Seeking Passion and Purpose? Call Off the Search Party!

Mel Robbins, ‘Take Control of Your Life’ is just packed full of pearls of wisdom. Here’s one that got me thinking today:

She points out that often, when we’re feeling lost and looking for our passion/purpose/job fulfilment/life satisfaction, we tend to focus on finding ‘it’ as if it were this ‘thing’ that we’ll just find – in a person, in a place, in an epiphany. And of course, this doesn’t work. Because we’re putting the ‘cart before the horse.’

Instead, Mel says, we should simply take note of what energises us and what depletes us, and take small daily action to do more of what energises us.

This is how we find our passion, or rather create it.

Seriously, I get this. I get it because I’ve lived it.

I spent decades trying to find my purpose, all the time becoming increasing lonely, frustrated, desperate. Then, approaching my mid-thirties, exhausted and deflated, I stopped looking, and instead decided to craft a life based on doing more of what I enjoyed and less of what I didn’t.

And guess what?! I found it.

Or rather it found me.

Or rather, I created it by doing more of the things that I was already passionate about.

If you’re stuck in that place of constant ‘lost’ like I was, desperate to leave a mark on the world but clueless as to how or what to do, perhaps it’s time to call off the search party.

Start exploring your own thoughts and feelings; begin to notice what you’re doing when you feel inspired, motivated, alive; and do more of them.

Everything else will soon fall into place.