Passion as a Source of Power

by Roxana Valea

At the HEAL Institute, every month we tackle a new topic. May is about turning Burnout into Balance.

If you think of burnout as exhaustion, as a state of low energy, the main question becomes where can we replenish this energy from? How can we reach a state of high energy?

The following fragment from my book, “Personal Power – Mindfulness Techniques for the Corporate World” talks about passion as a source of personal power. And personal power is life force, our reservoir of high energy.

“We each may have different sources from where we draw our personal power. But here’s one power source that stands out higher and taller than anything else, one shortcut your soul has given you to help you build and maintain your power, one thing you were born with and that no one can influence or take away from you: your passions.

Passions often make themselves known in childhood and accompany us through our lives. Other times we stumble upon them unexpectedly and they stay with us forever. They are there for us when we remember them and they reward us with a sudden increase in energy every time.

Passions are greatly overlooked and their potential to heal us and bring us back into our power base has been largely ignored. Described as hobbies, they lose importance, lose weight; they become disposable. A hobby is what someone does to kill time if he’s got time to kill. A passion, on the other hand, is what our soul longs to do, what we were born to do, and doing exactly that gives us amazing power. Don’t think of your passions as hobbies, don’t despise them, don’t put them last on your list. Make time for them, allow them space and weight in your life. Make peace with them. For whatever reason and from wherever they came to you, they are here for a purpose. They are your secret power-replenishing engines. Follow your passions and you will enjoy more personal power, joy and meaning in your life than you ever thought would be possible.

But in today’s world, which discourages personal pursuits and idealises hard work, how do we find out what our real passions are? We have been educated to fit into a ‘socially acceptable’ frame. Go to work, raise a family, socialise with friends. Go to the gym. Take a holiday. Repeat. In this never- ending routine, we might feel sometimes that we actually have no passions, and even if we had them once, we lost touch with them long ago.

Your passions are with you for a lifetime. Rest assured they are still there. Once you look for them, they will start slowly coming out of hiding. Just don’t call them hobbies. Recognise the enormous energy gift they hold for you and and honour them. Start by calling them passions.

Passions are things we are drawn to doing, and while doing them we lose awareness of ourselves. Time stops. We are so focused, we are so concentrated on doing that activity that we exist only in the present moment. Passions come easily and naturally to us; we feel we instinctively know how to do this and have been doing this forever. They are often our natural talents. Or even if it’s something totally new and difficult, we feel that no pain is too great to learn how to do this. Passions are always there; even if you do not do that activity for a long time you instinctively feel a sense of pleasure when you do it again. Passions are things you do for pleasure – not for money, recognition or because they are part of a plan. That is not to say that money, recognition or following a plan cannot tie in with a passion. They can, but they are not behind the drive for it. Passions cannot be faked; they are either there or they are not.

Cooking, dancing, playing an instrument, painting, collecting stamps, writing, sports: all these are forms of passions. Travelling, exploring new cultures and learning new languages can be passions too. Someone can learn a new language out of a feeling that they have to, that it’s part of a plan, but this will feel quite different than when the learning comes out of a passion for that language, culture or country.

Find your passions. It’s the most important thing you can do for yourself. It’s the highest expression of self-love. Rediscover them and honour them. Listen to their call and see where they lead you. You might be surprised.”

(fragment from “Personal Power – Mindfulness Techniques for the Corporate World, Roxana Valea, 2018)