Why I Don’t Set Goals
(And What I Do Instead)
Discovering my soul signature led me to a rather shocking revelation – I can’t set goals. For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me because I couldn’t stick to goals. I’d make elaborate plans and abandon them. I’d try to follow systems that worked for others but felt like shackles on me.
Eventually, I realized: it wasn’t a failure. It was a misalignment.
My soul doesn’t chase end goals. It moves through intention. I prefer to set rhythms over rules, practices over milestones. Intentions allow me to evolve. They’re spacious enough to hold change. And most importantly, they let the process be the point.
It’s not that I’m directionless, I’d say rather that I’m deeply guided. But I’ve never been able to name exactly what the destination looks like. And that’s because my soul needs room to become. My life has always unfolded like a series of breadcrumbs, not a straight path.
Last month, I tried to ignore that. I tried to live fast. I forced timelines. I abandoned rhythm. And I paid for it — loudly. I burned out, emotionally and mentally. Everything in my spirit said: This is not your way. I cannot do speed. I do planting. I do long-haul. I do sacred pace.
Soul vs. Society
Of course, there’s tension between my soul and the world. The world rewards hustle. Grind. Metrics. Viral success. It tells you to be everywhere, do everything, and win fast.
But I’m wired for the slow burn; tugging gently at my dreams, trying things out, pivoting when needed, and nourishing what’s real. The garden of my life grows slowly but meaningfully. And in that garden, mental health is the sunlight. Without it, nothing blooms.
To others, that may look undisciplined. But discipline isn’t just about rigidity, it can also mean protecting your peace. It can mean saying no to the algorithm and yes to alignment.
I remember something my father once told me on visiting day in boarding school. He looked up at the sky and said:
“See how vast it is? Everyone has their own lane, each with its own pace, trials, and victories.”
That stayed with me. Whenever I feel off-track, I remind myself: I am not behind. I’m just growing at my own rhythm.
On Soul Gardening
I think of soul signatures like plants. Some people are cacti. Some are monsteras. Some are wildflowers. They all need care; water, light, nourishment, but the dosage varies. What overfeeds one starves another.
So why do we garden our souls like everyone else?
Why do we take literal advice from people with completely different soil or care plans?
The work of life is to figure out what you are and how you grow. To study yourself like a garden. The universal principles may apply — rest, joy, nourishment — but the specifics are yours to discover.
The Role of Experimentation
Living in alignment with your soul signature doesn’t mean sitting idle. It means moving intuitively. Saying yes often. Trying things out. Figuring out patterns. Learning what sticks. You can’t know what works for your soul until you’ve tested it.
I’ve said yes to things that didn’t work — jobs, friendships, routines. But even those “wrong” turns taught me something. They helped me build the manual of me. They showed me my yeses and my hard no’s. They introduced me to amazing people who cracked me open and people who were purely lessons in passing. They gave me data.
Unfortunately, we don’t arrive in life with handbooks. We curate them as we go.
In Closing
If you’re in the middle of your own tug-of-war between the world and your soul — especially in a place like New York, where speed is a currency — I hope you pause.
Before you say yes. Before you commit. Before you compare. I hope you ask yourself; Does this feel right to my soul?
I don’t have it all figured out. But lately, I’ve started to see a shadowy outline of my soul’s signature. And I know it’s not fixed. It will morph and change. But I’m ready to stick around and watch it bloom.
And if you’re still in the fog, keep going. Keep observing. Keep experimenting. Life will whisper back eventually.
You’ll recognize your rhythm when it starts to feel like home. Happy soul searching!
Udhedhe Ojile is a Nigerian-born writer and creative based in Brooklyn. She explores identity, emotion, and everyday beauty through personal essays and her evolving food project, Didieats. She’s currently in a season of planting — experimenting, observing, and documenting as her work takes shape.