Distilling What my Purpose Looks Like: Passion and Joy

In my last post I wrote about discovering my life purpose:

To live a passionate, joyful life in which I continually challenge myself to achieve my dreams and act courageously; to have unabashed love for and connection with the universe, nature, others and myself; to have peace of mind knowing that every day I live an intention-filled life of my own creation.

Now what do I do with this purpose? How do I ensure that I am consciously living it and adhering to it?

Being a lawyer, my first instinct is to parse the purpose itself - to break it down into smaller parts and examine each one further:

- to live a passionate, joyful life

- in which I continually challenge myself to achieve my dreams and act courageously

- to have unabashed love for and connection with the universe, nature, others and myself

- to have peace of mind knowing that every day I live an intention-filled life of my own creation

Starting with the first:

1. To Live a Passionate, Joyful Life

What does it mean to me to live passionately and joyfully? What does that look like?

- Passionately means I am pursuing things that I am passionate about, things that hold meaning to me. It could be a variety of things, such as my health, my interests, community or social causes or things that bring me enjoyment, such as travel, reading, writing and self-discovery.

-  Joyfully means happiness to me, elation even; I picture laughing, lightheartedness and being easygoing. To me, living joyfully means not taking myself too seriously and having gratitude for the wonderful things that are present in my life.

What does living passionately and joyfully look like to me?

It looks like pursuing things for the interest, pleasure and satisfaction that these things give me, without the expectation of profit or gain from them in a monetary, social status or acknowledgment type of way.  A few years ago I took a leadership development course. The course required me to take a test that revealed my working style, personality and my predominant values. Skeptical of its accuracy, I was shocked when I received a 32 page description of myself that was bang on. The description revealed that one of my core values was "utilitarian", meaning that I do not like doing things for the sake of doing them; I want some usefulness or gain from taking an action. While I recognize this value is certainly productive in the workforce, I think it has steered me away for pursuing hobbies or trying things that I do not think will benefit me down the road financially or career-wise. And often when I learn or read about something, I think about trying to remember the details so that I can recall this information later; admittedly even, so I can sound smart, knowledgeable, be a good conversationalist. But really, I also have a desire to learn and try new activities just for the sake of it, though I often do not. I would like to break out of this utilitarian mold and experience following passions for my passions' sake.

This isn't to say that I currently do not pursue my interests or things I enjoy. I certainly do, but I want to devote more time to some that I have let fall to the wayside, or ones that I have thought about pursuing and haven't due to my perception of their limited "usefulness" or that I will not be good enough at it for it to be worthwhile trying.

Living passionately and joyfully looks like me being busy - busy having fun and actively engaged in things I enjoy and am curious about. Doing new things, being open and feeling a lightness within me. Welcoming the new and change. Jumping in head first without taking things too seriously. Being present. Experimenting, learning by doing and enjoying the process. Wow... writing this out, I FEEL excited. I feel like YES! That is exactly how I want to live!

Okay, given how fired up I am, I decided to throw myself a challenge: every morning this week, I will read this description of what it means and what it looks like to like passionately and joyfully. And every day this week, do something that I am passionate about. Let's see what happens.