Heart & Soul

The day-to-day grind can slowly move us away from our dreams and passions. “Passion .  . .Who Needs It?” author Shaunice Hawkins has just the trick to reginite your fire inside. Here is her four-part series on tapping into your passion for the life and career you deserve.

Many people associate the word ‘passion’ with torrid love and feelings for the opposite sex. But, in truth, passion is so much more.  Passion is best and most simply defined as ‘any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling; a strong or extravagant fondness.’ It is not to be mistaken for desire. Marketing guru Stephen Pierce best distinguishes one from the other: a ‘desire’ is to ‘want something’; ‘passion’ is the ‘refusal to live without something.’ Ready to discover what you can’t live without?

Look Inside
To discover your passion, you must allow it to emerge from the inside, rather than attempt to ‘install’ it from the outside.

• Slow down and spend time with yourself. Listen to what your heart, mind, and spirit are telling you. Let your inner voice tell you what fills you with energy and enthusiasm
• Be aware that your passion will often come as a whisper or a serendipitous event that reminds you of what’s important and what makes you happy

Listen Up
It’s so natural to talk about the thing that you’re passionate about that you may not realize you’re doing it. However, the people listening to you are all ears. They know when you’re talking about your ‘pet topic’ and can be helpful for you to identify what you’re passionate about. Ask your friends, colleagues, and other people who regularly come in contact with the following:

• If I seemed sad and you wanted to start a conversation with me that would change my mood, what topic would you pick?
• Do I do something that you think is amazing…even though it seems second-nature to me?

Go To Your Happy Place
The things in life that bring us the greatest joy whether we’re thinking about them or doing them. True happiness does not exist without passion and vice versa. Use the smile test the next time you pass by a magazine stand to figure out what makes you happy and identify your passion:

• Which magazines capture your attention – Heart & Soul…Home and Garden…Computers Today…American Bride?

• Which ones do you automatically reach out for and which ones barely get a second glance? Which ones make you smile even before you open them up?
• When you start to smile, pause for a moment. Get in touch with how you feel when you’re smiling and luxuriate in the feeling of happiness that you’re experiencing. As you develop a better understanding of what makes you truly happy, you’ll become more adept at identifying your passion.

Look out for next week’s post on transforming your life with passion. Discovered your passion? Share it below.

“Passion .  . .Who Needs It?” is on sale at Amazon.