The Art of Inner Beauty (2015)
Chapter 4: Pursue Your Passion: Your Beauty will Shine
Do you know anyone who has discovered an activity or a calling that they believe is the overriding purpose in life? These individuals may be volunteering for a specific cause. They may have discovered early in life what inspires them to wake up every morning and head off to work with a smile on their face.
Have you noticed, additionally, that these individuals are unusually happy with their lives, more upbeat than others and always seem to find the good in every situation and in every person?
Undoubtedly, these individuals are pursuing their passion and in addition they’re sharing their inner beauty with you and every other person they touch every day.
One of the most important methods of discovering your inner beauty is by discovering your passion in life. When you can actually put your inner desires to work in the world, you’d be amazed at how your entire demeanor changes.
When going to work every day in order to work at something you love, you discover that you view the world entirely differently - and those around you will certainly notice.
If there were any doubt previously that you hadn’t connected with your inner beauty, all of those will be removed. You’ll know immediately when you connect with your passion and you’ll pass your pure bliss that’s a consequence of that on to others.
How do you find that passion?
It may take some digging inside yourself to discover it. Some individuals are lucky enough to find it early in life. Others shuffle through several occupations before they find what truly makes their inner beauty shines. Some people actually never make it their job, but play for hours with it because it’s their hobby.
If your inner beauty isn’t shining the way you think it should be, perhaps you haven’t found your passion yet. Something that makes your eyes shine when you talk about it. An activity that gives you added energy when you believe you couldn’t take another step.
So, exactly how do you discover your passion if you don’t have a clue? You start with this moment. How would you describe your inner state right now? What does your body feel like? How would you describe your emotions? Deep down in your soul, in other words, what’s happening?
Now when you put all these feelings together what happens? Do you feel like a whole person? Do you believe there’s something missing from your life? If you feel as if something is still missing, then you probably haven’t found your passion in life.
If you’re living with what feels like continual anxiety, a chest full of resentment or any other emotions that zap your energy and your happiness, then your body and mind may be dropping you some subtle hints. Perhaps it’s time to analyze your life.
Consider this Alternative Scenario
Perhaps you know exactly what your passion is. And you’d like nothing better than to follow it. But …
Here’s where you suddenly your inner beauty becomes disjointed from your true inner desires. You throw up a handful of “buts” around you and box yourself in.
- “But, I couldn’t possibly make a living following my passion.”
- “But right now is not the time to start the business that I feel I could succeed in.”
- “But who would take of my children if I went back to school and got that degree I so desperately want?”
- “But I’m too old to do something like that right now. My time has passed.”
Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.
There is certainly a time and place for everything and that may include following your dreams. But... if you really want something and you dug deep into your soul, you’d probably find a way to overcome each and every one of your long-held beliefs that prevent you from doing achieving - in some cases even pursuing - your dream.
Did I hear you say you’ve already tried writing once and your submission was rejected? So? Write again, submit again. Did you know that Stephen King’s work was rejected so many times that he was ready to call it quits. Actually, he did call it quits. As the story goes, he had thrown what he considered to be his last rejection into the garbage when he learned that yet another publisher rejected it. His wife, however, was not so quick to give up.
She retrieved the manuscript her husband threw away from the garbage when she came home from work that afternoon. She convinced him to try just one more time. He did and his manuscript was accepted. His advance for the book was only $250, but he didn’t care. He had found a way to align his passion with his daily life.
You can start right here and right now to change your attitude toward your vision and move ahead to follow your bliss. No, I’m definitely not talking about quitting your job tomorrow and randomly seeking a purpose. There’s a method you can use to seize this golden opportunity in your life and take well-ordered, prepared steps to discover your soul’s purpose and allow your inner beauty to shine.
If you follow the following seven steps to bliss I guarantee that you’ll experience that inner glow that you find so appealing in others.
- State your vision clearly.
Don’t be wishy-washy about your vision. If you aren’t concrete about how you express your passion, the odds are against you in it manifesting in your life. It has to be clear enough in your mind that you can see it even before you’ve attained it.
You’ve no doubt heard the saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Well, throw that saying away and replace it with “I’ll see it when (and only when) I believe it.” Why do you think they call it a vision? See it in your mind’s eye and never let it out of your sight.
- Write out specific goals to attain this vision.
There are two distinct clues in the previous sentence that are vital to your success. The first is the term “write out.” Don’t just trust your memory to how you’re going to accomplish this. Write it out. Then look at these goals frequently. These terms are nothing less than your tickets to success, your blueprint to a shining inner beauty.
