Passion to Purpose · Soul Awakening Solutions

🔥

Passion to Purpose

I've been thinking a lot today about where my passions went. Not my passion for life. I love my work. It's the fun stuff that has gone missing. Just because I love my work and I'm passionate about it doesn't mean that it should be the only thing in my life.

Our passions are the arrows that point towards our purpose. So what takes us off purpose? Burying what we are passionate about under what we believe we are supposed to do. I'm sure we can all think of passions we set aside to pursue careers, families, and other commitments. I know I can. I used to love camping, dancing, and painting. I would compare myself to others on the dance floor, in my art work, and even when I went camping.

Camping was something I loved to do with my family. I tried going camping once in the past few years. Okay let's be honest here it was 5 years ago. I went once and decided that it was for families and young single partiers. I couldn't see people like me who were camping alone. So I didn't go back. I didn't ask anyone to go with me. I just quit.

During the pandemic I started painting again. But after things started to open up I dove into volunteer work. Rebuilding my recovery community took up all my time. Again lets be honest here. I gave all my time to the volunteer work until I came to resent it and the recovery community I was volunteering with. I still have all my crafting supplies. My paints are dried up and my brushes are hidden away. I look at my friends who are artists and instead of remembering how much fun it was I compare myself to them.

Video games was another passion. So much so that it became like an addiction. Today I barely play the games with my grandchildren and never alone. At one time I was interested in game design and now I don't even play. Why? It got complicated and I quit instead of remembering I was doing it for fun.

Dancing...well I still do that alone in my living room but going out with friends. It has been a while.

Reflecting on this today I realized that my passions lead me here to the purpose I love, to the work I love. The key is I stopped doing them when I started doing what I love. That's what causes burn out. Following our passions to our purpose it doesn't mean we stop when we find that purpose. When we stop following our passions we begin to lose our sense of purpose. That's what happened when I dove into service work. I gave up my personal passions and only worked in service.

Following our passion let's us balance service to self with service to others. By the looks of this post. I need to return to my passion for writing too. I guess I've made a good start.

What passions have you been burying?

What passions are you still following?

What passion is ready to come alive in your today?

18 comments