Observing Your Passion
If you want to experience boundless energy, let's find out what your passion is. Your passion is whatever you will walk through fire to get to. Your passion may be different than your family, friends, or significant other or insignificant other. Although you may walk through fire to get to them, their passion may not be your passion.
Your passion lights up your brain. When you live your passion, you are oblivious to the opinions of others... you keep moving forward because you know in your heart there is something you need to express to feel fulfillment. Walking through fire will not stop you, mountains are just bumps in the road, and the stars are yours for the taking. This is what it is like to live passionately.
How do we come to understand what our passion is? Perhaps you already know what it is that you love to do the most. Perhaps you already know where you are in your element.
The word that is used for passion is translated from a Greek word meaning "to suffer". What are you willing to suffer for?
Mountain climbing can cause scraped knuckles, complete exhaustion, and you risk your life in falling. But this may not be as painful as sitting through a quilting session. You spend hours with a needle and thread making minute stitches, and seeing only a small part of your work at a time. When you are all done, you either sell it for next to nothing, or you give it away. Many people will not appreciate what you are doing and say "quilting??".
Writing a book requires lots of suffering. You have many people wondering "What are they really doing with their life?" Yu spend hours staring at the wall or the ceiling waiting for inspiration to come. Then when you write something down, you crumple it up, yell at it, and then you throw it away.
Another example in writing a book, you spend hours in creative mode and write 2000 pages in two days of fantastic information. You take a break, and come back home to find that your dog has eaten your manuscript. Then you follow your dog for the next three days with a pooper scooper. Perhaps your writing takes a while to digest.
How do we get through this? Is it worth our time? No one will appreciate us. What are you willing to do despite all of the time, energy and pain to get it? Are you looking for the holy grail? Are you willing to do whatever it takes? If you are not, this is not your passion.
Can you remember a time when you have something planned for the day, and you wake up at three o'clock in the morning anticipating the event? Was this Christmas? Was this Disneyland? Was this a date with Betty Lou? If you are following your passion, this can happen every day. You may have a hard time going to sleep at night, and you may wake at three am, anxious to carry out your passion.
This is why inventors, artists, and scientists will work days on end. They are so engrossed in their work, that they will not want to take time for food, sleep, or sex.
What are you willing to spend hours doing each day? What are you willing to spend every spare amount of money that you have? People will spend large portions of their paychecks to pursue their passions. What are you willing to do even if your family or friends think that you are stupid, and reject you? What would you do even if no one paid you? What would you do if money was no object? What would you do if you were bleeding and had broken bones? This is your passion.
We are going to do some exercises to find out what your passion in life is. Be as focused as possible while you’re working on these exercises. You will need to tune out the noise of the world. In order to be focused, you will need your powers of observation without judgment.
Ask, is there more you can do to realize your own talents and passions? Ask yourself what’s stopping you, and what you can do about it? "To thine own self be true." means that you take a long hard look at yourself to know who you really are. This is our objective.
You need to get some sticky notes. This is very important and you need not waste time. If you do not have sticky notes, stop and get some. After having observed your world for seven days now, and you know where to find sticky notes. You can continue to use your observation skills to get out of your Lizard Brain and find them.
Sticky notes are stronger than tarot cards, fortune cookies, and astrology. With them you will look deep into your soul and be able to foretell your future. Sticky notes give you the ability to create your future. Sticky notes give you messages from God.
Place the sticky note pad in front of you.
Now write what you enjoyed doing as a child on ten to twenty sticky notes. These will give you insight into your heart. When you were a child the things that you loved to do were not as cluttered from information coming in from adults. When we were young children our imaginations were stronger and our inhibitions were weaker. Most people have their creativity and imagination beat out of them by the time they are five.
Now that we have done those exercises, let's take another portion of the white board, and do a different exercise.
Place the sticky note pad in front of you.
Write what you feel about what your passion is on the note. Repeat this ten times about different passions. Then place them on a wall or a whiteboard, prioritize them to your level of importance, and place the most important ones on top. Spend a total of one hour rearranging these sticky notes or until you are sure that they are in the right order.
Write on ten things that you would be doing if money was no issue. If money were no object would you be buying paint and canvases, hang gliders, or spaceships. This will help you to understand your passion better.
Start with the one on top and write ten things across that need to be done to carry out all of these different passions. Be as detailed as possible. Then do this with the rest of them down the line. If you can, find a friend,family member or a significant other who will give you their opinion on whether or not they think you have them in the right order. You may have put the one on top as "taking out the garbage" and your insignificant other responds "You never take the garbage out. That ain't your passion!"
Once you have spent some time on this, you have gotten people that you trust to give their opinion, you know for sure that the most important one that goes on top, and the least important one that goes on the bottom is on the bottom. Eliminate everything but the top three. You will not have enough time for anything else. You may feel the need to look at this list of the top ten things before you decide which are going to be your top three. This is a work in progress. As we go on further through this process, you may find things that need fine tuning, switching, and complete renovation. This is all ok.
Sudden changes in life can be too abrupt to maintain for a long period of time. This is like a new diet or exercise program. When you gradually make a change it is easier to make the change permanent.
As time goes on you may find that the passion that you listed is not the real passion. You may have felt that you wanted to be an actress on stage, but after several years, you may have found that your real passion is makeup, stagehand, or selling tickets. Its ok to change. In this universe that we live in, you can do whatever you wish.
Write on the sticky notes the things that take away from the time that you wish to spend on your passion. Then eliminate these things as much as possible from your life. If these things must be done, usually you can find other people that enjoy doing these things for you, or you can pay others to do these things for you.
On the sticky notes you want to write down certain things that you have to do to pursue your passion. Do you need to buy a canvas and paint, a guitar, or a dog to pursue your passion? Do these things now so that there is nothing that will get in your way for you to live your passion.
Create a vision board, post pictures and sayings all over your house about your passion. If friends or family make fun of you, get new ones.
If you still do not know what your passion is, there are several tests that you can take online that are presented as aptitude tests.
http://www.livecareer.com/career-test
Another way that you can find your passion is to talk with others about what their passion is. You will find by asking questions and letting people talk that it is very easy for people to feel safe around you. Whatever you want in life, all you need to do is give it away. Love, kindness, respect??? Hate, disgust, anger??? And the same works for passions.
Some may decide that they want to become a famous movie star, but what do they really want? Money? Admiration? Depression? Suicide? A paycheck? Constant harassment by paparazzi??? They could just want other people to adore them. Unless you have examined all of the details of what your stated passion is, you will not understand completely what your passion is.
Do you want to be like Banksy, create works of art in the middle of the night, and have no one know who you really are, be chased by the police, and have your freedom threatened every day of your life? Is that what you want to do? Do you want to create beautiful works of art and put them in a basement where no one can see them? What is more important to you? Creating your art or being admired for your creation?
Unless you can become totally honest with yourself, you may have a difficult time discovering what your passion is. This will require you to fine tune your powers of observation. You will need to observe yourself going through your world from an outside perspective. You will need to observe the world that you are living in more clearly.
You will need to disconnect from the judgments of others. They may say "Oh he could never do that." or "She has no talent to draw, paint, or sing." Are you willing to ignore others putting you into a box? Are these people going to help you pursue your passion?
This may or may not be an overnight process. As we go through the lessons, and understand the multiverse that we live in better, your passion may change completely or not at all. When you move forward you will find once you taste your first bite, you will be addicted to your passion. As we go through the lessons you will be able to fine tune new things. Don't fear making mistakes.
Please watch the following videos that can help you use sticky notes to focus your passion.