Scheduling Your Passion Level 2

 

 

Finding your passion

Ken Robinson when he was young thought he wanted to be a soccer player, and then he got polio.  This destroyed his opportunities to practice, stay in shape, and play on the field. He was destroyed, and he was forced into a different area of his life, which eventually revealed his true passion for revolutionizing our education system. It took him working a wide variety of jobs and experiencing many different aspects of society before he was able to figure out exactly what it was that he wanted to do. 

 

Using the stickies will give us direction on where we would like to go in life. And sometimes it is not sustainable for us to pick up everything that we have in our life and go full tilt toward our passion.  

 

Once we unlock our chains, we might find that being a locksmith is our true passion. Once being incarcerated, we may find that helping people with rehabilitation is our passion,  once we become homeless, we may find that providing homes for others is our passion.  Most of the time in life, what we are doing is taking us closer to exactly what it is that we want to be doing. 

 

When you are doing your job, or living your day, how much of your day are you spending judging yourself and saying “There must be a mistake. I don’t deserve to be here right now. If I studied in school and got good grades, then I would be really living the life of my dreams.”  Perhaps you are thinking if your bosses or coworkers weren’t so conceited that you would be able to really shine in your profession. 

 

If rather than spend your time judging yourself or others around you, you spent your time developing your craft to help the people around you, what would happen to your life?

 

“They are going to just take advantage of me.” 

“No one will appreciate what I will do for them.”

“They don’t deserve my help.”

 

These are all comments that are 100% correct.  And all of these we boldly respond “Either they will laugh at us, or they will laugh at us.” Every comedian that you know of doesn’t care if you are laughing with them or laughing at them because they are laughing all of the way to the bank. People that laugh with you become your supporters, people that laugh at you help you realize what you do not want to be. Either way, you have learned something new.   It's just like learning a new foreign language, the only people that really learn are those that learn without shame.  There are many people that live in a foreign country and never learn the language well because they are constantly living in fear about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

 

This is how babies learn. Babies are not afraid of making mistakes, either laughing with them or laughing at them, they still have your full attention.  

Using the stickies we can reveal where it is in life that we would like to go. Sometimes we are forced into doing a job by circumstance. An example would be when Ken Robinson was forced out of football to become a leading educational innovator. Before he received his epiphany of what his passion in life was, it took three different career paths. 

 

We may find ourselves in situations in life that are beyond our control. We may find ourselves behind enemy lines in a war zone and in order for us to survive we must be good with camouflage, traveling hundreds of miles a day, and finding safe places to sleep at night. When this ordeal is over, you may discover one of two things: that you really enjoy time in the outdoors as your true passion, or that you may never want to go outdoors again unless you have a well-stocked vehicle to take you back to the city. 

 

Doing things that we do not enjoy in the moment at times can help us discover more clearly what our true passion is.  Being forced into getting a job in a food server in a restaurant can help you understand that you are passionate about giving people high-quality food.  You can also discover that you hate being in positions where other people look down on you even though you are doing amazing things for them.  If the job becomes painful enough, it forces you to look out for other outlets that you would find much more enjoyable and passionate about doing.  

 

Finding your passion can take time.  You cannot do something for two weeks and make a decision if you do or do not like it.  At times more education and practice is required until you become proficient at it. So we should always be looking forward to new opportunities to do new things and meet new people.  

 

In order to find your passion you have to first be able to become mindful and observe the world around us. When we observe the world around us without judgement we can better observe what is and isn’t in the world. The news media, politics, and religion will try to inject emotion into our observation, this is how they make money. They convince us that we need to buy a slicer, a dicer, and the sharpest knife in the world. Then sell the latest exercise equipment, and build a fence that keeps unwanted people out of our backyard our city or our country.  

 

The slicer and dicer after a week will sit in our drawer and we will never use it again. Twenty years later we will pull the slicer and dicer out of the drawer and ask ourselves “Why did I ever buy this?” The exercise equipment after we have moved it from three different rooms in the house into the storage unit is now on Craig’s list as “free if you come and get it.” The walls, years later we will be saying, Mr. Gorbachev, tear that wall down. 

 

By taking the time to observe what is and what isn’t, what is important and what has less importance, we will be able to make better decisions. Next, we need to move understanding. 

 

The better that we understand how the world functions and works, the better we understand ourselves, and the more successful we can become.  The word successful means that you have achieved your goal.  It doesn’t mean that you have acquired money, possessions, or power over other people. Success means that you want to go to New York, and you arrive in New York.  Success means that you have decided to have a healthier diet and now you have more energy strength, and better health because you have the strength to change your diet. Success means that you have more loving and caring people in your life that you can love and care about more.  By taking our observation of the world and understanding that different forks in the road will take us to different places. 

 

This is where wisdom comes in.

 

You have made a decision on where you would like to go.  You have looked both ways to go on the road.  One way leads to the edge of the cliff, and the other leads to a get-together with your loved ones. You understand that if you take the cliff road, you could fall off.  If you have a parachute or a hang glider with you, that may be the choice that you wish to make. On the other hand, if you wish to spend the day with your loved ones on a picnic, you would take that road.  Wisdom comes in when you take the road that you have chosen to get the desired result. There is no wrong choice, as there is no wrong way. 

 

In finding our passion we will need to hone our skills of observation, to hone our understanding, and to hone our ability to acquire wisdom.