By doing this you’ll be keeping them in your consciousness. You’re far less likely to let them fade than if you merely write them out and stick them in some file folder.
The other part of that sentence that is vital to your success is the word “specific.” Again as in step one, you need to know exactly what you want. You need to know the goals necessary to get your vision realized. Don’t be vague. When Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, he didn’t say I want to paint, uhm… a woman or maybe a man or …
No. He knew exactly what he was going to paint and the odds are good, he already had a copy of it in his mind’s eye.
That’s how you need to be about your vision and your goals.
- Make sure the goals you set are yours and not someone else’s.
Remember this is your passion. While you may consult with friends and family you ultimately control your vision. After all, this vision is what’s going to release the inner beauty within you. It’s not going to affect your mother’s inner beauty or your best friend’s passion.
While they may certainly make suggestions, the final decision comes down to you. And only you. In fact that only way you can turn your vision into your passion is by following your heart’s desire.
- Release any goals that don’t lead you directly to your vision.
You may have thrown some random, stray concepts in the listing of your goals. Review them to make sure that each of the steps you plan on taking to realize your vision don’t lead you instead to something else. Also double check to ensure that, as we talked about in the last paragraph, that all the goals are yours and not what a close family member wants for you.
If your goal is to write a novel, keep those goals that have your working on your piece of fiction. Don’t clutter your life or fritter away your precious time pursuing ideas that have nothing to do with the piece of fiction you want to write. If you splinter your time and your concentration in that way, you’ll never discover your bliss.
- Set a deadline for the completion of each goal, then work out a time line.
This is probably the most complicated part. It involves being able to estimate when you’re going to be able to reach any number of goals. Most of us have a hard time doing this. You may discover when you get this all down on paper that you haven’t given yourself enough time for one or more goals.
Don’t get upset. Just be flexible. If you’ve misjudged how long one or two activities take simply adjust your timeline. It may be that one of goals may take longer than you thought. But on the other hand, as you work through these stepping stones, another one materializes much quicker than you thought. Flexibility is the key to success.
Don’t be afraid to change your goals in the midst of your pursuit of your passion. Just be sure that as you do so you’re still laser focused on your prize.
- Practice persistence
There may be valid reasons why you may need to adjust your timeline or extend a goal. But there are no excuses why you can’t reach your goals in pursuit of your passion. This is so vitally important to your success let’s read it again. There are absolutely no valid excuses why you can’t reach your goal - any goal.
The point is to never give up. We talked about Stephen King a bit earlier in this chapter. Can imagine what would have happened if his wife hadn’t retrieved that manuscript out of the trash? The obvious answer, of course, is that no one would have heard of King. He’d be doing some anonymous job in his home state of Maine.
But beyond that, imagine what a loss that would have been to millions of readers and movie goers who have been thrilled and horrified by such books as The Shining, Christine and Pet Sematary, to name only a few.
If you give up on your dream, you’d be depriving not only yourself of its manifestation, but countless numbers of others your concept will certainly affect.
Many people have dreams which they truly believe are beyond their reach. Others begin to doubt themselves as they begin to create it. Even when they believe they’re pursuing something great, they stop and ask, “Who am I to do great things?”
The answer to that comes from inspirational speaker and teacher Marianne Williamson who simply states, “Who are you not to do great things?”
- Stay laser-focused
Regardless of the obstacles you may encounter in pursuing your passion (and you’re bound to stumble along a couple) don’t ever give up. In fact, always keep your focus at the final outcome, your dream.(Have you noticed a pattern in the theme from the last step?)
When you do this, you’ll discover that some of the boulders in your path disintegrate, the hurdles seem to fall to one side and allow you to pass and those hills you thought you’d never reach the top of aren’t that tall after all.
Ask any person who you admire for their inner beauty. They’ll more than likely all tell you that they have a passion and pursue it fiercely. For some, it could be a love of animals and they pursue it by volunteering at an animal shelter or perhaps they even breed dogs.
Other individuals may be pursuing their passion of writing and have a vision of a novel they’ve written being on The New York Times bestsellers list someday soon. Whatever their passion is you’ll know when they begin to talk about it. Their faces light up, their countenance change, they may even have a certain glow about them.
Got a passion? Get one and let your inner beauty shine.
You’ll discover that those inner beauty often employ a trick to keep them thinking and feeling upbeat and optimistic about their passion as well as life in general. It’s called positive self-talk. Want to learn how to do this so you can remain focused on your inner beauty? It’s all outlined in the next chapter.