One of the biggest pieces of advice a friend gave me when attending college lectures was to pay attention to anything the professor repeated, and repeated often. It was an indicator of what the professor felt was important and would eventually end up on a test and was worth knowing. This bit of advice definitely paid off and helped me pass my fair share of tests.
Fast forward to real life and this "rule" seemed to apply with most people. The more someone repeated a fact or statement (or displayed a particular behavior) the more importance it held for that person, and if we look at ourselves we can see examples of how we do the same thing in our own lives.
Let's say you go out shopping for a new car and either have a particular model, brand, or color in mind. Lo and behold all of a sudden you start seeing this car, brand or color all over the place. Your mind is calling attention to this detail because it's important to you at the time. We probably don't pay attention to this because we write it off as mere coincidences or unusual but not abnormal. The same can be said for our personal passions.
Passion
Passion is defined as a "strong liking or desire", whether that's toward a person or object, but widely accepted as a feeling we have towards some activity. Most often our passions are pushed to the side in favor of taking care of responsibilities at home, at work, and with friends/family. Pretty much anything that does not involve our likes and desires seem to take precedence and importance. After awhile, ignoring what we have a strong liking for becomes a habit and soon, what we desire can fade from our immediate thoughts and become a distant memory. That is, until something reminds us of our passions and brings them back, front and center.
This has recently happened within my life, thanks to a crash course in Psychology and a fantastic professor that challenged us to observe behaviors and question how a person arrived at the decision to behave in a certain way. She also challenged us to become introspective and try to analyze our own behaviors.
Doing so revealed some "passions" I had forgotten due to day to day mundane activities. But once brought to the surface, the desire to engage in my "passions" has become strong enough they cannot be ignored.
The challenge is simple: Take inventory of what you like to do and what excites you. Rest on those thoughts, and if they excite you and you cannot stop thinking about them then congratulations! You may. have found your passions! And if those thoughts make you restless, maybe it's yourself reminding you of the importance of your passions and to take action and bring them to life!
Let's commit to ourselves in getting excited about our passions enough to go ahead and take that first step in making them a reality, and then doing it! We owe it to ourselves!
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