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Ep. 133 Finding Your Passion

by Claudine Sweeney
June 15th 2022
00:25:34
Description

Do you know what your passion is? Did you once have passion about something in your life and then it faded away? Living a life fulfilled includes doing what you are passionate about. For many of us... More

This is episode 1 33 Find your passion. You're listening to the Rise up and Shine podcast with Claudine and Ashley as an empty nester and a mom with young kids, we have both shared very similar and very real struggles from chaos to coaches. We now help other women live an authentic and meaningful life. So tune in weekly for girl talk and tips on how you too can rise up and let your light shine bright. This is the rise up and Shine podcast. Welcome back listeners and today I'm going to start us off with a quote, Oprah Winfrey has said passion is energy, feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you and that's what we're going to talk about today. Passion and that energy and what excites us because honestly that's how we want to live right. We want to live full of excitement and passion and energy. I mean I hear all that, I'm like yes, sign me up and you and I both know as coaches, this is something that a lot of our clients struggle with is finding that passion is uh finding motivation or something that excites them, especially I work with empty nesters that can be a time of transition and change.

We've devoted our lives and we're passionate about homemaking and parenting and all those things and all of a sudden it's like now what and with you with small Children, it can be a challenge that is all consuming managing the home and all the day to day responsibilities of taking care of small Children in the house and all that. So, and you and I were talking earlier and we wanted to differentiate between passion and purpose because those are two different things, but they can be used interchangeably. So passion is a powerful or compelling emotion or feeling and it drives us to do what we do purpose on the other hand, is where we find meaning, what we want to do and how we want to contribute to others. And of course when we live our purpose with passion, our lives are filled with peace and joy and we're able to make a great impact on those around us. So that's why we're talking about it today. We're talking about all things passion. Yeah, this is great. So I was thinking, you know, you specifically with empty nesters and in that stage of life and feeling like the desire to have more passion.

And I feel that even with being a stay at home mom, you know, for now 11 years I was so passionate and excited to be a mom and I could not wait to have my own kids and I was so excited about it. And I had all these dreams and ideas and expectations. And then when it happens it's like, you know, it's great for a while and then you have a second kid and then, oh my marriage is kind of having a hard time and I'm feeling tired all the time and I'm snapping and you know, I'm getting more irritated with my kids and uh all I'm doing is dishes and laundry and vacuuming dishes and laundry cleaning and very mundane, very mundane. And it was interesting. I'm like, same situation, right? Just a loss of passion. But it really got me thinking about what kills passion, right? So something happened to kill that passion I once had. So what are some common passion killers? Well, for one it could be past discouragement failures and we can really fixate on that, right?

I mean, there's been times I have not had my best mommy moments and then I feel bad and I feel ashamed. Oh my gosh, I messed up. Oh my gosh, I yelled at my kids. Oh, I did not handle that. Well, I was not the adult there all the things, right? All the things we start thinking about and we start feeling we hurt ourselves. We really do. We harm ourselves and we put ourselves down because I failed. I'm not living up to that. Like, you know, I'm not being the mom I want to be. And then that goes into our beliefs and our thinking, right? So that is with those mistakes for those failures or moments of discouragement. Then we start feeding this belief that like I was saying, I'm not a good mom, I'm not the mom I thought I would be and I'm tired all the time and I struggle with even having fun or even being present now I feel just more full of stress and overwhelm or maybe irritation and fatigue and so then those are, you know, feeding my thoughts. Um and then another thing also is high expectations of myself, you know, I mean obviously as an eight year old when I dreamed about having Children, I did not know the gravity or the reality I should say of what that looked like.

You know, I just, oh, oh, I see it in the movies are so different on the brady bunch was so different. Six Children is so easy. I want six Children. We stopped at four when I, when my husband and I talked and when I was really wrestling with because I always wanted three kids, three kids. And then I thought, wow, I have two kids. And then and it really did cause a strain in our marriage because you know, when they're a year apart, it is like all about the kids when they cause an issue or a challenge in our marriage and then I'm like, maybe we can't have three, maybe, you know, having three might just really rock our marriage or am I even gonna be like a great mom if I have three, am I like, I'm barely holding us all together too. And you know, so, and I remember feeling when I made that decision, I think, I think two is good. I've actually felt like a failure. It was so interesting to me like I was aware of it and I'm like, that's interesting that I feel that way, you know, it's like because I let myself down my expectations.

