How do you discover, nurture, and live in your passion? It’s not as hard as you may think! Below are 12 exercises to discover and re-connect with your passion and purpose.
- First, list your top five values so they remain in your consciousness as you proceed through the following steps. Your values will give you big clues about your passion.
- Identify your strengths and those qualities about yourself that you recognize come easy to you.
- Be open and aware of any emotional or physiological signs from your body. What excites you, gives you butterflies, or tingling in your spine? Oftentimes our passion is trying desperately to come into consciousness and body signals are a great way to move into awareness.
- Recognize what attracts your attention. Are there certain hobbies or pastime experiences you enjoy and look forward to? When do you feel most content or happy?
- What inspires and motivates you? Why? Journal your thoughts.
- The next exercise to discover the why or purpose in what you do:
- Imagine it is five years from now and you just poured your morning tea or coffee, opened the newspaper and saw an article about you. What does the article say? Why are you featured? Write down some quotes from the article and other pertinent pieces of information.
- Make a list of all of your accomplishments or steps necessary to achieve the point of the article.
- Visualize yourself five years from now, looking back on those accomplishments and steps. How do you feel? Journal your thoughts.
- What were you most passionate about with those accomplishments? List the top five.
- Prioritize the list of five.
- Under each of your five passionate priorities, identify the necessary steps to achieve those goals.
- Find a coach or someone you trust to share this list and support you in the process.
- As you start to uncover the answers to these questions, be aware of a possible need to seek the approval of others. Be conscious of the fact that you do not need approval to stand in your divinely crafted passion or purpose.
- Be open to accept and dismiss the disapproval of others. Know that when you align yourself with your life purpose, you align yourself with God. For that, approval from others is not necessary.
- While moving along in your purpose and vision, don’t focus on the outcomes, as the outcomes may look different from what you anticipated. The detachment from outcomes allows you to flow with the present and remain open to the possibilities of divinity. This practice allows you to enjoy the journey and not just the destination.
- Like the well-known Nike advertisements, just do it! Don’t pass from this life with your purpose still in you. Our purpose always involves sharing our God-given will with others, always! Passion, happiness, purpose, and joy are realized through service.
- Remember that when we surrender, we begin anew. With the realization of our passion, we surrender to its glorious divine order. The divine order is of God and we need to remind ourselves that God’s time is not necessarily on our schedule. When we surrender, we let go of the egoic need to control every detail. Believe that God can handle it.
- You do not have to leap into passion all at once. Take baby steps to live in passion. Soon enough you will find the natural, authentic way to step into passion with full abandonment and still survive in this world. In fact, you will not only survive, you will thrive when you step fully into passion.
Let me know how these strategies work for you! Can you add to the lists?
With love and excitement,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book!
