Uncovering Your Passion and Purpose May Require You to Spend Time Alone
http://talentdevelop.com/articlelive/articles/760/1/Uncovering-Your-Passion-and-Purpose-May-Require-You-to-Spend-Time-Alone/Page1.html
Jim White
Jim L. White, PhD is a President and CEO, Senior Consultant/Executive Coach and Workshop Leader with over thirty years of international business experience. He is the founder of JL White International, Inc., a management consulting and leadership development organization dedicated to “Inspiring Excellence in People”. He is author of the book What's My Purpose? and the What's My Purpose? Life Mastery program
By Jim White
Published on 08/17/2008
Uncovering your passion and purpose may require you to spend time
alone. Your greatest thoughts and ideas will come in times of quiet
reflection and stillness. Remember, your purpose is not something you
can just think through and figure out. Instead, it is something that
you feel and experience. It comes from deep inside you.
Uncovering your passion and purpose may require you to spend time alone.
Your greatest thoughts and ideas will come in times of quiet reflection and stillness.
Remember, your purpose is not something you can just think through and figure out.
Instead, it is something that you feel and experience. It comes from deep inside you.
Anthony Stone wrote the following:
The creative person is constantly seeking to discover him/herself, to remodel his/her own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates… His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insights, or makes some new discovery; and these moments are chiefly, if not invariably those in which he is alone.
In order to engage in this creative process of finding your purpose, you may need to take charge of your schedule. Learn to turn off the television set. Read the newspaper standing up. You can probably find a lot of extra hours in your day.
Take some time every day for calm reflection. Walking is a great way to center your mind and think creative thoughts, so make it a habit to walk half an hour each day.
While you are walking, focus your attention on the present moment. Take slow, deep breaths. Notice the trees and flowers. Feel the wind on your skin. Use each of your senses to help you stay in the present.
Journal writing is another way of getting in touch with yourself and your desires. Each day record how you feel and what you are thinking about. Talk about the day’s events and about your reactions to them.
A third way is to spend some time every day in meditation. Give yourself 20 minutes every day to sit quietly, allowing your mind to grow still. Allow your thoughts to gradually drop away.
Quiet time is a variation of the meditation theme. Seek times when you can be by yourself and free from outside distractions.
Turn off the TV and even music.
Get alone with yourself and do some activity that satisfies you — sewing, perhaps, exercising, taking a bath, shooting baskets, watching the sunset, tending the garden, fishing in some quiet place, or working on a hobby.
A personal retreat becomes an extended quiet time. Retreats are usually most effective when you go alone. If you go with another or others, structure your schedule to permit some periods when you can be by yourself.
These activities will help you to get in touch with your actual feelings and passions.
Expect the time to uncover the actual desires of your heart.
What would you really like to do with your life? What are your dreams?
Shake yourself free from the expectations of other people. If you cannot be right for yourself, you cannot be right for anyone. If you aren’t fulfilling your passions by the course of your life, you aren’t serving the larger purpose of your life that you should be serving or making the positive impact upon society that you should be making.
Get over the trap of doing what you “should” be doing, as the “should” is defined by the expectations of your family or friends. These “shoulds” create artificial boundaries around the person that you could become, the work that you could be accomplishing, the peace of mind you could be having, or the joy you should be experiencing.
Shoulds might have to do with possessions — pushing you into the kind of home you should live in or the car you should drive. Or they might have to do with your behavior.
People’s expectations about your conduct may provide barriers to your dream, for example, of being a singer or writing a novel. Despite the psychological barriers that these “shoulds” throw up in moving towards your purpose, they are extremely difficult to let go of because you have bought into them.
They become part of your self-definition.
The destination is not the ultimate aim. The joy comes from the journey.
Purpose is bound up in the process.
Bon voyage!
Jim White, PhD
Author & Creator of What’s My Purpose?
Your greatest thoughts and ideas will come in times of quiet reflection and stillness.
Remember, your purpose is not something you can just think through and figure out.
Instead, it is something that you feel and experience. It comes from deep inside you.
Anthony Stone wrote the following:
The creative person is constantly seeking to discover him/herself, to remodel his/her own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates… His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insights, or makes some new discovery; and these moments are chiefly, if not invariably those in which he is alone.
In order to engage in this creative process of finding your purpose, you may need to take charge of your schedule. Learn to turn off the television set. Read the newspaper standing up. You can probably find a lot of extra hours in your day.
Take some time every day for calm reflection. Walking is a great way to center your mind and think creative thoughts, so make it a habit to walk half an hour each day.
While you are walking, focus your attention on the present moment. Take slow, deep breaths. Notice the trees and flowers. Feel the wind on your skin. Use each of your senses to help you stay in the present.
Journal writing is another way of getting in touch with yourself and your desires. Each day record how you feel and what you are thinking about. Talk about the day’s events and about your reactions to them.
A third way is to spend some time every day in meditation. Give yourself 20 minutes every day to sit quietly, allowing your mind to grow still. Allow your thoughts to gradually drop away.
Quiet time is a variation of the meditation theme. Seek times when you can be by yourself and free from outside distractions.
Turn off the TV and even music.
Get alone with yourself and do some activity that satisfies you — sewing, perhaps, exercising, taking a bath, shooting baskets, watching the sunset, tending the garden, fishing in some quiet place, or working on a hobby.
A personal retreat becomes an extended quiet time. Retreats are usually most effective when you go alone. If you go with another or others, structure your schedule to permit some periods when you can be by yourself.
These activities will help you to get in touch with your actual feelings and passions.
Expect the time to uncover the actual desires of your heart.
What would you really like to do with your life? What are your dreams?
Shake yourself free from the expectations of other people. If you cannot be right for yourself, you cannot be right for anyone. If you aren’t fulfilling your passions by the course of your life, you aren’t serving the larger purpose of your life that you should be serving or making the positive impact upon society that you should be making.
Get over the trap of doing what you “should” be doing, as the “should” is defined by the expectations of your family or friends. These “shoulds” create artificial boundaries around the person that you could become, the work that you could be accomplishing, the peace of mind you could be having, or the joy you should be experiencing.
Shoulds might have to do with possessions — pushing you into the kind of home you should live in or the car you should drive. Or they might have to do with your behavior.
People’s expectations about your conduct may provide barriers to your dream, for example, of being a singer or writing a novel. Despite the psychological barriers that these “shoulds” throw up in moving towards your purpose, they are extremely difficult to let go of because you have bought into them.
They become part of your self-definition.
The destination is not the ultimate aim. The joy comes from the journey.
Purpose is bound up in the process.
Bon voyage!
Jim White, PhD
Author & Creator of What’s My Purpose?
