Tips to Discover Your Passion in Life

Tips to Living Your True Passion

A few weeks ago I launched the survey “Are You Living Your Passion in Life?“, to find out just how many of us are living in such a truly blessed way.  Let me say this is one of the greatest challenges in life; discovering what you really love to do, and then finding a way of aligning your life with it.  Here are results of this intriguing survey and below that are some tips and ideas to help you do this.

So from the above only about 20% of you said you were either living your passion in life completely or at least to a pretty large degree, while about 80% either did not know what their true passion in life was or were really not living it very much.  So lets see if we can turn this around.

How to Discover Your True Passion in Life:

In the article Stop the Madness of Self-Discipline, I went deeply into the importance of living your passion and to help you discover it, I suggested to ask yourself the following questions.  Reflecting on these questions will help reveal to you those things that you truly care about in life.

1. What is it that you like to do for its own sake, without any concern for reward or compliment? Do you like the joy of building things? Do you like to just create music? Do you like to teach? Do you like the challenge of watching your thoughts in action?
2. If you won the lottery, I mean the really, really big one how would you like to spend the rest of your life?
3. If you were informed you are about to die shortly, what would you regret most as not having spent your time doing?
4. No matter where on Earth you are. In a rich, first world country, in the bush lands of Australia or high up in a Himalayan village what do you see yourself doing regardless of location?
5. What activity do you always find yourself coming back to throughout your life?
6. What activity can you just not see yourself doing without?

In addition to the questions above, there is one more question which I think you can pose to yourself and listen to the answer which comes from deep within, and that is “What is Living?”  The article, How to Live Your Own Life, goes into this approach more deeply.

How to Live Your True Passion in Life:

Living your true passion in life, required the same thinking and approach as you would use in order to master something in life.  In the article, How to Master Anything in Life, I went into these requirements and here are the four keys to accomplishing this.

1. Give Your Life to Something:  Think of any great artist, philosopher, saint, athlete and the one thing that stands out is that they have given their life to it.  So if you know what you are passionate about, start to give more of your life and energy to it.  Everything else will follow naturally. 
2. Be Free of the Pain/Pleasure Principle: No where am I saying that living your passion is going to be easy.  It is probably not and that’s half the fun .  What it is going to be, is satisfying in a way you probably did not imagine.  It is going to satisfy your soul, so you will have no regrets in life.  Giving up mood based decisions is going to be important in order for you to be able to do the necessary work to implement and realize your passion in life.

    

3. Don’t Concentrate on Results: Leave the results in the hands of the Universe.  This is the essence of the Bhagwat Gita (Karma Yoga), and the key to living life in a very unique and different way.  If you can stop focusing on the results, and instead just focus on the work you need to do, you have found the Tao, you have found the Way to Freedom. 
4. Don’t Worry About Survival: Many will say this is the most key aspect for successfully living your passion in life.  This is the requirement of courage, of heart.  It is much easier said than done and also, it should be done intelligently, not recklessly.  If you feel you have the guts, but  the path you need to walk is not clearly marked, I would suggest simply asking life for directions, and then listening from deep within for the answers to arise.

Summary:

For all you parents out there, one of the most important responsibilities you have is to help your children discover their true passions in life, and then giving them the confidence and opportunities to live it.

For the twenty percent who have either discovered their true passion or are already living it, it would be great to hear your thoughts on this very important aspect of successful and joyous living.