become your inspiration

“Every morning I wake up and see all these posts in Twitter, LinkedIn and my Facebook page  – Follow your dream! Follow your passion! And every time I read this I feel horrible! Because what dream are you talking about? I do not know what my passion is!”

2 weeks ago I attended public speaking conference, where Julio, one of the speakers of that event, shared his story, the extraction you see above. What dream? What passion? And what I noticed is that ALL the audience was reacting very responsively to Julio’s speech, he had our full attention during his entire speech.

Do you know why?

Because each of us felt connected with his story. Probably only few of us knew since the beginning, since we were kids – what do we want to do in our lives and what is our passion. The rest of us – we follow the ¨usual path¨ (school, university, office, maternity leave) – and you know what? This is absolutely fine as long as it resonates with our values and the way we see our lives.

Another day one of my client´s was telling me: “Jelena, I hate my job. Sometimes its fine, but sometimes I really hate it. But I feel sooo comfortable there, so I stay”.

…..

And so we stay. Because we feel comfortable. Because we follow “the usual path”. Because we are disconnected from ourselves and our values.

Is there anything we can do differently?

For example, in case of Julio, his main message was:

“Instead of doing what you love, love what you do”.

How can we start loving the job we hate?

Think for a second about your usual day. How many hours do you spend at work? Even if we won’t start loving the job we hate, at least we can start seeing it from a different angle.

For example: list all the things that you appreciate from your job. Maybe your colleagues? Your learning path? Maybe the location and career opportunities? If you start listing – you will find a LOT of things to be put on your ¨love list¨.

Today I invite you to start with your 2 weeks challenge which we will call ¨Love & Hate¨ tracker! Are you ready?

What you will need to do?

Every day after your working hours, write down in your LOVE & HATE tracker all activities that you love and all that you hate. This will give you a thorough understanding about what activities do you enjoy and which ones you do not. Try to be very much specific about it!

What I will ask you now is: what of your core values do you honor while doing activities that you like?

Which part of your essence is forgotten while you make activities that you hate?

What is the most important out of this for you?

After 2 weeks, having the completed list and analyzing your notes my question is: What do you see in this Love & Hate tracker? What do you realize after looking in your daily tracker?

What your daily life is about?

How do you feel about what you have just discovered?

And finally, what changes will you make in your daily life to improve it? By when?

I am sure that by searching for the activities we like, by paying attention to our values and by listening to ourselves we become more connected with our essence!  This enables us to have a wiser look towards the situation, towards the work we love or hate. By doing this we activate our ¨internal appreciator¨, who knows what really matters and is able to find positive side of what is happening in our daily life.

And now you might probably ask – what about passion?

Recently I watched amazing speech of Elizabeth Gilbert, sharing her experience on passion, the main message is that it is OK to discover your passion little by little, step by step!  (Ufff, what a relief!)

How?

By paying attention to what we really enjoy doing! By taking into account our interests and where we spend (or would like to spend) our days. By being curious!

If you are interested to listen her entire speech, here is the link (very much recommendable):

Elizabeth Gilbert – Curiosity driven life

And finally, I would like to share with you a quote that I have heard from my colleague:

¨Life is whispering at you. If you don’t hear, it slaps you in your face. And if you still don’t hear, it starts throwing rocks at you¨.

Do we really need to wait until life will start throwing rocks at us?

Wish you a lovely week ahead, with your appreciator switched on! 🙂

 

With love,

Jelena