But then also another thing that went into that is when I get like input or feedback, I realized for myself that I would get discouraged and that for me and many others it can kill your passion because you can be so excited about something and if someone's like, oh here, let me give you this little bit of input and then it's like, it's not good enough, you know, they're not, or even if you're excited about something and you're sharing it with someone and they're not as excited about it as you are, then you feel, oh, that content to kill our passion. So there's really a lot that fuels that energy and the emotion of passion. Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you bring those up because in May, in our, in the Courage Club, my online small group program, we talked about passion and purpose and those were some of the stumbling blocks, you know, we, it's almost like we want other people's approval or even our own, like you talk unmet expectations were so passionate, Like we can be so passionate about starting a business, right?

Because we're focused on the results at the end. We don't realize how many, 12, 15 hour days it's going to take, how you have to show up and do the work, even when you're tired, even when you're sick and all of a sudden our expectations aren't met and we think well if it's not easy it must not be right. But pursuing our passion doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be easy. And another thing with passion is that, you know, people always say, well I want to find my passion right? And passion isn't something you find outside of yourself, it's something that we create because it is an emotion and so we create our emotions, it's not out there, our passion is not out there and we can't allow other people out there either to take away our passion, right? We've got to create it from within and you kind of talked about it a little bit but really it comes from our thoughts. If we can keep our thoughts, our minds in the right space, then it's going to be, it'll be a good thing and it really is mindset work and that's what you and I both do as coaches.

We do a lot of mindset work to help our clients find that passion to keep that passion um find it within and keep it growing, keep that energy alive alive, right? It's alive. So I was thinking about how our thoughts create our feelings and thoughts create the feeling of passion and thoughts also can kill the passion, another great bumper sticker for the rise up and shine podcast there, but it is so much of a mental thing. You know, I mean like I was sharing with my personal experience of being the mom and all, I was excited for the shift that I had in my mindset as I was going through those hard experiences. It wasn't easy, it wasn't smooth. I didn't have all the energy in the world. Things didn't pan out the way I expected them to. For example, nursing, I couldn't nurse very long with my kids. That was a challenge.

So all the things that you think are, you know, you think it's so linear, we really do. It's like our mind thinks. Yeah, I understand that life is hard, but we still live as if we expect life to be easy and no hardships, but there's so much growth and beauty that comes with challenges. But the passion aspect is if we want to create that passion then it really starts with our thoughts. Absolutely. Yeah. It's almost like as you're talking, I'm having this visual like passion is a campfire, right? And our thoughts are the logs and so we got to make sure that we keep logs in there, good logs, healthy logs, if they're bad logs, it's like putting, I don't know actually, I'm not a professional at campfires, but I think if you put wet logs on the fire, they won't burn right? Yeah, okay good. It'll smoke. So you know, it is, it's so important that we keep our thoughts in the right place to keep that energy to keep that passion burning. So um actually why don't we share some practical for keeping our passion burning or getting it even started right.

One of the first things we can do is explore and as we explore things that we're interested in, things that energize us. That's a great time because we're really going out there and just searching, exploring. Let's see, I'm going to try this, I'm going to try that, I'll try this. We can try many many things right to find what really, really keeps us going or what gets us excited because that's what it is. It's an excitement when you're full of passion like time stands still, you know when you're doing something for like four or five hours straight and you forget to eat. Yeah, that doesn't happen to me too often. The forgetting to eat part but I've been your so in the zone right? You're so energized and excited, you just want to get this done or you're just having fun working on it that you know, you have a passion for something and exploring when we explore things like that, our brains will release dopamine, which is the reward neurotransmitter. So the more we explore and find things that energize us then our brain releases dopamine, which is a reward and then we want to keep doing it.

So even though those hard times come, like you were talking about the passion killers or the stumbling blocks as I call them, if we continue going forward, we'll have enough of our brain, you know, neurotransmitters helping us to keep succeeding and going after it, but it is a push like we do have to push past that to get through the disappointments and the stumbling blocks and all that to get to where it feels good. One part of that also is really being confident in the why. Yeah, whatever it is, we're doing whatever role we have, whatever goal we're going after to anything, whatever it is, just going back to the why, why am I doing this? And that helps kind of re spark that passion sometimes it does when it gets hard we do it kind of fizzles out, but you can get it back and if you think, oh yeah, this is why I want to do that, this is why I was so excited about being a mom and then you start focusing on those things like oh yeah, like I love this part about it, you know, maybe I don't like the dishes and the laundry and the dinner every day, but I love the smiling faces and the laughter and those memories we're building, you know?

