DIY Designer Passion

This week, leading up to next week’s show with Bob Doyle, I’ll be looking at passion and how it can be the illumination we’re looking for to light the way ahead.

What is a Passion and How Can You Define Yours?

During the various seasons of our lives, we may try many diverse experiences. Whilst some are nothing more than “passing fancies” or “fashionable fads”, others stay with us for life, their call to our attention, and draw on our affection, never waning.

It’s those lifelong past times, well known as the “humble hobby”, that could well prove to be the glorious golden bricks that lead you to even more gold at the proverbial end of ‘somewhere over the rainbow’.

You may never even have allowed yourself, or had the opportunity to spend any time actually doing your desired activity, but have invested hour after hour, imagining, dreaming and preparing for it.

Find Your Gold

One of the quickest, easiest ways for a lot of people to find their deepest loves, is to recall what they loved doing as kids. This isn’t a fool proof way, but it certainly can be a pretty sound indicator. Since our ‘passions’ seemed to be so inherently part of our DNA and hard wiring, they often appear very early in some form or another.

“The Passion Test”, authored by Chris and Janet Attwood http://www.thepassiontest.com/offer/ptprofile/ is also a fantastic resource.

Even so, I know many people who still feel they have NO IDEA what to do with their lives. It isn’t always because they don’t know what they love doing, but often because they have absolutely NO IDEA (again) how to monetize it. They don’t even see how such a thing is possible, so the mere thought of it doesn’t so much as enter their conscious thinking.

In these instances, a person can literally enter a self imposed obliviousness. That call from within will stay with them, seething as unidentified anger or frustration, or may surface for an odd second when inspired, but if no action is forth coming, will become submerged again in all the clutter and business that make it easier to justify letting it go. Somewhere inside though, we feel the betrayal.

This can lead to what I believe to be the greatest of all tragedies- the tragedy of dying with your song unsung and your vision still in your belly.

Mine Your Gold

If, in that moment of inspiration, some prolonged thought is given, there can be a different outcome. That blackened ember is closer to life than you could possibly imagine. It can be breathed upon and fanned into flame so easily that it will take your breath away! I’ve watched happen over and over again.

Your passion will give you LIFE. It will energise and ignite you. It will leverage any resource you pour into it back untold fold into your being. Tapping into the power of who you are through your passion will connect you to Source faster than a secret hotline to the president, and the more you commit to living true to your deepest passions, the more magic you will see come into your life to help you do so.

The more clearly defined you become about what you really want to do with your life, and the more the method of that is refined through your specific sets of skills, talents and knowledge ( usually able to be linked to your passion), the more amazing the synchronicities you will see enter your reality to help you fulfil those clear intentions.

This is why the single most important question you may ever ask yourself is “What do I Want?”

Not just “what do I want to do?”, but also “who do I wish to be?”, “what would I like to experience?”, “what would I like to give? Or leave as a legacy to future generations? ”

Refine Your Gold

I love doing SOOO many things, and often, I’ve heard people comment on how this could be a blessing, or a curse, because it makes it hard to choose. But going through the process of prioritising those loves certainly makes it clearer. It’s not the mode of expression (singing/writing) that mattered to me near as much as THE MESSAGE.

I took Janet Attwood’s Passion Test 3 years ago, but I had spent so many years pondering my vision for the future, and was so thorough in following the instructions, that the 8-9 pages of information that outlined my Top5 , their ‘markers’ and the details have remained as true as the day I penned them. The only aspect that has ever really changed has been in the area of monetary amounts, as I grew more comfortable with higher thresholds.

Many of the things I listed began to take shape and continued to develop, one of them being to mix with the company of certain well respected high profile people in whose company I wanted to be considered a friend and peer, as well as those who may not be so well known, but are beautiful spiritual souls, in whose company I greatly delight.

I knew I wanted to sing (compose and play), to speak, and to write-on a public scale, and watching these things come to pass has been great fun. These desires coupled with my deeply appreciative love for other Arts practices, became the basis of my content and the source of my empowerment. They led me into greater understandings and made it possible for me to ‘hone’ them for the benefit of others.

I knew I wanted to sing, but I also knew I didn’t want to sing rock in pubs after midnight. I also knew I wasn’t interested so much in cabaret and music theatre, although I enjoyed them a lot. I found my ‘first love’ for singing, my deepest satisfaction in singing about my love for, and connection with, God. After that, I found, whatever I felt passionately about-this is what I wanted to give melodic voice to. That’s also what came out in my songs. Love, intimacy, communion, connection, family, adoration, appreciation, joy, truth, beauty, wisdom and grace. I did this in churches for a LONG time, and loved it, but when I left I didn’t know how to re-shape it. The ‘new’ spiritual awakening has given me a long awaited platform and an appropriate audience.

I tried to be all things. Sing all types of music. I felt like I had to please everyone, and did for a while, feeling a little false because it always felt 2Degrees off MY truth. Like many ‘artistes’, I felt like what I really wanted to do, wasn’t wanted. I was working in places where having people stay and drink mattered more (as it was all about business) than creating an atmosphere for genuine intimacy, which is all about spirituality.

And here’s the thing: There doesn’t have to be a rift between the two. Spiritual prosperity, which comes from living your passion from a pure heart, should also result in monetary reward and physical abundance-sooner or later. One is the physical expression of the other.

Finding out EXACTLY what it is about your passions that you love, will help you to fashion a viable product/service package around it, so that you can dedicate your life to living it, living completely authentically, whilst still being amply supplied with all you need and plenty to share AND staying in love with what you do (plus how you do it).

Alchemical Magic.

Even though I refer to your seeds of passion as ‘gold’, they are, in some ways, more accurately termed the “blackened ember”. As they are reignited and begin to burn hot, the fire in your soul brings refining and purifying, by which process that original base element becomes GOLD.

There is an old Brothers Grimm fairytale of “Rumpelstiltskin”, a dwarf who spun straw into gold, and the way he tried to outwit a young woman of her baby through an exchange made under fearsome circumstances. Cautionary Tales, as they are more accurately termed could be quite cruel, but hidden in their plots were “secret keys” for life and growth and personal wisdom. In such tales, through ‘overcoming’ the adversary, the protagonist assumes the others’ strengths. In this case, the maiden kept her baby, but she also developed into her own ‘alchemic’ version of herself.

So, there may be fire and challenges, depending on the level of resistance you have toward being able to live your dreams through the power of your passions, but they will ALWAYS lead you into you the most pure form of Self.

And THAT is my no.1 passion. That’s what matters to me more than anything.

That’s why I want to live by my passions-because they are literally the meeting and merging place of GOD IN ME where we are fully ONE.

Not only will you have the extreme pleasure and satisfaction of a full expression in life, but you will know how it feels to be a true child of the Universe, co-creator, consciously connected and lover of All-That-Is.

Trust me...you can’t beat that. J

Lisa Shah

“The Passion Coach”

Creator of CTT (Creative Thinking Technology)

DIY Designer Living with CTT Series