What Blocks You From Your Passion?

One of my coaches decorates her office in a minimalist style. Only a single clock hangs on the walls. There are two comfortable chairs across from a coffee table. One the coffee table sits a stand that holds a small photograph. The photo is of a small dog standing in front of a ball. The dog’s ears are up and its head turned just a little as if to say, “Let’s play!” Below the photo reads, Find Your Passion.

Earlier this week I suggested that finding your passion starts with identifying your core values. Passion is found where what you are doing and your core values meet.

Maybe for you it’s making or listening to music, photography, woodworking, running, or flying. How often do you engage in your passion? How long has it been since you have done it? I come across a lot of people who have not tapped their passion for over twenty years. Work and parenting managed to get in the way.

It’s easy to get consumed by a life that seems to sucks out the passion for almost everything. You forget what you loved to do for recreation in your twenties or how much you loved to bike or sing. Fortunately these are not irreversible conditions. Is it time to pick up an activity that you’re passionate about? Is it time to reclaim your passion?

Passion is not something you have to find as much as it’s something from which you have to remove the blocks. Passion is something you have to recall, not learn. What blocks you from your passion? 

From my late twenties until age forty (the year my wife bought voice lessons for my birthday) I was consumed with making money, a name for myself (aka trying to compensate for low self-worth) and a nest egg. My interest in music, spirituality and psychology went dormant. Instead to pursuing passions that met core hungers I pursued addictions like buying things, “getting away” to vacation escapes and eating and drinking too much. I know now they were addictions because they lacked lasting satisfaction and I had to do more and more to find them enjoyable.

After I started my personal growth work I stopped being driven by my belief of inadequacy or “not enoughness”, my passion and those things I was passionate about reemerged. I then went to work on integrating my passion with my vocation – more on that later.

 What blocks you from either remembering or stepping into your passion?

Filed in: Work/Life Balance