Creative Calm Connected: What should I do with my life?

I was basking in the sun at a trendy suburban café one Sunday afternoon with the most beautiful group of mismatched women. We had the pleasure of working together in one of the most awesome teams I have ever had the privilege to work in. Now we all have different jobs, but still make time to catch up when we can. We were talking about all the things important in our lives right now, my blog came up (!), all the children, and generally what we are doing with our lives.

One of our party – bright, colourful, caring and kind, clever, brave and driven – mentioned that she is still working on figuring out what she wants in life next…still searching for what her passion is.

I feel like this is something that is coming up around me a lot lately. I’m not sure if it is because of the season of life my friends and I are in, or if it is an ongoing quest we will encounter throughout the rest of our lives. Everybody seems to be searching for more.

So how do we work out what that is?

We’ve already had a chat here about the Desire Map; by Danielle LA Porte (see this post). The main gist of her idea is that we work out how we want to feel in our life (because she feels we are chasing a feeling rather than goals) and then sort it out from there.

I was listening to a podcast by Rob Bell the other day (the RobCast, episode 6) and he answered the question how do you figure out what your thing in life is?

Rob suggested you can find the answer in a number of ways:

· Listen to the themes that keep arising in your life. When is it that you felt most alive/at peace/satisfaction? When was it and what were you doing at those times?

· What angers you? What fills you with a sense of divine anger or injustice that you think “someone should do something about that” – maybe that someone is you!

All great questions I think that could help guide you to where your passion or “thing” in life might be.

Everyone’s favourite spiritual guide, Oprah, suggests we already have the answer within us. All we have to do is listen:

"If I were to put it in business terms or to leave you with a message," she told a crowd of Stanford GSB students, some of whom waited in line 90 minutes to secure a seat close to the stage, "the truth is I have from the very beginning listened to my instincts. All of my best decisions in life have come because I was attuned to what really felt like the next right move for me."

"Your real work is to figure out where your power base is and to work on that alignment of your personality, your gifts you have to give, with the real reason why you are here," she said. "Align your personality with your purpose, and no one can touch you." If you want to watch Oprah speak about this go here.

Another suggestion that I heard recently (I think it was on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast) is to remember what it was you liked to do when you were 10 years old. Chances are what you liked doing then, you will still like doing today, and you may just find inspiration for something you would like to add back into your life again. Using this method, I have identified that my career of choice should clearly be singing into a hairbrush, dancing to John Farnham songs ;) However, if this is not possible, my next favourite thing to do was read books and write stories, letters and poems. Pretty close to what I love doing now!

What has worked for me? I’m a big believer in following my instincts. It seems that the right opportunities seem to present themselves when I am ready for them. I start thinking about something I’d like to do or achieve, slowly mulling it over, dreaming, wondering if it is the right path to take. Usually, when I listen to what my soul is saying, something will happen that seems to show me I’m on the right track. I love those moments. It is like you feel energised, excited and can’t wait to get started.

So, have you found your passion in life? The thing you can’t wait to bounce out of bed to do each day? Are you still searching? Do you have any advice for my sparkly friend? Comment below or on the Facebook page (search Creative Calm Connected).