What Passion Drives You?
What gets you out of bed every morning? The alarm clock? The baby crying? The dog nuzzling you? The “John”?
When motivational speakers and vocational counselors ask this question, they’re not looking for those kinds of answers. They want to help us identify our PASSION — something we love to be doing with our life, the purpose that fires us up with energy.
My children, Ryan and Shawntel, have best friends, Ryan and Dana, that live here in Austin. Actually, they are one of the reasons my children moved here in the first place. They all moved from Seattle to pursue life and living and going after their individual dreams. It is remarkable the ingenious creativity that they have individually.
So, Dana’s dad, Leland (aka Lee) Rosenlund, and his wife, Sharon, moved to Austin a few months ago to join the family. They were here just a few weeks when they had to move back for health reasons. Sharon passed on a few months ago. Lee moved back here, and at 80-years-old, I am inspired by his PASSION.
Lee (and family) are elite skiers. He and his wife owned a home in Hailey, Idaho next to Sun Valley. Lee was a ski instructor in the Seattle area, with a children’s ski school called Powder Pigs and also taught at Vail, CO.
Life didn’t end with Sharon’s passing. Lee is as invigorated with passion at 80 to continue skiing as he was since he was 3-years-old. As a matter of fact, he’ll be leaving for three weeks to go back to ski with his family in Sun Valley next week.
Passion is more than just enthusiasm or excitement. PASSION is ambition that is materialized into action to put as much heart, mind, body, and soul into something as is possible.
Let’s talk about the ONE Who we should be most passionate about. A personal encounter with God can be the X-Factor in our life. Having Him at the center, causes life-at-large to become our PASSION. Having Him as our greatest passion, will cause just about everything else in our life — our job, our family, our hobby, our favorite team, or favorite outreach to become our “Wake-Up-With-Passion” each and every day!
Thank you for driving my PASSION. I wake up with PASSION to provide yet another blog. I am relentless to seek God’s wisdom for the words that might encourage someone each day. My PASSION for God tops everything else. There is nothing that takes the place of knowing He was my FIRST love and will be my LAST love. Pleasing Him drives my decisions and everything within my being.
Sometimes we can get so caught up in the act of living that we forget why we’re living. At the start of this new year, I want to close my eyes and feel my spirit excitingly begin its next journey without fear or regret. I want to live with a PASSIONATE heart.
Here’s some things I’ll be doing to keep driving my passion:
1. Take responsibility for my life and live every moment, and every day like it could be my last.
2. Live every day with the expectancy that something good is going to happen in this day.
3. Turn negative thoughts and situations into gratitude by choosing to see what’s good in my life.
4. Love what I do. If I’m not PASSIONATE about what I’m doing, consider what I love to do and then start moving in that direction.
5. Make time to follow my heart’s desire. Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
6. Seek God for my PASSION: Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make direct your paths.”
Let’s start today to live our lives with PASSION and when we do, then every day of 2023 will start out with overflowing joy for what each new day holds!