Find Your Passion. It’s out there!
Finding your passion and having the courage to follow it can give your life new meaning. Many people struggle all their lives and never really discover or have the courage to follow their passion. Often, they are lead to believe by others around them that their passion is insignificant or without merit. It is important to remember that if there is something in your life that brings extreme joy and excitement it will always be significant and will always hold merit. Just because someone may not enjoy a good cup of coffee does not make coffee worthless. Coffee is a billion dollar industry. Millions of people are employed by coffee. Many people are millionaires because of coffee. People complete business deals over coffee.
Relationships are started and strengthened over coffee. The point? Everyone has their own cup of coffee, or their own individual passion. It may not mean to someone else what it means to you, but it is yours. Don’t ever let anyone lead you to believe otherwise. You hold the key to your happiness. You just have to be willing to unlock the door.
So now, you may be wondering what to do if you don’t know what your passion is. You may remember career day in school where teachers handed out questionnaires about your interests, what things you enjoy, etc. Once your answers were totaled, it was supposed to give you ideas of jobs that may make you happy in life. Although those questionnaires may have some validity, they were always limited to the typical 9-5, corporate, or generic artistic type jobs. They never ventured outside of a blanket title and they never discussed the difference of a job versus life passion.
For instance, you may have answered that you like the outdoors, to work independently, to be trusted with responsibility, and are interested in the environment. The conclusion would suggest you could probably find true happiness and fulfill your life’s passion in waste disposal because it met those characteristics. Not to degrade anyone in the waste disposal business, because it is a honest, highly important job in our society, but I don’t believe many people truly have a life passion for emptying garbage bins. These questionnaires tend to gather information and suggest a blanket occupational passion, but passion is not necessarily something popular or typical in society. A passion is individual and sometimes following it has nothing to do with making a living, but everything to do with making a life.
Many people live their lives day to day content with the things they do and the habits they form, but many still have a nagging feeling like something is missing. Some people tend to chase money or attention or become overachievers because they believe if they just get that big payoff they will be happy, but often the payoff is not external. It is internal and until you find that inner happiness within, you will never be content and always be searching for more.
Everyone has a passion. They may not be fully aware of it, or how to find it and live it, but they dream, they believe, and somewhere deep down inside it is there.
So How do you find your passion?
Passion is what drives you. It may make provoke happiness, anger or inspiration or compassion, whichever it is for you it moves you. It comes from the soul.
You have to get in touch with your heart and head. Here are some tips to help you get in touch with your passion.
To get in touch with your heart and head you need to concentrate on you. Take care of yourself. Sometimes we spend so much time on other people that we neglect ourselves. Mothers are especially guilty of this. Start by spending time with yourself, nurture your inner spirit, read a good uplifting book, exercise, eat right, do simple creative projects like work on a family album, put together a scrapbook of your life and what it means to you. By doing these type of things you start engaging your heart and your true inner spirit with your everyday life. Often our hectic lives become so busy and chaotic that we can become disengaged from our feelings and we often put off what we really want or need. It is important not to lose track of what we really desire and the true importance of life.
As you start to recognize or reconnect with important things in your life and the feelings associated with them, take it a step further. Start to closely evaluate what evokes those feelings. What makes you happy? What makes you sad or feeds you negative energy? What makes you excited? Evaluate everything. When you watch the news how do you feel? When you are at work evaluate what happens throughout your day. How does it affect you and how do you respond? When you talk with friends or family what do you talk about? Why? How does it make you feel? The idea is to become aware of yourself and what moves and motivates you.
-What interest, passion or desire do you have but are afraid to share with others?
-If failure was not an option, would you be willing to try something that you are too afraid to try now?
-If you had an unlimited supply of money, is there something particular you would do?
-What do you dream about doing?
-When people ask you what you do or what your interests are, do you shy away from telling them your true interests or secret hobbies? Do you only tell them what you do to make a living rather that what makes you want to live?
-What are you not pursuing your true passion now?
-List five things that you want. List five things that you’re good at. Do you know the difference between them?
-When you were young, before you had any environmental influences what did you want to be when you grew up?
-How would you like the world to be?
-What would you regret not having done if your life was ending?
Once you define your passion and know what you want to do the only thing left to do is do it. Stop analyzing and over analyzing your plan of action start doing something! So you have to start trying new things and you are afraid, so what? You could either sit and do nothing or start and do something. By doing something you open doors for something more. Challenge your fears with action, you’ll not only raise your self-esteem, self-awareness and gain experience and learn valuable lessons for future use.
[...] Many people struggle all their lives and never really discover or have the courage to follow their passion. Often, they are lead to believe by others around them that their passion is insignificant or [...]
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