2021 – A Year of Living Passionately

Don’t you just love that feeling when you’re passionate about something?  Yeah, me too! It truly is the life blood of everything we do.  

I haven’t heard it in a while, but I remember hearing and using the phrase, “that really got my juices flowing!” 

And you know what that juice is?  It’s the God Force.  May the force be with you!  And let me tell you when you’re flying around in those space ships fighting the Empire in a Galaxy far, far away, you’re probably feeling pretty passionate about not getting your butt blown out of the sky, right?

But, back in our galaxy, passion is that God Force that when you really want to be, do, or have something that you don’t have any conflicting beliefs about, and that desire lines up with your higher conscious, you, my friend, are tuned in, tapped in, turned on with your Creator, your God.

Now I realize that many of us are of a certain age shall we say?  And some have actually retired.  Retirement in Spanish is jubilación. Jubilation. Celebration. We have paid our dues. We have contributed to society. Now it’s our time, and it’s a great time. And that doesn’t mean we retire from life or from our passions.  I have chosen to stay passionate, engaged with an open heart. I am working on it every day. Want to join me? 

I believe that passion flows from Universal Energies.  No matter what ya call it, it’s like any electrical appliance or equipment. when a blender is plugged into the power outlet, the “potential” is always there, but the electricity, the energy, doesn’t flow unless the appliance is turned on and what happens?  The circuit is completed, the energy flows, you’ve got a smoothie and Bob’s your Uncle.  

So I see our flow of passion like Electricity to the blender.  On our own we don’t generate passion.  What does the passion is when we are aligned with our Source.  

Just like the blender when it taps into the source of electricity, when it “lines up” or in our case, when we get “juiced up” about something . . .  a new idea, a new project, an exciting adventure, and we tap into and align our desires with the God Force energy and that completes the circuit so her energy, her passion can flow right through us and we flow it back to her. 

I gave a talk several months ago on Co-Creating with the Quantum God.  If you remember, the main plot of my talk was that we are constantly gathering information.  We take this information, we have our own experiences, expand a little more, then send that information to the Universe, who takes the information we send and essentially goes through the same process, sending the info back to us, setting up this wonderful symbiotic relationship, from which we can experience passion.  We could also call it love, but passion is so much more fiery!

So, even though we aren’t the source of passion, I think there are several things we can do.  

SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

Life’s complicated.  There are so many facets to life, that a passion for simplification really starts with either fixing or removing convoluted parts of your life. That may be relationships or friendships that have run their course, looking for a less stressful job, or thinning out a bunch of material items that you have no real use for anymore.

Simplification can help reduce your stress, making it easier to interpret situations, and making better decisions in the overall grand scheme of things.

“If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.” ― Angelina Jolie

GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE!

Many psychologists recommend new activities can be a means of getting out of a rut like rediscovering old passions, and finding new ones. This doesn’t mean you need to sign up for sky-diving lessons or need to step completely outside of your comfort zone. 

YOUR FAITH

Your values and beliefs are what drive your Faith.  If you aren’t acting within the  values and beliefs that you have created for yourself (not somebody elses), but YOU, you don’t feel so great emotionally OR spiritually and you have a real disconnect between you and the Universe or the Divine Spirit. 

You see, that’s why our “Faith” or our spiritual paths are so Unique to us. No one can dictate our values . . . hah, Goddess knows that many try to, but in the end we establish our own.  

So commit to doing one thing each morning for 5 or 10 minutes before you become bombarded with information and activity.  For Christian perspective, read the daily word, then consider how you might be acting outside of your values and beliefs.

Maybe you prefer meditating or performing morning rituals, or simply praying, just do something to bring yourself back to yourself, your values and beliefs.  You might discover they have been handed down for generations and don’t really work for you.  You also might RE-discover the passion you have for pursuing your path and you might discover another than is more in alignment with those values and beliefs that you created for yourself.   

GET PASSIONATE ABOUT YOURSELF

I mean, who else are you going to spend the rest of your life with?? HMMM?

So invest your time or money into yourself, your self-improvement, and future development.  That’s always a good way to begin to live passionately.   

You don’t need a lot of money and in many cases, you don’t need any.  There are more than enough YouTube videos and free and low cost classes on Udemy to help you find ways to improve some area of your life.  

A good way to spark passion in yourself is to do things worth feeling good about. Do some volunteer work, help some random people out, or find a way to contribute positively to the world with the skill-set that you have.

FIND PASSION IN YOUR HEALTH

Check your eating, get out and walk, exercise, even do chair yoga if you have physical limitations.

Because, nothing will kill passion quicker than living life as . . . a couch potato.  I know first hand.  It was in the month leading up to my hip surgery, when pretty much all I could do was lay around 24/7.  I was in a lot of pain and had NO motivation and the only passion I had was for my upcoming surgery.  

The body is a machine that must be taken care of if we want it to perform well for an extended period of time.

Developing a passion for health and fitness will not only help with physical health, but it helps improve our mental and emotional states and overall well-being.

I mean, have you ever seen an unmotivated athlete or someone dedicated to exercising regularly.  Walking into the gym, you can just smell that passion . . . OK, it’s probably sweat, but work with me . . . you get my meaning.

REDISCOVER YOUR INNER CHILD

This is one of the most important parts of the exercise.

At a certain point in our young adult life, our parents, teachers, tell us to “grow up”, give up our childish dreams and behavior.   And eventually many of us begin to believe that we need to give up our childhood dreams and settle for something more reasonable.

That’s why this step is so important.

Take out a notebook and start writing down all the things you’ve ever loved to do as a kid.  Start as far back as you can remember and run all the way up to now.  But only write down things you had a real passion for. The things that you used to LIVE for!  For me it was whichever sport was in season and in the summer, spending all day at the Kearny swimming pool. 

As you list these things, pay attention to how each item makes you feel.  Does something jump out at you? Is there something you’re crazy eager to try or to do again for the first time in years?

Also, maybe this exercise has made you think of something you have always wanted to do but, for one reason or another, were never able or allowed to. Write those things down as well.

These are things you can feel good about choosing to do, not just for others, but for yourself.

LASTLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY . . .

LAUGH!

Look for reasons to laugh every day.  It’s great for our emotional and mental health.  It helps us to be less rigid, to take life less seriously, and allow love and passion to flow more spontaneously to and from the Creator. 

Laughing also helps us socially.  It ramps up our passion.  Let’s face it would you rather spend “quality time” with a couch potato or someone filled with passion?

When we understand that arrogance and pride just get in the way of our passion, we take a huge step forward. When we don’t take ourselves so seriously, it allows us more humility, so we are less sensitive to criticism, teasing, and other people’s opinions.

In the end, all of this helps us to feel better about ourselves, to connect with the Divine Light from which passion flows.

Laugh with me . . .

AND Remember the words of the poet Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Year of Living Passionately