When "Find Your Passion" Makes You Cringe

You’ve heard the advice about finding your passion, finding that big creative outlet.

You cringe as you think about how much you hate even the idea of painting, drawing, acting, dancing, writing.

All it feels like is pressure, and more pressure, and trying to measure up or compete with people who’ve been doing this for years, while you’re once again, coming in late.

Too late.

Don’t do this to yourself.

Instead, focus on the everyday little things that bring you joy, that give you a chance to do something just for you. Those things that make you feel good about yourself, that give you confidence in you, that give you that feeling of accomplishment.

Not for anyone else, but for you.

I've been there. I've done that. I've tried all those big things and came to the same conclusion most of you have intuitively come to even if no one ever confirmed it for you.

It's not in those big out of your comfort zone, jumping all in to something kind of things so you can write home about it or put it up in a perfect Instagram picture that matter; it's about what it feels like to you to know you tried something you've always wondered about.

If you haven't at least been curious about it, don't bother. That's not one of yours.

If you loathe the idea of even going there, again, skip it. That's not one of yours either.

The entire reason for developing your creative side, for exploring those things you're passionate about is to authentically validate your truest self. So many of us stopped exploring or never even got started because we were given a version of ourselves and told this is who we were, rather than being allowed to develop and explore our own inner nudgings.

So many of us had hard and fast rules about what we could and should do that were only about what someone else was comfortable with us doing, and were never allowed to find out who we might have been if we were only raised differently.

I've told you about my ice-skating career that never happened. The one I came to realize I never needed to happen, just to know I could try it out to see what it might have been like, turned out to be enough for me.

And then there's my own life as a dancer story where after never being allowed to pursue dancing classes, I discovered after taking mother-daughter dance classes lessons that I'm actually not good with the cheoregraphed parts, but free form dancing is what I was really after.

My daughter actually discovered this one for me, after watching me dance my own way, and she informed me that I was actually really good "as long as you don't ever do it the actual teaching way."

She was right.

Then there's my piano story - lugging an old piano that had a certain feel to it around the country, beating it up more and more each time we moved, always thinking I'll get around to re-learning to play the way I'd always wanted to play someday. What I've found is my love of playing isn't found in the "someday I'll get around to really mastering piano",  but in those moments when I'm so inspired by a song I'm hearing that I sit down and without worrying about whether it sounds the way it  "should", I play the notes by ear and feel like I'm there.

I paint that way too.

In a little tea and pottery studio/cafe nearby where I can go with a friend and just pick one thing and have the idea of cleaning up the mess after and the related idea of perfection of what I'm painting, leave me long enough to let me actually paint.

I've heard from many of you how well this more simplistic, breaking it down like this approach works well for you, too.

It can be heard in the sighs of relief after I explain what I specifically mean by "find your passion" or "explore different creative outlets." Yes, there's room for you in there!

Or in the words of one of of my clients who called me up in a panic over her therapist saying she was going to hold her accountable to trying one new thing a week.

Did she really have to? That was her question to me.

No, you don't ever HAVE to. But will it be good for you? Will it help you get just far enough out of your comfort zone to find something that just might surprise even you? Then do it. I may have a different approach than her therapist, but I couldn't agree more that when you're feeling stuck and nothing is calling out your name, trying something - anything - to see what sticks is going to be more helpful than doing nothing at all.

I had it all mapped out.

I started out focused on a degree in Public Relations and ended up switching to Psychology because of life events that made me more curious about why we are the way we are than making money for some company that would never be more personal to me.

We defeat the entire purpose of this exercise - to validate ourselves and build self-confidence and create a new focus to our lives by finding a creative expression for ourselves - when we make it into something that works for someone else. When we feel it's something that we should do, rather than something that actually works for us!

When I describe what I do to people I'm meeting for the first time, for a long time I struggled with it because a coach, a writer, a motivational speaker doesn't get to the heart of what I feel like I do. It doesn't do justice to what gets me up in the middle of the night because I've got a burning message to get out there, to post something that someone in the world needs to hear.

"I empower sensitive souls", is how I've come to describe myself.  Because that's what gets me up at night. That's what keeps me going.

You've got to find that for you!

Not the culturally acceptable form of what you do, but what do you actually do that brings out the best in you, that sets you apart, that makes you come alive, that makes you feel like if you don't do it, something is missing from your life.

Don't cringe next time you hear someone say "Follow your passion." Create your own life instead.

Your way, not their way. One tiny step at a time.

If you don't like it or it's not what you thought, don't beat yourself up with someone else's shoulds. Try a different path. Try another version of the same thing. Make it real for you. Design it the way you feel it, the way you want it, not the way someone else says it's supposed to be.

Feel the difference? Good.

There's no competition here. Only you finding your path, finding your own way, the way you never found too many years ago.

Start here. Start now.

Pick one thing. Today. Whatever the result, there's always another way. And tomorrow will always be a new day.

Love,

Jane

How about you? Can you relate? I'd love to hear where you are on your own creative path and how this speaks to you! Share it with me in the comments below!