What do I want to be when I “grow up?” What’s my passion?

If I only knew, then I could get on with my life. Then I would be happy, my life would have more meaning, I would be more motivated, less depressed, a better wife, mother, sister, friend, I would find the perfect job, I would be ______________________.

The answers to these questions seem to be on most people’s minds across all age groups. The search for them seems to create a sense of lifelong yearning.

What if finding your passion was closer than you thought? Literally. Because I think it is!

I too want to live a meaningful life filled with purpose. I want what I do to be aligned with who I am.

After reading Brene Brown’s book, Dare to Lead, I realized that if we live within our values we will always be living with passion. We will always be living our best life.

WHAT we do is really secondary to WHO we are. We can bring our values to anything we do and therefore we will always be in alignment.

According to Brene, “A value is a way of being or believing that we hold most important. Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk-we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs. Our values are our North Star.”

This sounds like passion to me!

Although finding our passion may be more tangible than we think, it still requires some introspection. Brene goes onto say that, “We can’t live into values that we can’t name.”

In her book she encourages her readers to make a list of their values or choose from her list. She suggests narrowing down the list to one or two values.

“Choose one or two values-the beliefs that are most important and dear to you, that help you find your way in the dark, that fill you with a feeling of purpose.  If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities. ”

“Our values should be so crystallized in our minds, so infallible, so precise and clear and unassailable, that they don’t feel like a choice-they are simply a definition of who we are in our lives. In those hard moments, we know that we are going to pick what’s right, right now, over what is easy. Because that is integrity-choosing courage over comfort; it’s choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast or easy; and it’s practicing your values, not just professing them. “

LOVE Brene!

So, I made a list of my values-adventure, connection, authenticity, balance, family, ….. and came up with 18! How to decide? After much deliberation and further reading, I learned  that some broader values encompass other specific values (for me, connection includes family), I was able to narrow it down to just two core values, connection and authenticity.

That was the easy part. The next step is aligning our behaviors with our values, or as Brene calls it, “Taking values from BS to behavior.”

I think this is a life long process. We can infuse our core values into everything we do. In doing so, we ARE living our passion. No more searching, just BE who we are.

So next time you’re searching for your passion or trying to figure out what you want to be when you “grow up” just remember:

“You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”

-Glinda the Good Witch

 

This post is dedicated to someone I know who is at the end of a difficult journey. She has inspired me with her strength and courage and has been questioning what she will do next, what she will do when she, “grows up.” I hope in some small way this creates some light along her journey to finding her passion.