Passion Part 2

At the end of my last posting on May 16, Passion, the Most Important Attitude, I left off with a promise that we will discuss exercises that can help you harness your imagination, discover your life purpose and create more Love, Joy, Enthusiasm, Satisfaction and Success in your life. Well, here they are.

Although these exercises will benefit you even if you haven’t yet read the article on Passion, I suggest you go back and read it before you continue here. I think you will find that the exercises will then have even more value for you.

Here are two exercises that can help you harness your imagination. Your imagination can allow you to explore situations that may seem impossible until you have stepped inside them to feel what it feels like inside the scene.

You may want to record the instructions, or have a friend read them aloud. Either way, be certain that there is enough time allowed between each sentence for you to be able to respond internally to each step.

1. Take a moment to close your eyes. Take two or three deep breaths…… Imagine there are two boxes in front of you...... On the left, is a box containing all of your abilities, talents, knowledge, training, interests and passions…… On the right is a box containing all of your life……
Now ask yourself “how much of everything that is available in the left box is represented in the box on the right?” In which parts of your life are you selling yourself short?...... Now ask yourself the well-known question “If you knew that you were absolutely guaranteed you could not fail to succeed at whatever you decided to pursue next, no matter how big, what would it be?

2. This is helpful when you are trying to decide between different options. Again whether you are recording the instructions yourself or having someone read them aloud, it is important to allow enough time between each sentence for you to respond internally.

Get comfortable, and as you take two or three deep breaths, allow your eyes to close whenever it feels right…… Imagine what it would be like to be comfortably watching three separate video screens…… Each one is showing you successfully living one of your possible choices……Notice whether the action is accompanied by sound?......if you decide to be imagining yourself also holding a remote control, notice how it feels in your hand…… In each scene,
Notice how you are dressed…… Are you dressed up, or in casual clothes?...... Are you with other people, or by yourself?......
Where are you?...... Are you outside or inside?...... As you feel yourself in each scene, be aware of which one excites and satisfies you the most…… This can be a clue as to which path you really want to pursue next.


Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Secrets of Highly Effective People, advocates that we should always begin with the end in mind. By clearly choosing the outcome we are seeking, we can work backwards to identify the steps required to get us there. Another advantage of starting with the end in mind is that it excites our passion, which creates energy, the enthusiasm that will sweep you along to success.

In his audiocassette tape Getting Rich While you’re Young Enough to Enjoy It, author and speaker Jerry Gillies quotes an interesting study. He attributes the study as coming from the book Getting Rich Your Own Way. According to Mr. Gillies, the author studied more than 1,500 middle class people over a twenty-year period. Over that time, 83 of those people became millionaires. What intrigued the author was that each of the 83 people had three things in common:

1. Not one of them became rich by investing. They didn’t invest in
stocks or real estate or any of the other standard ways of investing.
2. Not one of the people who had a plan became rich.
3. All of the 83 who became millionaires did the thing they enjoyed the most. Each of them found their work absorbing, involving and enthralling. For them work and play became one.

This caused the author to speculate that while it may be important to have a plan when you are building a bridge or constructing a house, there are more important factors to consider when becoming successful at life, in this case, getting rich. In fact, the author and Mr. Gillies believed that a plan might actually get in your way if you aren’t following your passions, the things you love most.

Finding Your Life Purpose

Sometimes we can discover our passions in life through unexpected events. In fact, that’s exactly how I discovered my passion for helping people that became my life’s work. Here is what happened.

When I was in my mid twenties, I met a man who asked me what I liked to do most. He was several years older, and had recently made a career change to become a lawyer. As we talked, I tried to answer his question and discovered my answer began to change. My first response was that I really liked to travel. In fact, we met through a mutual friend while I was enjoying a visit to Seattle. So, it was true that I like to travel, and I thought it sounded less lame than telling him about my preoccupation at that time and what I enjoyed most, which was meeting women. Remember, I was 24 years old and single. He shared that what he enjoyed most was meeting new people, talking with them and really getting to know them. Exactly what we were doing then.

At that moment I became conscious of how much I enjoyed meeting people and getting to know them, at a deep level. I remembered how much I like to share information and ideas. Those interests had led me to the first job I ever really liked. That was as a volunteer counselor at a free clinic when I was an undergraduate in college. Imagine, the first job that I ever liked was doing something I enjoyed so much I did it for free.

Few things in life give me as much pleasure as I get when I help people discover how to get unstuck and create more exciting lives full of Joy, Love, and Fun. It is this passion that led me to put forth all of the effort and expense to complete the many years of training and internship to become a psychotherapist. Afterwards, I discovered I could help people whose lives were shattered by industrial accidents, and I worked as a Vocational rehabilitation Counselor. Those experiences, in turn, sparked my interest in helping people suffering from chronic pain conditions and to start my own business combining those interests.

