Finding Your Passion

Change in life is never easy.

Later (ish) in life change is even more difficult.

Later (ish) in life CAREER change is even MORE, more difficult than that!

Yet with the pandemic and subsequently "The Great Resignation" more people are dis-covering that the pre-pandemic life they had been living no longer fits. Maybe it never did.

That's what happened personally, when changes in radio coupled with the pandemic, led to "The Great Firing of 2020" for myself and many of my radio peers.

If I'm completely honest, radio hadn't been feeling exactly right for a few years leading up to this.

Although for the most part, I loved my decades long broadcasting career, I was starting to itch for change. I just didn't know what type of change, and I wasn't sure I was ready to jump without a net.

Maybe you are going through something similar.

Mindfulness may be able to point you in a direction that feels more authentic.

When we get started on the business of adulting, we put so much pressure on how we think our lives are supposed to look. We believe that when we attain pre-conceived ide-als and each certain milestones, we'll be happy.

Eventually, many of us realize this isn't the case. Some call this a mid-life crisis. I like to think of it as a mid-life rebirth

When we stop living our lives on autopilot, we can step back and honestly assess who we are and what makes us feel alive.

We can make choices that serve the ‘us’ that existed long before parents, society, and conditioning told us who you should be.

We can use mindfulness to divorce ourselves from the picture of our life that we may have created without even consciously knowing it.

Mindful living can help in finding the real version of us that is hidden underneath the fa-cade and being of service to it, and by serving it, in turn serving others.

So what is your passion?

Are you shrugging your shoulders, and/or scratching your head?

I came up with something I call the "Alignment Equation for Authenticity," when I was trying to figure this out for myself.

In order to live authentically and in a way that is in alignment with my higher-self, I used the following equation:

Passion + Purpose = Peace

It looks simple on paper, but in practice, not-so-much. It took me decades to figure it out. In fact, I'm still figuring it out today. Unlike mathematical equations, the elements of life are never static. They are always changing and evolving.

For me, my passion in life has always been communicating. Taking news, stories, in-sights, ideas and lessons, breaking them down, and sharing them with others. I enjoy helping people learn, think, and laugh. I found my passion early. It could be through speaking, writing, acting, or video creation. It didn't matter as long as I was sharing.

One would think finding my passion early in life would automatically bring me peace of mind and happiness, right? I thought it would! It turned out not to be the case. I had the passion, and it brought me bouts of happiness, but it wasn't bringing me peace.

I was chasing happiness. I thought happiness would bring me peace. I had it back-wards. Peace brings about a contentment which can lead to happiness.

A feeling of peace is an underlying sense of calm and rightness. Peace is the baseline that keeps us equally steady in both the turbulent and calm times.

(Side note, peace doesn't need to be chased. As a matter of fact, as soon as you start chasing it, it ghosts you).

Back to the Alignment Equation for Authenticity. I knew my passion early on, and as I said, it brought me happy moments, but something was missing. I now know it was MY PURPOSE that was conspicuously absent. I was using my role as a communicator in what I perceived to be a glamorous job to feed my ego’s purpose, not that of my higher self.

Now as a writer, author, content creator and coach, I am starting to use my passion for communication to convey hope, share things that have helped me, and talk about how we are all more the same than we are different, I finally found THE PURPOSE for MY PASSION.

Where will this lead me? I haven't a clue. Maybe I'll wind up back in broadcasting with a different mission statement, who knows. What I do know is that I feel excited, energized and hopeful in a way I haven't for years. I feel like marrying your passion with a purpose that is true to who you are intrinsically can only succeed.

Try the equation out on yourself, and let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear them!