Tag Archives: purpose

When dreams you didn’t even know you had, come true.

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The world is continuing to inspire me with every passing day, and I’m noticing that even though I need at least 3 lifetimes to effectively execute my current bucket-list, and no mater how hard I try to practice some crazy, wild child ambitious dreaming, it seems that there will be some morsels of gold thrown my way, materializing fantasies I haven’t even ‘dreamt’, conjured, tasted, or felt yet.

It is precisely at this point, (when I see paddle-boards on someone’s car roof), that I not only realize that I now want to paddle-board along the entire bay, but also, that my bucket list will never be complete.

I will always need another leaf of paper as soon as all the dotted lines are filled, and a trip to the newsagent, once I have exasperated every option on my 4-pen.

Surely, as soon as I tick off hiking to Base Camp, the Everest trek will supersede my next day-off hike, and just when I think I have seen every crevice of Barcelona, I will acknowledge that Granada is only a short train ride south, with an inevitable backyard of even more spectacular things for me to touch, explore and appreciate.

From that location and perspective, I just know that another place, idea, experience, ride, walk, talk or book will come flying my way and a whole new world will open before me, for the thousandth time.

What I’m learning today, tomorrow, next week, and now, is that this world is fast, so fast that if you blink you might just miss it, the way that you might miss the Town Centre of Yackandandah, if you look down at your volume dial in an attempt to turn the radio up whilst driving. (Shout out to my fave, and only Yack-er, Harry Quealy).

We never really know where the de-tour is actually going to take us, or if we might just find the next big thing on Bean Hunter if we go left instead of right.

The implications and consequences of every thought, word, action, chance encounter, and brief meeting is something we will never truly grasp.

But that’s the beauty of it right? Making rules in order to break them, and setting plans so you can bail last minute for something better, greater, funner?

So keep dreaming, little dreamer, as Cinderella says, a dream is a wish your heart makes. Corny I know, but everyone loves a little Disney flashback (or maybe that’s just me…awks).

A passionate discussion on passion, not pashing.

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There’s a lot of noise at the moment about passion.

Passionfruit has always been delish, and Passiona a somewhat refreshing beverage.

But take away these suffixes, then your’e just left with little old passion. Just. Left. With. Passion. A 7 letter gem that shapes a lot of what the mystics call their ‘life-purpose’, what the entrepreneurs label their ‘calling’, and what I like to call, something bloody massive I just cant decide on.

I mean, personally, I want to be a writer, a dancer (currently I’m perfecting the moonwalk), a surfer (thanks Blue Crush), a corporate bitch, a band-member, a hippie who lives in a combi in Byron and sells handmade jewellery, a yoga instructor, a Buddhist monk, a mining magnate, Miranda Kerr… basically, everything under the sun.

I guess in my fiasco of options, I am desperately just trying to define my, wait for it… PASSION.

As I learn more about the said, 7 letter-er, I can safely say the two of us are slowly becoming friends.

Motivational books will tell you to “follow your passion” if happiness is what you truly seek, but thanks Confucius, how am I meant to follow something when I don’t even know what it looks like? There is no road-sign, no Google answer, not even a Wikipedia article that precisely tells me what my passion is. So, your notions of living a purposeful life are really of no help to me at all, not unless you help me find it anyway.

So I assigned myself a James Bond mission to get to the bottom of the P word. What I found was surprisingly simple.

What. Do. You. Love. 

But here’s the catch, you have to limit it to 10. And list them in order.

These are your passions. Voila!

A 10-point list could very well include:

·      Cheerleading,

·      Shopping,

·      Travelling,

·      Eating McDonald’s fries,

·      Being with friends,

·      Reading,

·      Watching the Disney Channel,

·      Playing in the pool,

·      Playing with dogs,

·      Being in the sun.

Please note these are the Top 10 ‘passions’ of my 12 year-old sister.

So enlighten me, how on earth is she going to make a career out of being a dog-loving, junk-food munching, cheerleader? Truth is, mate, she’s not.

So as an informer big sister, do I tell her to discard all these fun things because, well honey, that ain’t gon’ pay the bills? 

Nope, I tell her to lap them up, do these things, and do them often!

Do them for as long as you stop loving doing them, and when you do, find something more fun and enjoyable to replace them.

