Passion, Purpose and Simplicity
I’m excited to see Happyzine calling for local writers in every town to gather the good news because the changes we need to see in the world are coming from the grassroots, from local communities, from people like you and me doing what we love to do, whether that’s cleaning up the river, recycling plastic into cool jewelry, planting a community garden, mentoring adolescents, creating a business that supports Fair Trade, teaching how to use herbs for healing, building with renewable materials, whatever….the list is endless. And people love good news and need inspiring real people as role models of what’s possible don’t we?
For the last few weeks I’ve been writing about living our passion and finding our gifts and I know a lot of people have trouble knowing what their gifts are, so this week I am going to share some of the attitudes that help us to live our passion.
Scary as it is, be willing to leap into the unknown
At its best life is an adventure and adventure means heading into the unknown and being a pioneer. You have to be willing to not know, to make mistakes, to be “foolish”. For example, as I was telling you last time, writing is my passion and a long time ago I left a good full time job because I just had to write. Well, it didn’t turn out as I’d expected and I soon realized I needed to eat and keep a roof over my head and I couldn’t do that writing poetry. So I created my own business using my educational skills and this included being paid to write training materials in group leadership. I had no idea how to create a business but I learned by doing it. If I hadn’t taken the leap and followed my passion I wouldn’t have had many experiences that challenged me and helped me to grow and gave me a delicious freedom.
Here’s what entrepreneur, Will Lau said about leaping into the unknown when I interviewed him for my book, “Living your Passion”:
“Living my passion is about having the courage to do what I really want to do in life. Passion for me isn’t a fire from within, it’s this massive energy that consumes me and I don’t have a choice. After university, I did a career path: five years of learning mechanical engineering. I then went on to what was a pretty good job as a product designer for Fisher and Paykel Healthcare division. It was interesting to me, but it wasn’t fully living my passion. I went overseas and did some re-thinking and when I came back, it all came to a crunch point. To make the jump from what other people, and myself actually, expected me to do, to doing what I really wanted to do, was a big decision, probably the hardest of my life.”
But after Will had made the leap he said: “You know, it took eighteen months to get over the sheer joy of not being in the nine-to-five, that’d hit me each morning. The joy of playing each day has not ended.”
Find a consciousness practice to support you
The creative process calls us to flow with it, either as an inner journey from the safety of home, or as a physical journey at times. This can feel risky, whether the risk is leaving physical comfort behind, or dropping a belief system and rediscovering who you are. Fear and resistance are a normal part of creative unfolding. Adopting various forms of consciousness practice such as meditation, journal writing or yoga can be an essential support to carry you through.
The secret of a happy life is to fall in love with your destiny and embrace it wholeheartedly
Very often the seeds of big dreams are born out of crisis. Here’s what Vivienne Wright, Founder of One People, One Planet told me about how she started her fabulous project, www.onepeopleoneplanet.org
“Peace has always been my passion. Kids have always been my passion. These two elements came together in a flash of inspiration, very powerfully, when my life was unexpectedly riven apart. It was an incredibly challenging, traumatic time. Everything that had previously been the anchor or the structure of my life, the picture and the shape of a life I cherished, was taken from me. I had built my home and my life on an island in the Gulf of Siam, in Thailand and with no warning, no money and no job I ended up back in New Zealand. In response to this, and with a great deal of generous support from loving friends, I took time out to come to terms with my new status, to reflect and to understand the deeper meaning of events and the unexpected gifts that could come from this.
I set about planning a positive way forward into a new life and a new future. I was aware I needed to move beyond my small world of pain and loss, and dream big. I knew I wanted a life that would be, in my terms “big, bright, bold, and beautiful”. So, the process I embarked upon was to allow myself a time of retreat to go deep within. I came out of that process, thinking I had been granted an incredible opportunity to begin again and to live in a purposeful, meaningful way, committed to something I really believed in, larger than self. I came to the conclusion that the way to mend my hurting heart was to realize my gift to the world. That realization in hand, three questions emerged: What can I do – what shall my gift be? What is it I really feel strongly about and passionately connected to? What are the gifts and talents I can bring to bear, that are meaningful and useful? The answers came over a period of intense reflection. When I really focused on what I most believed in and wanted to work with, it became clear it was all about working towards a more peaceful world, the world our kids are going to inherit.”
Live a life of voluntary simplicity.
When I first arrived in New Zealand from Scotland in 1994 I was only planning to stay for a few months and all I had with me were two suitcases. When I realized I was going to stay I moved into my first home and the rooms were totally empty, yet I was ecstatically happy. I lived at the top of a hill with no overlooking neighbors, and a million dollar view. Although I didn’t have a lot of cash, I had found a way of living and a quality of life which many people in the busy world would envy. It was a perfect vantage point from which to reflect on our Western way of life. I began to understand what people really want is to be at peace with themselves, their family and community, and to live lives filled with meaning, purpose and passion. This is real prosperity. In the beauty and community of New Zealand I came to realize that even without much money I am one of the most privileged people in the world; it’s a great feeling! An attitude of gratitude is enormously helpful in any aspect of life.
Have a very happy week!
To learn more about “Living your Passion: How Love-in-action is seeding A Whole New World” go to: http://www.awholenewworld.net/books.htm
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