How To Untap Your Unstoppable Passion
Unleashing Your Inner Drive: The Ultimate Guide to Unstoppable Motivation
My friend and fellow blogger Barrie Davenport has just launched a brand new site that is entirely devoted to helping people uncover and live their life passions. I love how she presents this subject with such authority , and so when she asked for an interview I didn’t have to think twice about doing so.
So here below are my questions and her fabulous answers. Be prepared for impactive words that could just change your life.
- How important is it to get quiet – in order to identify your passion?
Identifying your life passion is equal parts introspection and action. Much of the early work around finding your passion involves self-discovery work such as learning more about your personality, skills, values, and aptitudes. It also requires creating a vision for your life based on your core values. This certainly requires getting quiet and asking yourself the important questions about what is most important and how you want your life to look, and listening to your intuition about these things. Also, in order to clear a path for your life passion, you must identify and address the roadblocks. These might include limiting beliefs, emotional issues, fears, and other things that prevent you from moving forward. Often dealing with these issues requires getting quiet in order to be truly honest with yourself and to get to the root of the problem. And of course, it is during those quiet and reflective times that our creativity tends to blossom. When we give ourselves the space, our minds have this propensity for generating amazing ideas and insights. However, identifying your passion also involves getting out of your mind and taking real action. This might include reading and research, experimentation, and planning. So both quiet introspection and solid action are necessary ingredients in the passion search.
- Is becoming sensitive to my environment important if I am going to discover my passion?
Yes, it absolutely is important. And so many people have created environments that prevent them from pursuing their passions in a meaningful way. We fill our lives with so much stuff – material stuff, emotional stuff, and an over-abundance of activities, tasks, and unnecessary time-fillers. We are so overwhelmed and distracted that there is no room for passion and no time to search for it. One of the first steps I recommend to people as a life passion coach is to begin to simplify their lives – both their interior and exterior lives. Living a passionate life requires that you focus intently on your passion. You need to have the time to be fully engaged in it, to practice it, to continue to learn and grow with it. Otherwise, you are just skimming the surface which will never allow your passion to blossom. It is imperative that you create an environment that is conducive to life passion. And to do that, you must be aware of your current environment and how you can change it.
- What questions should I ask myself in order to truly understand my passion?
Oh my, there are so many questions. Finding your passion is a process – like peeling back the layers of an onion. But one great place to start is by asking yourself these three questions:
1) What are your most important life values?
2) When in the past have you felt most engaged in something and in “the flow”?
3) What do you feel are your natural aptitudes (even if you aren’t proficient in them)? When you can identify the intersection of your values, your aptitudes, and what really engages you, you are on the way to uncovering your passion. In the simplest terms, I see life passion as this equation: strong interest + practice + engagement + purpose = life passion. When you have a strong interest in something and you begin to practice it to become proficient, you hopefully become more engaged in the interest. As you become more engaged, you come to internalize a higher purpose for your pursuit – it becomes deeply meaningful for you. That is when it truly becomes a passion. There are other times you begin to practice a strong interest pursuit, but it doesn’t engage you. This is part of the natural experimentation of seeking your passion.
- Where do I go to find clues about my passion?
There are clues in many places. You can take personality and career assessments to get some good foundational information. You should go back into your childhood and youth to look at old interests and passions you may never have explored fully. You can read about other people who have pursued various passions to see what resonates with you. You can focus on what you find yourself gravitating towards at work or in your personal life. Are you the person who helps people solve problems? Do you tend to be the organizer? Start paying attention to these things even if they don’t seem like the potential for a passion. Of course, trial and error ipassion for most people. You have to experiment, go down the road a bit with one or more ideas or interests. There’s nothing like real-world experience to inform you about what makes you feel engaged and happy. And it is so important to value and embrace this process of finding your passion. The search should not be a means to an end. It is during the search that much of your personal growth and self-awareness occurs.
- How important is it to take a risk?
It is absolutely necessary in order to live a passionate life. Rarely do any life choices or decisions come with a guarantee. You can do the due diligence, think and ponder, ask yourself questions, research and study – but at some point, you have to take that leap of faith. If you don’t, you will stay stuck forever. Any positive change requires risk. And there is something so powerful and life-altering about taking that leap. That moment when you decide you’ve done everything you can and it’s now or never – and then you leap. It is a breathtaking moment. It’s as though we know instinctively that the universe will catch us.
- What else should I know about the pursuit of my passion?
You should know that it is one of the most important, life-changing pursuits you will ever undertake. This is your one beautiful life, and you mustn’t waste it living a life of quiet desperation, unhappiness, or boredom. You have the ability to thrive – to become deeply engaged in something that will make you feel alive, enthusiastic, and purposeful. One of my favorite quotes is this: “Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night.” Go after it with all of your heart and soul. Take the time, do the necessary work of learning more about who you are, what you want in life, and how you can make that happen. You will never, ever regret spending your time in this pursuit. Even an incremental move toward your life passion will increase your quality of life. Yesterday is not too soon to begin!
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