I wanna tell you story.  I’ve summed it up with the title Should I Follow My Passion but there’s a touch more to it than that.  It’s about backing yourself, it’s about doing the thing, even if the thing has a conflicting interest.  It’s about the thing that niggles at you, that keeps nipping at your butt and asking for attention.  Now it’s time to do something about it perhaps?  Right now it could be about backing yourself and about finding out whether or not it’s a good fit for you.  

Often it feels counter intuitive.  

It might feel like picking the thing means you’re rejecting other things – it doesn’t, you’re merely saying not right now, my attention is going elsewhere.  

It’s a story about a wonderful lady I had the pleasure of working with.  I am going to call her Claire for the purposes of this wee piece.  Why, because unfortunately she’s no longer with us to ask her permission to use this story.  Whilst I am a million percent sure she’d say yes it’s not my place to make that decision. 

Claire had 2 things in her world that she called work.  One of those things was based on what she’d always done.  The other was based on a passion.  I spent the day with Claire (and a few others) taking about getting out of their own way and making progress.  

Claire lite up when she talked about the work she was passionate about, there was a palpable change in her voice, her excitment, her demeanour and her enthusiasm.  She literally lit the room.  Those would I won’t have placed as having any interest in what she did were fully engaged, they were bought in, they loved the concept and they were actively becoming part of the movement she was creating with this passion in front of my eyes.  

THEN when she talked about the other thing there was a heaviness, a sense of obligation, a feeling of weight attached to her language and demeanour.  

What should she do? 

Keep doing both things?  Neither getting her full attention or getting to fill their potential or make a choice.  Now, when we are making a choice between this and that we can feel like there’s a terrible chance we will get it wrong.  Our eggs will go into the wrong basket. 

Instead what we have to consider is that the eggs collected in that basket aren’t going anywhere (and just pretend eggs don’t have a shelf life).  We are just putting them down.  We aren’t saying an outright NO, we are saying “not right now” instead.  It might just be time to take some action and lift the burden of that thing that’s not bringing us joy in order to focus on the thing that is.   

Throughout the course of our day together she made the decision.  She was going all in on her passion project.  She was just going to pop the other one on the side for now.  It wasn’t milk, it wasn’t going to go off if it sat there a wee while. 

She never looked back. 

Her legacy of that projects continues to thrive in that project and impacts stacks of people.  Why Am I Telling You This

Because Claire has been on my mind for a little while now.  She’s also left a legacy with me.  Our conversation has been ringing round in my head during the end of 2021 and that has had a huge impact on me.  

It’s incredibly important for me to follow my passion. 

What actually is my passion?  It’s about removing people out of their own way to be able to do the stuff that they want to do.  It’s about unleashing adventure and excitement into YOUR world.  

My world changes when I back myself and it’s time to do that again!

So Should You Follow Your Passion?

YES!!! 

Hell yeah! 

Life’s too short not to! It doesn’t mean you have to throw everything else in the bin.  It doesn’t mean you have to turn your back or throw the baby out with the bath water.  It means lean in to it, it means get curious with it and get started.  Like Claire did.  She then got to the stage she needed to make a choice in order to unleash herself into a whole new place, remove the load of the thing that then felt like it was holding her back.

What do I want you to know; 

  that niggle needs your attention 

 dip your toe in, don’t ignore it

  if/when it’s time to make a decision remember that popping something to one side for now doesn’t mean you’re saying never will I ever do that ever again.