Feed Your Passion What it Needs And Watch It Grow

You’ve discovered you are passionate about writing romances or creating music or making the best gosh-durn peach pie in the county. When you create based on your passion, you are in your happy place. Whatever your passion is, it needs a certain amount of feeding. Overtime, you may think you’ve “outgrown” that passion. For any passion to survive, it needs a little TLC. Feed your passion what it needs and watch it grow.

Recognize a Starving Passion

We all have times when life places extreme demands on our time and attention. Sometimes those demands are self-imposed (perfectionist anyone?). Sometimes it’s a pandemic, or a loved one who’s ill. It is easy to disconnect when your stress levels are high. Stress, whether self-imposed or from an outside source, can turn a passion into dread. You may even find that the pressure of all-the-things sucked the passion out of your life.

Are you starving your passion? How do you know? A daily journal recording time spent can help you see what you lack. Or a simple list of questions may give you the answer.

  • What do I spend hours reading or dreaming about?
  • What do I look forward to doing—someday?
  • When was the last time I…..?

Passion Requires Action

image of a man trying a skateboard trick and in mid-fall

A “someday” project will never be a passion. Passion requires action. You must take the first or the fiftieth step or the fifty-thousandth step.

Fear can overshadow passion. When you allow fear to stop you once, it will be harder to step forward at your next opportunity.

For your passion to grow, you must practice it. Even if your attempts cannot reach your dream’s potential, the practice takes you one step closer. With each step you take, you’re not only closer to your dream, you’re growing.

Feed Your Passion

You wouldn’t expect a seed to grow without the right environment. The same is true of creativity. Any passion or creative endeavor needs to be given nutrition. How do you feed your passion what it needs and watch it grow?

1. Learn

Image of a hand with fingers pressing the strings of on the neck of a guitar

Find videos, articles, and books about the level of skill just above yours. How do you find them? Google it. Ask a reference librarian at your community library. If you’re still stuck, look up your passion in a thesaurus. Use the synonyms and even the antonyms to do a search.

2. Connect

Search your favorite social media for groups of people who share your passion. Listen to others when they share tips and information. Ask for advice on a skill you want to learn. Share what you’ve learned with others. Teach what you know at your local community center or club. 

3. Get a Mentor

Look for the persons (living or dead) you’d love to emulate. Choose potential mentors carefully—the current best-seller or most famous person may not have time to mentor anyone. Study the work of the mentor whose skills you admire or are several levels above your own. Be helpful to that person or persons. After you’ve built a relationship, ask that person for advice on a project. If that goes well, ask if he or she will offer more advice from time-to-time. Be respectful of their time. Keep in mind that you may need more than one mentor.

4. Get the Right Space and Tools

Image of sharpened tips of colored pencils. Feed your passion what it needs and watch it grow--be certain you have a work environment that helps you create

Everything that grows needs the right environment. Do you have a space and the tools you need? You may not be able to have the ideal place, but find a place for you and your passion. All creativity needs a physical place, a set of tools or skills, and the nutrition to grow.

5. Renew Your Passion

Sometimes you may need to remind yourself why this is your passion. Renew your acquaintance with the experts you admired in the past. Take a deep dive into the new experts in your area of passion. Try to imitate an expert—even making an exact copy can be what your passion needs.

6. Rekindle Your Passion

Look outside your passion to rekindle it. Sometimes our best sources of inspiration come from complimentary disciplines. If your passion is about baking, perhaps a visit to the local farmers’ market will inspire you. Or you may need inspiration from another area of passion. Step outside of what’s familiar to your Music, Art, Theater, cake decorating, wood carving. 

Look at what is around you and see the creativity there. Someone was passionate enough to create the paint colors you chose for your rooms, or the species and color of flower you put in your front yard. You can see creativity in playgrounds, architecture, computer programs, even in pots and pans and hairbrushes and toothbrushes. It might not be your passion, but if you look for it, you can see some creativity in almost anything around you.

You Don’t Have Time?

Quote of Fear is the mindkiller from Frank Herbert's Dune over a dark background with a silhouette of a person who's afraid

There are life events that limit us. Before you say—yup, that’s me. Life has limited me. Stop. Take stock of your situation. Are you too busy or too afraid?

“Fear is the mindkiller.” Fear often disguises itself as procrastination. I won’t fail if I don’t start. They won’t laughed at me if I don’t try… I won’t waste my time… Your excuses can be almost anything. You are the only one who can evaluate your excuses honestly. If it’s fear, face your fear by taking action. Fear shrinks in the face of action.

If your life situation takes all your time and energy, make a few minutes each day to feed your passion. Give yourself an estimated date when you’ll be freer to pursue your passion. Adjust the date if you must, but always, always ask yourself if the delay is necessary or is it fear.

If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors for you. I say, follow your bliss, and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be

.Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

If you’ve enjoyed this post, check out other posts about creativity.

Watch it Grow

Nothing stagnant will sprout. So feed your passion what it needs and watch it grow. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, the stuff you need will show up where you didn’t know it would be.

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