Finding your passion in life.  I think that is something that eludes most.  I’m lucky I guess, because I have found mine, but it has been because of the tramatic experience of losing my son to mental illness.  I know my mission in life is to do everything I can, using my skills and abilities to educate people about mental illness and create awareness about the reality of mental health recovery. I’m also fortunate because my job as Development Director at NAMI of Southern Arizona utilizes my experience in sales and marketing in our ongoing effort to fundraise.  I’m also offered  the opportunity to speak publically about the many issues surrounding this topic from a family members perspective.  I love what I do and it gives me a mission in life.

Even without a life altering experience, finding your passion is not an easy thing to do.  But, finding it and being able to do if for a living is well worth the effort and enables you to come closer to realizing your potential. I don’t always jump out of bed, excited to get my day started, but at the end of the day I am thankful that what I do means something to me. I admire people I know that work closely with people in mental health crisis.  The stories can be heart breaking and have on many occassions brought me to tears.  These people, like medical doctors and nurses, have to be able to balance their compassion with a focused determination to help the person and the situation.  It’s intensely sad and it would be difficult to not bring home with me.  I like what I do.

So, what can you do to find you passion?  Here are a few suggestions.

1. Do you have a hobby or something you loved as a kid?  Research the possibilites of finding a way to make money doing it.
2. What do you spend hours reading about? Maybe there are some possibilities there?
3. Get out a sheet of paper and just start writing ideas down.  No matter how silly – write it down and evaluate later.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help!  Ask you friends and relatives what they think would be a great career for you.
5. When something seems like it might fit, research, research, research. Find out all you can about the topic. Is there a way for you to volunteer in the field and see if it really works for you before making a committment?
6. If you had all the financial resources in the world, what would you do for free?
7. If you can’t do it now, is there a way to work towards your goal? Set a time-table.

One thing to remember – you can have more than one passion in life and sometimes your passion can change.  So, even if you feel you are already doing what you were meant to, don’t close your eyes to something new or something you can additonally do.   I am not an expert and I am certainly no life coach, but doing something that has meaning to you helps you to feel better about yourself  and your life.  And the possibilites are limitless!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 4:47 pm and is filed under depression, General Mental Health, Health, Life, mental illness. Tags for this post: confidence, depression, mental illness, passion in life, personal goals, self esteem, therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.