Yeah, when you're creating something, I love to create, we both do, you know, we're creating things for our clients and we're creating um courses or were you know working, even one of our favorite programs I'm going to say is Canberra, we make invitations even for birthday parties that we use, we use it for business, we use it for pleasure, but that helps even build, you know, being able to use creativity and helps build that passion and I want to add a couple of things to that we can do as we explore is ask a few questions. What fulfills me, what things do I like to do that? Really, I feel fulfilled when I do another one is what are my talents and my gifts, That is a really great one. And sometimes if you feel stuck on that, even if you're like, I don't even know because maybe we're so much in the negative mindset right now, I don't even know if I have a talent ask someone, hey, what do you see on my talents? That really helps to give assurance of Oh yeah, like I do, I do do that, you know, I am good at and so then that helps fuel that fire.

Um and the last one is what things are important to you. What things do you value for the passion? Those things that we value are really a driving force to create the passion when we always go back to our values, we want whatever it is we're pursuing to be lined up with our values, there will not be passion there if it is not lined up, you know, speaking of creating in Canberra, I think you and I should both put a free resource on our websites for this. I have a worksheet. Yeah, I've already got one since we did this in the month of May. So you can go to mind over chaos dot com or Claudine Sweeney dot com and we'll have a free resource on their on um those questions exploring and questions to um kind of spark and ignite your passion. Second practical is have a vision. This is so important being able to visualize what you want, who even who you want to be, um what things you want to do, you know, what are things that you've dreamed of, what our goals that you have.

One thing you can even do with this is a vision board, you can go through magazines or find pictures somehow to create your little vision board of something that's always kind of been there inside of you, this desire, you have this dream, you have and if you see it on a wall, if you, you know your mirror, if it's visual then that really helps get you excited. You know, as you think about it, if you are thinking more optimistically about it, not the negative, limiting beliefs or you know, oh that's not going to be realistic. I know one of mine is I have this dream of writing a book and one thing it's interesting that I've you know, well researching about passion is that they recommend going back to childhood. What things did you love doing as a kid? And I loved writing. I always wrote stories when I was a kid, I loved it, I had so much fun. I was starting to write like little chapter books and and so that's something that's followed me. I've always wanted to write, I have this dream of I want even my kitchen, not the other day I went on a date with my husband, we walked through Barnes and Noble's and I just love looking at all the books because I just vision like one day I can have a book in here, that's awesome.

But you know, I lose that for a while and then it comes back, I want to do, but you know, I have young kids and how am I possibly going to do? So we kill our passion when we start having those limiting beliefs and so, but a vision is really a great practical because we can see it and it's just that constant reminder yeah, that I can make this happen, I can do this, you know, that my life isn't over yet. I can still work towards that goal. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I don't think we can um be happy and fulfilled without a vision, right? And it's it is like a dream, a vision or a dream, I kind of see him like minded, It's so funny when you said, what did you like doing as a kid? And I'm like, I don't remember, I just remember bike riding, skateboarding, roller skating and watching tv that was kind of my childhood and what I dreamed of. I just dreamed about having Children when I was little. I really wanted, I did want six Children, I think I watched the brady bunch a little too much and it looks so easy.

But then they, I know they did have Alice, which I never had an Alice, but anyway, we stopped at four, I thought four was plenty, so vision good one. The third practical is to connect with other like minded people. I cannot tell you how important this has been in my pursuing my passion. I just love coaching, I love this business, I love growing this business, I love coaching the women, I love every part of it. It's become a passion of mine and there have been stumbling blocks along the way. But what I love is connecting with other like minded people and when we do that the brain releases oxytocin, which is that connection chemical, which makes us feel closer to others. The other thing I've realized with it is that I have just loved um feeling in a room where I'm called higher because I'm part of a business mastermind now and I love it, we're all talking and dreaming that vision part of it exploring everyone's exploring different niches and strategies and then connecting with each other and it has been such a powerful experience to help keeping that flame alive of the passion.

You know, keeping that fire burning, it's been wonderful because a lot of times like you shared earlier, one of the passion killers can be people that are critical or not supportive and it's like if they're not like minded, it might be hard for other people to get on board with your passion. You know, that's not where their fire is burning. So they're like, yeah, so when you're with other like minded people, it makes it so much more fun and again it helps our brains and as we get these dopamine and oxytocin hits, it just continues to perpetuate us wanting to do more and more and more and will get us closer and closer to our vision and dream and also you don't feel so alone, especially when you go through challenges, when you have other like minded people who are walking the same road, they share their challenges and you share your challenges. You're like, I'm not the only one because that's a big one is just feeling like I'm the only one. I'm walking this road alone and no one understands and again that goes into all of our thinking.

