Find and Live Your Passion

Last week, we talked about the importance of clearly knowing what we value, what our intention in life is, and matching those value/intentions to where we spend our time, based on the Right Intention step on the Eightfold Path.  

This last Sunday, I talked about "getting into the full flow of living".  If we are to be passionate about living, we have to take the risk of being in the flow, which includes all the messiness of life. Oftentimes, we spend endless energy regretting or hanging on to something in the past or fearing something in the future. When we decide to make friends with our past (Jack Kornfield calls it the moment we give up trying to create a better past) and when we make friends with our fear, when we are finally honest with ourselves about the truth, we free up enormous amounts of energy that can be focused on being more present and passionate in each moment.  In each mindful moment, we will find our passion for living.

Now, think forward to this next week.  What one or two small things could you change that will help you make friends with the past and the fears and start to get into the flow?  Here's some ideas I threw out:

• Find some time each day to do just one thing at a time.  Washing dishes, doing laundry, taking a bath--without the cell phone, TV or all the other intrusions that sometime complicate our lives.
• Periodically, be aware of breathing.  Instead of worrying whether we're meditating enough, we can start with finding a couple of times each day to be aware of breathing.  Focus on your next three breaths and nothing else.  It takes less than two minutes and can be life changing as we slowly do it more and more each day.  
• Be slow to respond.  Whatever the trigger might be--an angry co-worker, a crying child, some person cutting you off in traffic--take 60 seconds to decide how to respond in a new way, how to respond in a way that blesses you and the other person.

One person decided that they were going to look for an opportunity to sincerely compliment another person every day.  It can be that simple.

That's if for this week!  Next week, we'll be talking about finding the power to change.