What Deciding On Your Life Purpose Can Do For You

When you take the time to discover your Life Purpose, you will discover it gives you a higher and larger vision. You will have a tool that will allow you to put your own passion into all of your daily activities, even those that others might see as mundane.

There is a well-known story that illustrates this. If you have heard this story before you can skip to the next paragraph. The story concerns an architect who went out to inspect the progress on the construction of a cathedral he had designed. He saw three bricklayers and asked, “What are you doing?” The first man replied, “I’m laying bricks.” The second man replied, “I’m building a wall.” The third man replied, “I’m helping to build a great cathedral.” Clearly, each person was having a completely different experience even though they were involved in the same tasks. Which person do you think put more into his work? Which one do you think got more satisfaction out of his work?

This tool will also make it easier to choose the next step for you. When I am confronted by choices, I ask myself questions. Two of the questions are “Is this congruent with my Life Purpose or not?” and “How can I use this experience to further my Life Purpose?” In my own case, I defined my Life Purpose as ‘Healing and empowering as many people as possible’
When I defined my purpose that way, I realized that by including the words ‘as possible,’ that meant I had to find ways to share the things I have learned and the skills I have acquired with more people than were ever likely to visit my office. That led to developing public speaking skills and creating seminars, workshops, audio-learning programs, and now this blog.

Those activities led me to discover two more passions, public speaking and teaching. The seminars led me to be hired to present at conferences. Those exposures resulted in requests to go into companies and government agencies to help resolve the people problems that were affecting the organization. These were opportunities to share my knowledge and skills with people who never would have considered going to see a therapist.

As a result of those choices, my own life became more exciting, rewarding and interesting. As a result of that conversation in which I was asked what I like to do the most, I began to consciously get in touch with my passion to work with people. Now I have become one of those people whose work is doing what I enjoy the most. Choosing to work at that which inspires, enthuses and delights me transformed my life. I encourage you to take enough time to decide your Life Purpose. You can start by taking only a few minutes.

By the way, over the years, I have updated and modified my Life Purpose and you can to. Deciding on my Life Purpose didn’t clear up all of the challenges (another word for problems) in my life. As I learned from my experiences, stumbled and sometimes got hurt as a result of my mistakes and acquired more knowledge and expanded my consciousness I naturally expanded my Life Purpose.

My interests in psychology and in metaphysics resulted in years of study in religious psychology in which the mysteries of the science of mind have been explored. These studies complement my work as a therapist very well. I developed a compelling interest in learning how life works at all levels. I wanted to understand the hidden as well as the obvious principles that operate in our life. As I have learned more I have included the new perspectives in my work with people and in my understanding of how life works. A hint: life works best when we are in harmony with universal principles. We will explore those in future postings.

For now, I want to point out that almost everything I value most was once just a dream. Sometimes just a vague or distant longing. However, everything in life starts with an idea. I think you would agree that before the computer you are using ever existed in its present physical form, it existed as an idea in someone’s mind. You would also agree that the same is true of the car you drive. Before it existed in its present physical form it existed first in someone’s mind. So perhaps you might also agree that before the present circumstances of your life existed in their current form, they also existed as ideas, both conscious and unconscious in your mind.

As I mentioned above, almost everything in my life that I value most was once just a dream. The dreams that came true, my close relationships with my wife and daughter and my 4-year-old granddaughter, becoming a family therapist, becoming a professional speaker, creating audio-learning programs, teaching college students and my closest friendships all came about because I chose to follow my passions. Other dreams I had which, up until now, have not come true were abandoned because I did not link them to a passionate desire which could inspire the courage and interest and energy to commit to them completely.

Going For Your Dreams

It has been said that regret comes from not living the life you really wanted. If you could look into the future twenty or thirty years from today, what are the things you might be telling your children or grandchildren that you always wanted to do but didn’t? Why didn’t you do those things? How did you stop yourself? What were your fears? Was it worth giving into those fears and robbing yourself of al of that fun and excitement and satisfaction? What would you give to have a chance to go for your dreams, to experience the thrill of going with your passions and to constantly feel Enthusiasm and Joy in your daily life? What would you give to go back and choose a life consisting of ever increasing Love, Joy, Satisfaction and Success?

Right now you have that chance! Realize that the only moment is now. So what is it going to be? Impassive and apathetic, or Fervid and Exciting and filled with Passion? Luckily, you get to choose.


In future postings we will explore ideas of how we can uncover our hidden, unconscious beliefs about life and ourselves, how we can uncover and release limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs and create ideas that support our dreams, not our fears. As always, I welcome your comments, questions and suggestions for future topics. Stay tuned and be sure to check back on a regular basis.