Finding and Living Your Passion

Have you ever been at a point in your life where you wondered what your true purpose was? Where you felt like something was missing, that you were living without passion or purpose? One woman who has fabulous insight and advice about finding your purpose and living your passion is Dr Fran Harris.

Finding and living your passion leads to greater quality of life, waking up everyday excited about the day ahead, and a drive to share your passions with others. Dr Harris believes by examining what she calls your ‘Core Four’ you can uncover your passion and purpose which leads to the outrageously happy, healthy and successful life you deserve.

It all begins with taking an inventory of your Core Four areas- emotional; spiritual; physical and financial. The key  for all core four areas is to examine your answers honestly and to connect with what you do want rather than get caught up in focusing on what you already have that you don’t want.

Firstly, your emotional area – this includes more than your own personal day to day feelings and emotions, it includes both your relationship with yourself and with others. So, ask yourself, are you happy with your relationship, with yourself; your love life; your family; your brothers and sisters; your parents; your close relationships? The aim here is to find out what’s working in the emotional area of your life and what isn’t.

So, what would you like these relationships to look like, feel, like be like?  Now write down that description in detail including the things that are currently working well for you.

The physical area of our life is one where many people get caught up in the idea of ‘perfection’ and that nothing else will do. Sometimes we spend great amounts of time focusing on what’s not right and comparing ourselves to others. Ask yourself these questions: Are you in the best shape of your life (for you, not in comparison to someone else)? Are you in the shape YOU want to be in and not what other people think is right for you?

It’s time to get real about this. Write a description of what you’d like this area of your life to look like. This is no time to be harsh with yourself, just observe, make some notes of what you do want and move on to the next area.

Now, let’s look at your spiritual life. Perhaps you feel confused by ‘spirituality’ and have defined ideas of what this should be? Don’t be afraid to redefine it for yourself if you feel the need to do so. Ask yourself, do you feel connected spiritually with something greater than you – perhaps it’s God, Buddha, the Universal Force? Whatever your belief, perhaps it’s a strong spiritual connection with yourself and your inner knowing or spiritual being. It doesn’t matter what your personal beliefs are. Maybe it’s a belief in the process of life that all is in order and as it should be. Take a look at your spiritual connection, what’s working for you and what’s not. What would you like it to look like? Remember to write it down in full detail exactly as you would like your spiritual life to be.

When it comes to the financial area of our lives many people measure this as dollars in the bank, income earnt last financial year or material things owned. What I’d like you to ask yourself here is: Do you love your Job? Do you wake up and think I can’t wait to get to work today? Or do you wake up and think ‘Oh no another workday?’ The financial area of your life in this context is about your passion for what you do to earn an income. Do you love it? If you spend all day working in a job you hate then that really impacts on the quality of your life. In fact, it could very well be impacting in the above three areas – emotional, spiritual, and physical.

How would you like to feel about the way you earn an income? What kind of work would you love to do, even if you weren’t getting paid? Write a comprehensive description of how you would like to feel about your work, what would you really like to be doing?

The reality is, to make any kind of changes in your life you have to have a compelling why. Why do you want to make the change – what’s not working now and what would your life look like if it was? Flesh out the description of your ideal Core Four in as much sensory detail as possible, make that vision compelling. How would it feel to live this way, what would you look like, your life look like, your relationships, how will you feel each day when you wake up, what would you be saying, what would others be saying?

In order to make the changes required in your day to day life, attitude and behavior to create this vision for living with passion and purpose, you need to have a compelling why. Why do you want this why would be make these changes?  So ensure you spend as much time as you need to flesh this out in great detail.

As with all changes in our life we all have a tendency to slip back into old familiar ways from time to time as we move forward toward our new visions. There are a number of ways to deal with this – you can use affirmations, re-affirming what you do want, create a visual board as a reminder of the life you are creating, perhaps use technique such as EFT or NLP to assist in installing new behaviors and beliefs and discarding old ones. Writing can be therapeutic. Write about how you feel and where you are headed. Write about your passion and purpose, maybe even set up your own blog. Maybe you will chose to use some of these in combination or have your own techniques for installing change in your life. It’s important to choose whatever feels right for you.

The most important thing to remember is that this is your life and the path you take needs to be of your choosing. So get creative what do you have to lose more importantly what do you have to gain. Your purpose and passion awaits!

Tags: Articles, Mindset, Mindset, Work Life Balance, work life balance articles