Passion is the driving force behind a dream life. A dream life is not a destination but a journey fueled by passion. More importantly, your passion is the fire that ignites the creation of your reality.
In this article, I will give you some tips to find your own passion and joy in life and to know if what you are doing is truly your passion. In other words, I will tell you how to make sure it is your passion and not someone else's. I will also give you a hint on how to live your passion on a moment to moment level, since it is not a destination but a journey.
How do you identify your passion?
Here are some tips:
• It gives sense to your life.
• It is something you enjoy doing.
• You enjoy doing it even if you are alone. You can share it with the world, but you enjoy doing it also when you are alone.
• When you are immersed in it, you do not want to be interrupted. You want to keep doing it, not merely because you want to finish something to meet a deadline, but mainly because you are having pleasure doing it.
• It does not feel like work.
• It is fun.
• It comes naturally to you. You do not feel like struggling with it.
• It is easy for you.
• It flows from within. Inside out. Not outside in. • It gives you joy. It gives you pleasure.
• You feel your soul when you do it. It gives nourishment to your soul.
• You feel energized when you do it and afterwards.
• It does not drain your energies.
• While you are doing it, you are not watching often the clock to see how close your lunch or dinner time is.
• Experience, knowledge and technology might help you to do it better, but you enjoy doing it even in its rawest form. Like a famous basket ball player that still enjoys playing on the street.
• You feel free doing it.
• There is playfulness in it. You do not want too many rules to suffocate this playfulness.
• It works not only with reason. It also involves your intuition.
• You do not do it “just for the money”. Sure, earning money with your passion feels great and better than earning money doing something else, but the first driving force is joy. Joy comes first.
• It is not only about “doing”. It is also about “being”. You like how you feel when you do it. You enjoy being yourself when you do it.
• It is your favorite channel of expression.
• You sincerely love doing it.
• You feel empowered doing it.
• It gives you pleasure.
• You feel you “belong there”.
• It “feels like you”.
The above tips should give you enough insight to identify your passion. Two additional pieces of advice are in order:
The first one is that you should make sure that you are indeed following your own passion and not someone else’s. Often the lives of successful, happy and wise people are a source of inspiration for many, but one has to realize that they arrived to a happy or exemplary life precisely because of THEIR passion.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry...”–Oscar Wilde
So how do you know if some kind of life is YOUR unique life, your passion, your personal dream?
“If you enjoy the process, it's your dream. If you are enduring it, desperate for the result, it's somebody else's dream.”–Salma Hayek
In other words, if you are enjoying the journey, chances are it is your dream. But if you are just putting up with it -or worse, suffering from it- it is not. You are only doing it for a result that you expect, but you are not really happy in the process. You have to realize that, as April Garrity points out, “the true measure of success is the joy you feel” doing something.
The second piece of advice is Derek Sivers’ observation that “passion” or “purpose” sound to many like huge overwhelming things, which is true.
So you should give yourself the opportunity to find and live your passion on a day-to-day or even moment to moment level. Do not attach to the words “dream life”, “passion” or “unique life” the sine qua non condition that they have to be monumental, stunning, enormous or colossal by definition. Sometimes, if something is not stunning from the very beginning, people think of it as not being their passion. Hence they deny themselves the joy of living it, and the potential to grow it.
Remember, a “dream life” is a journey. A journey made of moments fueled and lived with passion.
So how do you live with passion on a moment to moment basis?
Abraham Hicks gives us the answer in a beautiful way:
“When you feel enthusiasm to do something, it means you've lined up the Energy, and you are being inspired to take action from that point of alignment. When you don't feel like doing it, don't push yourself, because your effort is not worth it. But, when you line up the Energy, the feeling of procrastination goes away”- Abraham-Hicks.
This is also called at spiritual level being in alignment. Another helpful test to live your passion on a moment by moment level comes from Ayurveda. When you understand the philosophy behind Ayurveda, you may conclude, as Deepak Chopra does, that there are three ways to assess your alignment. Chopra suggests that you ask yourself three simple questions: Is it easy ? Is it fun? Am I getting results? And if your answer is "yes" to all three, it means that you are “tuned in”. Or, in other words, that you are aligned.
Clearly, “easy” means –again- that you are not enduring it, putting up with it or suffering from it. “Fun” means that you are enjoying it, that it is inspiring you, which “lights your fire” or sums up your energy. And “getting results” seems to me self explanatory. It might mean positive results in any area of you life, be it your health, spirituality (connection to the divine), the broadening of your vision, the expression of your freedom, the deepening of your loving relationships, your real empowerment, your pleasure or your prosperity.
"Follow your passion, and success will follow you"-Arthur Buddhold
