What's Your Driving Force?
It’s February and hearts abound due to Valentine’s Day, leading me think about passions and what makes people tick. There are many types of passion including romantic, physical, and cause- or activity-based. Knowing what fuels the inner fire greatly supports energy, mood and connection. What’s important in life is often a moving target, causing the need for regularly scheduled reflection before action. If you wonder what makes your inner fires burn, it may be time to turn your focus inward and investigate. Discovering, deepening, and refining passions are essential elements of ongoing personal growth.
Why does having awareness of your driving force matter? Because knowing yourself, what makes you tick, what holds you back, and where you are going supports present moment focus and optimum performance in all aspects of life. Ultimately, having intentions about what matters to you, and taking action to grow and make changes in those areas, allows you to thrive. Emotional, physical, social, and professional success leads to health and harmony. So, I repeat, what makes your passion fires burn?
Here are some questions to consider when honing in on and identifying your passions:
1. What activities or areas of interest make you feel the most alive and stimulated to learn more?
2. What ideas inspire a feeling of meaning and purpose in your life?
3. What makes you feel large amounts of love and compassion, connecting you more deeply to the natural world?
Passions are not always something you choose so it is important to look into your nature from an honest and nonjudgmental perspective. My love of horses was inspired by a random experience with horses in a community my family moved to when I was small. I do not come from a line of horse people and my older siblings were not particularly partial to the horses in our neighborhood. No one intentionally exposed me to the equine world, but I was instantly attracted. My play became all about horses and my imagination constantly circulated around horse breeds, potential names, adventures I might take with them, and challenges we would surmount together. Looking back into your own childhood play patterns may reveal important information about current adult passions.
Take some time to tap into your inner child self
and ask yourself the following:
1. What have you been repeatedly attracted to in your life?
2. What were your favorite forms of play as a child?
3. What upsets you and causes you to want to make changes?
4. Is there a skill you want to improve or a new skill you desire?
5. What do you secretly wish were different in your life?
6. If success were guaranteed, what would you do?
7. What holds you back from following your dreams?
Take some time to consider these questions and your wildest dreams - these are what passion is made from. Once you have identified which passion fires you want to stoke, it is time to dig into the personal work that supports manifestation. Design a strategy, seek out advisors who have navigated similar paths, and take yourself seriously. Remember that staying focused on a plan over time allows it to unfold on your path. Build reflection time into your personal practice so as to allow the process to morph and change as you grow. Baby steps and regular review of your plan will allow you to be focused on the process rather than the destination. Knowing what really matters to you is the key to happiness. Whatever it is that makes you tick also creates energy, inspiration, and growth – the essentials of wellbeing. Additionally, bringing joy and a sense of play to serious endeavors opens the door to flow state, the mind-body connection that is at the core of optimum performance. Take this Valentine season as a time to dig into your personal heart’s desire, explore your relationship to it, and potentially alter you life for the better.
Want more? Let’s talk!