But yeah, connecting with other people. So important, so important not to do life alone. No, we're not. And I'm telling you your fire will burn brighter when you're with other like minded people so connect very true. So last one, the fourth one is our mindset. So we've already talked a bit about the passion killers and that is our thinking, whether it's limiting beliefs or negative thinking about ourselves, unrealistic expectations, even the meaning we put onto people's feedback or constructive criticism, all that stuff goes into mindset, right? It's our thoughts and so the thoughts are the meaning that we're putting to a situation and so if we really take that into consideration and are aware of what are the thoughts that are running in my mind, what is my perspective on this dream I have or this goal I have, you know, really just become aware of that. Um it you cannot grow, you cannot see you reach your potential, reach your goals, I believe, if you are not aware, if you don't know at the point you're starting, there's no way you can really grow right?

Because we don't know what are things I need to kind of tweak and change even again, our mindset, you know, kind of shifting that perspective and just out of curiosity, not judging and wow, I mean to myself, but or and at the same time is some things feel so true and we feel limited by some circumstances into a degree, we might, but there are ways to work around it right. There are ways to figure it out. So like how I was sharing as far as writing a book, I would love to write a book, but I see the big goal and oh my gosh, I have kids at home, I have, you know, now they're gonna be on summer and how am I going to write about? When am I going to have the time? But it's because I'm looking at the big overall goal, whereas I can just chunk it down. Hey, I have kids at home, I have a lot of responsibilities, I'm busy, we're busy, that's okay, but I can do a little bit, that's right, I can write a paragraph, I can write a page, I can write, you know, maybe what is realistic for you in your stage and in your capability.

Just think if you wrote one page a day at the end of the summer, you'd have half a book. They're crazy when you think of like who can't write one page a day right? I mean it depends what kind of book obviously, but when you think about that one page a day, I could do that, I'll write a book, oh my gosh, I don't have time for that. Yes, No, check your perspective well and that's what his coaches, that's what we do, right? We work with our clients and help them change their perspective, their mindset and find other opportunities and options that maybe they didn't see because I love that. Like even you just saying write a page a day. Like usually our brains don't do that on their own. Our brains are hardwired to keep us safe and comfortable and not expend energy right? But our higher self wants to do something. Like write a book and that's where we can get stuck and that's why we oftentimes need a coach. I mean you and I both have coaches ourselves as well as coach others to help us see where we're stuck in our mindset to turn that around to turn that negative into a positive alternatives, other stories that we can tell ourselves, other thoughts, we can think to create that emotion of passion because it is so much more fun when whatever we do is filled with passion.

Absolutely. We do you feel alive when you have those moments of going after something or you're like, you're really feeling passionate about something you feel alive and that's part of feeling fulfilled. So it's just how to kind of keep that keep, like you said, like the fire, the campfire keep tending to that. It is, it's not, it can get lost, it can burn out so easily like a fire, you have to keep tending to it. Absolutely. All right, everyone. So that concludes our episode today on Passion and again, as Claudine already touched on, that's what we are here for, We want to help you if you feel like you are excited if you feel like you have a goal or desire of what you want to do or who you want to be or even how you want to feel and you just don't know how to get there, that is what we do as your life coaches. We help identify what might be keeping you stuck, we help identify what thought patterns may be serving you or may not be serving you.

We help you discover all that and help you become aware and then help you with a plan of how to move forward in this specific situation, how to create more passion. Hey, this is something I want to do, like how do I get that passion back and we are able to help you do that. So for more information on that on either Claudine program, you can check her out at Claudine Sweeney dot com or Ashley over at mind over chaos dot com and you can get in touch with us there. We on our websites, talk about what coaching is, how we help you. So when you check us out on our websites, you will also find a section where you can connect with either one of us and schedule a free discovery call and if you want to get in touch with us, connect with us so we can help you discover and create your passion. So thank you for tuning back in with us here on the rise up and Shine podcast, have a wonderful week and we will catch you next time. Alright everyone, thank you for joining in on our conversation today here on the rice. I've been shine podcast.

If you haven't already, please take a second to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And while you're at it, share this episode with a friend who you know it can bless today. If you want to visit us as well on our websites, you can catch Claudine over at Claudine Sweeney dot com and Ashley at mind over chaos dot com. Our links are in the description. We also have some free resources there for you as well. So remember ladies, no matter what you are facing in life, it is never too late to rise up and shine and live your best life.

Ep. 133 Finding Your Passion
Ep. 133 Finding Your Passion
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