Passion, The Signpost to a Fulfilled Life

Passion is such a buzzword right now, so many times I have people come and say to me, if I only knew what my passion was I could change my life and be happy. It is like they are some big secret, something that is hidden from them that if they could only see everything would be great.

Having specifically worked with passions for a while now I have to reveal a secret – your passions are not something that are hidden away from you, something to be discovered that you haven’t previously allowed yourself to see. One person I was talking with said that when she wrote down her passions nothing new came to mind. How could it? We can only be passionate about what we know, or we think we know, we want. You can’t be passionate about something you don’t know. But you can, and many people are, not be focused on your passions or even dismiss them because they are so obvious.

When I work with clients who want to make changes in their life one of the first things we do is to look at passions because they hold great clues as to what the next step could be. And, yes you do want to be passionate about what you do. But there is a fundamental difference between feeling passionate about what you do and your actual passions.

Why is that? Well your passions are not just related to your work as some people think. They will most likely include your work, and they will also be over the whole broad spectrum of your life. And this is important as when you decide on a new direction you need to take everything into consideration. And your passions are not just one thing that can be translated into a career either. Living a passionate life is far more than that.

What I have seen is that many people think that passions have to have bells and whistles attached, or have to be something lofty to be achieved. One of my clients had problems trying to think of what he might put on his list at the beginning of the Passion Test process and at the end quickly scribbled down two things to complete his list. He thought them rather mundane and that they wouldn’t feature in his passion list – however they turned out to be his top two passions! Truth be told – your passions are what is important to you right now.

Why is that important when you are looking to change your life? Because right now is when you are looking for the next thing, and your passions are elements of that new direction for you. As I work with clients we identify many different elements that will eventually comprise, if not all, a lot of the new direction. Some of the areas that passions arise are work, fun, learning, home, family, relationships, hobbies to name a few. Passions have no limits.

I want to make this point because I have found that some people get so hung up on discover the ONE THING that they can be passionate about that their true passions never actually get a look in. I had a client who once she discovered her top five passions was very surprised to see organising as one of her top five. She said that if I had asked her to write her top five passions off the top of her head that wouldn’t have been in it. However as she looked at them, she saw that yes actually that is a huge part of who she is, and what she loves. This then gave her a new direction to look in regarding a career move.

Why else is it so important to understand our true passions? Because even though we obviously know these things, we are not focused on them, we are not giving them airtime and it is the giving of airtime that makes all the difference in the world. What I have found happens is that by making them my top focus, and by choosing in favour of them every time my life has shifted. If you know where you are going, even if you don’t have all the answers as to how it’s going to happen, you are 100 times more likely to achieve it.

There are three steps to this:

Intention: Consciously stating what it is you choose to experience in your life is the first step to manifesting it. This is about being clear about the ‘what’ you would like to create in your life – no limits.

Attention: Give attention to that which you choose to experience in your life, and it will begin to show up. You focus your attention by putting your attention on your Intention both through engaging with your passions - reading them through and focusing on them daily - and by taking action. This action isn’t always going to be everything that could create the thing you want but is about doing all that you can in the moment, and letting go.

No Tension: That letting go is the No Tension. An openness to what is appearing in the moment allows life to flow. Take ‘easy action’ (not a trying and striving and forcing something to happen), then ‘let go’ and let Life take care of the ‘how’. This is the ‘this or something better’. When you hold tightly to your concepts of how things should be, you shut off from the flow of life, which in turn prevents you from enjoying the fulfilment of living your destiny
Your passions are right there with you now; they are not some elusive mist. All you need to do is allow yourself to see them and then choose to let them lead the way.