By: Tina Jesso
MAKING THE CASE – for Passion and Purpose!
Personal growth is not meant to be easy. There is a lot of learning, and more specifically self-learning. Two very important factors can make our journey more seamless – CLARITY and PASSION.
IT STARTS WITH PASSION
“There are two great days in a person’s life – the day we are born and the day we discover why.” ~ William Barclay
To fuel the progress through life in a way that is more natural, free-flowing, motivated and unstoppable, it is so important to tap into our inner passions and discover what are the most important things in life for us. Some of us seem to naturally tap into this and excel and love their jobs and families.
However, very often, we settle in life and let our parents, friends or social media dictate our direction in education, jobs or even marriage. We are taught (often subliminally) that to be happy and live a balanced life, we must live up to our parents, spouses, social media, and our employers’ expectations. Stress and anxiety often result when we don’t, and our self-esteem and self-trust suffers. A good example of this is that according to a 2017 Gallup poll – only 19% of the workforce are truly engaged in their jobs.
CLARITY DOES NOT COME ALL AT ONCE
“When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life and only to the extent that you are clear.” ~ Janet Attwood, Co-Author “The Passion Test”
It is a process. Clarity is gained by really deciding and then acting on what means the most to us. Then life becomes simple by making decisions that are always in favor of our passions. It is through the process of taking action, evaluating the results, and learning through living our lives that we can gain greater clarity. After seeing the results of living life aligned with one’s top passions list, one gets clearer.
On that note – A WORD OF CAUTION is not to take any drastic moves immediately after working on finding your passions and to really reflect on how you can gradually bring in more of what brings you most joy into your life on a gradual basis.
For example, your job is very stressful. Instead of quitting right away, talk to a supervisor or counsellor about solutions or take a course or try a part-time job in a field interesting to you. The point is moving in a positive direction and adjusting your actions according to your results.
Here is a really great benefit of gaining greater clarity – we often start attracting people, events and things that seem unbelievable! This part is hugely important – getting to this point means taking action. This critical ingredient means taking action in a way that will take us closer to living our passions more completely.
The next step is just staying open to the way things unfolds for us. Often life unfolds in such a way that we could not even have imagined. It is very important to stay open and also let go of any preconceived notions on how we thought it should be. And, since the Universe has infinite possibilities, the results will always be better than anything we could imagine.
No matter how old you are – tapping into our purpose and passion will make life infinitely more interesting and fulfilling, to say nothing of helping us deal better with depression and loneliness. A pretty good payoff …