Reconnecting with your lost passion

There is something in your life that you are really passionate about: your art, your writing, your music, helping others, travelling, photography, or something else. When you make time for it, there is no concept of time. It feels effortless, and you are full of energy. You are happy.

But everyday life keeps sending those messages that your passion is better spent elsewhere. There are bills to pay and everything else to consider. Passions have become extracurricular activities for those with time on their hands and no responsibilities. When you see someone else living your dream, you might feel sad for a while or feel a sense of longing, then quickly convince yourself that, somehow, those possibilities don’t apply to you.

What has it been like to ignore your passion? For it to always take second place, and to never know what it could be? What if you did have time, it was possible, and you discovered that the thing you love to do left you better able to deal with the rest of your life?

From the age of 22, my career had been a series of jobs I fell into, stayed in because it’s what I knew and had experience in, and eventually suffered because I had committed myself to a sentence of experience, but not happiness. I had bills to pay, I was afraid of the unknown, and I feared losing security.

In 2011, fate intervened. I was informed one morning that I no longer had a job, effective immediately, as the company had just gone into liquidation.

After my initial fear, blaming and then numbness, I was overcome with an incredible emotion that I had not experienced in a long time: relief.

For the first time in many years, I felt free. The “shoulds” I’d imposed on myself, and the rules I took on from well-meaning others, melted away. For the first time in a long time, I asked myself a question: what is it I want? What is it I am passionate about?

Fast-forward three years, and I found my passions also turned out to be part of my calling. I am an ordinary person who found out that the same possibilities I told myself were only available to other people could be available to me.

How to reconnect with your passion

Pay attention to the rules you have adopted into your language

Sometimes we spend so much time attending to “what should be” that we lose sight of how we actually feel. The “you can’ts” and “it’s not the right time tos” were other people’s rules that I’d adopted. Sometimes they come from life experience. Security was something I valued very highly, to the detriment of experiencing something new. Now, contentment is something I value so much more.

Write down everything that you love

Then choose the top three and spend just one minute visualising them. Whether it’s singing, art, writing, yoga or whatever else, notice the surge in energy, the elevation in your mood and the contentment within your body as you think about something you’re passionate about.

Seek others who get it

Are you surrounded by people who also “don’t have time”, don’t share your passion, or have some of the same “should be doing” rules as you? What would it be like to spend time with people who earn money from their love of photography? If you love to write, where are the other aspiring writers or those who have already published a book? What about the avid hikers you know who turned their passion for nature and walking into a profession and now lead hikes?

Set out time to nurture your passion

This may start as 30 minutes, or even 10 minutes, a week. Just enough time to remind you how this thing makes you feel and to do something that makes you feel connected, energised, excited and contented.

Plan these times in your diary. That way, you can see that you do have time. Once you have got into the routine, increase the time and allow that one thing that nourishes you to help you experience what true passion feels like.

What do you love so much that you would do it for free?

Between that thing that you love and do effortlessly is where you may find your true passion, your gift and your calling.