Because they are your passions.

(P.S she later argued, telling me that people actually can make money being a cheerleader, enough for a 50-cent cone anyway!)

I think what we get caught up in, is thinking that you have to find passion in a job or career, but truthfully, that would be condemning your crazy passions into a tiny hole and saying, ‘don’t move, breathe, or smile. No fun allowed’. Passion is so much more multi-faceted. 

Sure, we would all love to be Oprah, or Kelly Slater, doing for a job what we LOVE, but let’s be realistic. Don’t think that if you are not able to land your dream job on Getaway, that you are going to live in misery, you can be as happy as Pharrell, even if you are the toilet cleaner at Flinders Street Station on a Saturday night.

But “how” you scream. I’ll impart my wisdom with you, it’s all about how you spend the remaining 77 hours of your week (considering a 35 hour work week and 56 crucial beauty sleep provisions).

That my sweet child, is where you live your passions. Read, dance, bake, write, sing, play, laugh and laugh some more!

Even if you just spend half your free time doing the things you love, you have already outbid your day job. Kapish?

So basically, yeah. Homework for this week, list your ten passions, and sacrifice Game of thrones to play out your own fanstasy!

I would love to hear your thoughts on the passionate topic, and what activities and things come up in your Top 10 list.

 

P.S Take a leaf from Janey’s book, this gal is one passionate painter!

 

The Barbie Belief System.

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It’s easy to be a Barbie girl in a Barbie world, if you’re not in a Barbie world though – which many of us mere humans are certainly not (Jen Hawkins my friend, you are an exception) – its pretty damn hard to be a Barbie girl.

My guess is that the same law of physics applies to the whole “happiness” thing. It’s easy to be happy if you live in a happy world complete with loving parents, cool siblings, a lot of shifts at a job you love, a cool car, an awesome place to live, crazy fun friends and a constant tan. I’m basically referring to the the Pounder Meal with chicken sauce on the side to dip your chippies in; the whole enchilada; or as my beloved year 12 Maths teacher would say, ‘the whole sha-bang’.

What I mean, is that, it’s easy to be happy when everything is going super well, our beliefs that “everything happens for a reason”, that “every failure is a lesson is disguise”, that “(insert whatever inspiring quote turns you on)” seem so solid.

For sure, why wouldn’t we believe that we were MEANT to land that internship, MEANT to make that new friend, MEANT to get a day off on the hottest weekday? Seems logical to me!

But how about when we crash a car, have a fight with a younger sister (who constantly wears your clothes without asking…I wouldn’t name names), fail that subject, or lose the job you love. Surely all that was 100%, NOT MEANT to happen. Surely.

How much would you want to throw eggs on the head of anyone who attempted to tell you that “crashing your car is certainly for the best”. Like, I think I would actually cut you.

No way am I “happy”, and I DO NOT believe that this was for the purpose of some profound “life lesson”.

There is no way.

José.

(This was getting too serious, so thought I’d invite my Mexican friend to join the post :D).

But seriously. When a winning streak collapses, what do you believe then? Do you still believe that you live a wonderful life? That Santa is still real and that the monsters won’t find you if you hide under the covers for long enough?.

(On this note, can I just say, WHAT is Rihanna’s deal with being friends with the monster that’s under her bed? She is one crazy gal!)

It’s hard. But in the midst of the most challenging, heart-breaking, spine-chilling and uncertain times, I think the only thing we can believe, is that life will go on.

Tomorrow the sun will rise, 9am will become 10am, we will get hungry, get thirsty, hear a song, see the stars, hug, talk, and soon enough, smile, laugh and believe in all those beautiful things again.

As we grow and see this cycle re-emerge with the same certainty as the seasons that pass, a new belief is borne, one which takes precedence over all others. And it is this: that something good will actually, eventually, one day emerge.

Not before bedtime, or before the weekend. Maybe not even before your 21st, Christmas, or before you graduate. But one day.

One day you will look back and smile at what you thought was the end of your world. Smile at your naïveté in allowing you to lose that ‘spark’, along with the happiness you vowed to always believe in.

We soon can appreciate that yep, they were right, it was for your own good. It was just, life.

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I would love to know which beliefs keep you sane in the midst of difficult times, please feel free to contact me and and share your recipe for lemonade when life gives you lemons!