4 Ways To Rediscover Your Passion

You deserve the best, and in the interest of doing what’s best for you and the people closest to you it’s a great idea to pause once in a while to rediscover your passion. 

You and I love routine because it helps us be productive and efficient. And while change and learning slows you and I down, routine turns us into experts. It’s a great feeling knowing we are ‘The best’ or ‘One of the best’. Unfortunately routine has a way of derailing our bigger plans at work and at home. So, I recommend getting into the habit of pressing ‘Pause’ on your routine in order to rediscover your passion.

Here are 4 ways to rediscover your passion that I’ve found helpful.

Slow Down:

Arrange time for you to listen to yourself. Spend a weekend alone, no radio or TV. You are not a bad employee or bad parent if you arrange for the kids to spend the weekend with their grandparents or if you turn off work for a few days. Perhaps even add to this a week vacation from work.

When you arrange for time alone, don’t spend your time keeping busy by rearranging closets, painting the kitchen or reading. The idea is to find your passion and purpose by doing things like sitting quietly and going for long walks; basically, letting yourself be bored. Being bored is a good thing. When you are bored your mind begins to explore… and your subconscious will keep going to what interests it.

Thing is, you will begin to rediscover your passion and begin to find the answers you’ve been searching for when you listen to yourself.

Talk To A Professional Therapist:

Arrange for 2-hour appointments because in 1-hour you might just start getting comfortable. Both therapists and trained executive coaches can help you explore your goals and make changes. However, if you are feeling emotionally charged it might be best to begin by seeing a therapist who has the licensure and training to address specific issues like anxiety.

Therapy often helps people increase their self-awareness by exploring the past and identifying the roots of important issues. After seeing a therapist, if there are no bigger issues an executive coach might be exactly what you need.

Celebrate Your Wins:

Reflect on your big wins of the past and celebrate them. Then begin working on getting into the habit of celebrating your small wins every day.

Too often we overlook what meaningful contribution we make every day and how satisfying our accomplishments make us feel. Instead of helping our passion flourish we fluff our accomplishments off as being “What my job expects,” or “What any good parent would do.”  But guess what, you did do it and nobody ever did it the way you did because you are unique. And, while you are at it, give yourself time to notice when you’ve been connected to your passions.

Write:

To rediscover your passion I recommend putting pen to paper versus using a computer – your thoughts will generate differently when you write by hand. During your weekend alone, find time twice a day to set a timer for 10-minutes and write. Write anything and don’t stop to think. If you don’t know what to write next, write bla bla bla until a new idea emerges. Answer any question that comes to mind, but start considering questions like:

• Of all the things I do, I am most happy when…
• I am most proud of…
• I’ve always wanted to…
• I would like to work with…
• When I was younger, I thought I would…

Conclusion:

Most of all, remember you are amazing. You are unique. Nobody else has your unique combination of experiences, natural strengths, education, learned skills and creativity. You have something great to offer yourself, your friends, your family and your employer.

And one last thing; when you try something new expect to not be perfect… but spend time reflecting on what you did well and where you could improve. When you were younger it took time for you to learn to drive a car and now you do it without thinking. Why should any other skill be different just because you are older? Before you know it, you will be great at it. We all need to push past our fear of failure, of not being the expert… and most of all… our fear of not looking perfect at every moment.

I hope you take some time to rediscover your passion… and to then help your passion flourish