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What’s your reason for getting up in the morning? How to find your passion and purpose, build your resilience and start living the life you want

"If you can't figure out your purpose, figure out your passion, for your passion will lead you right to your purpose" T.D Jakes

It may be a difficult question to answer, but what is your reason for getting up in the morning? Do you know what your passion or purpose is? Are you following it?

At the beginning of the New Year you may find yourself reflecting on what you are doing with your life. Perhaps you feel unfulfilled or bored and would like to make a change, but have no idea how to go about it. 

To be resilient, to thrive and maximise your fullest potential, you need to fulfill certain emotional needs. If you don’t fulfill your emotional needs it can less to distress, resentment or anger. 

One of these emotional needs is to have meaning and purpose in your life. People who have purpose and are passionate about what they do are more resilient. They also find it improves their mental health and wellbeing. 

When faced with challenges, disapointments or change resilient people can bounce back and go again with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. Instead of feeling negatively about what’s happened to them they find meaning and take learning from their experiences, whether good or bad, making them more emotionally resilient. They are then able to move forward with confidence and determination knowing they can deal with life’s challenges. If you have meaning and purpose it helps you to look beyond your problems and find the right solutions to keep you focused and on track.

If you find yourself asking “What is my reason for getting up in the morning?” then take some time out to invest in yourself and explore. 

Answer the 5 questions below to help you identify what your passion and purpose is and help you to build your resilience and live the life you want. You may not find your answers immediately, don’t rush, it may take time to think more deeply and uncover your thoughts. 

Put some time aside, relax and make a start. It is important to be authentic, open and curious when answering the questions. Dig deep to find out who you really are and what lights up your life. Take notice of your gut feelings too, intuition is very important in this process. Write your answers in a journal so you can keep them, refer to them and add more thoughts as you continue your journey of self-discovery.

Use this information to start planing and taking action to achieve what you want, both personally and professionally. It is much harder to be defeated when you are passionate and purposeful and take action. 

1. What do you really love doing and what gives you the greatest joy?

Look for any recurring themes or patterns in your answer. Recall how you felt when you were experiencing these events. 

2. What did you enjoy doing as a child? What were you good at?

We often forget all those activities we loved as a child as education, other pressures and responsibilities take over as we grow up. Perhaps recalling them can give you information to help you on your journey of discovery.

3. What activity are you doing when you lose track of time and get totally lost in what you are doing? How does it make you feel?

These are strong indicators of what we love to do as we feel completely absorbed and energised by what we are doing and oblivious of what’s around us. This is know as being in a state of flow and enables us to feel strengthened, capable and resilient.

4. What would you do if you couldn’t fail? 

Think about how your life would be. What are you doing? Relax, close your eyes  and visualise your life as clearly as you can and write down what you see, hear and feel. Resilient people don’t see failure they see learning and use it to move forward. 

5. Have you got a really big dream that you have packed away because you think it is totally unachievable or unrealistic? 

Why not unpack that dream, be curious and explore it again. Change your perspective as there may be other ways to achieve it. Resilient people learn to look at challenges in different ways to find a solution. After all this really big dream might well be exactly what you are supposed to do. 

After completing the questions read through your answers and thoughts and see what you find. Your true passion and purpose is most likely to be found from a series of interests and opportunities you spot along the way. Some of you may find your inspiration immediately but for most it will take more time and effort to realise and discover your true passion, which in turn will lead you to your purpose. 

If you have found this post helpful and would like to further explore finding your passion and purpose to build your resilience and live the life you want please just drop me an email. 

Kate Darbyshire Evans

Kate Darbyshire Evans

Helping women entrepreneurs and designers in the fashion industry who struggle with overwhelm and anxiety to thrive

I help women entrepreneurs and designers who struggle with overwhelm and anxiety to rethink their response to stress and learn how to accept, embrace and utilise it to become more resilient, happier and more successful. Stress is inevitable but by changing your attitude to stress you can transform your challenges and difficulties into opportunities and possibilities. Utilising stress can be liberating and empowering by choosing to see stress as your friend, rather than seeing it as your enemy. By building your resilience you will be able to remain flexible in your responses to your thoughts, behaviours and emotions when under stress. Learning how to transform stress and make it work for you is exciting and liberating. As a result you will feel more empowered, confident and resilient and be able to: • rethink and change your attitude to stress • know what it means to be good at stress • embrace challenges with confidence and positivity • persist in the face of setbacks • use anxiety to help you rise to your challenges • see effort as the way to mastery and achievement • turn nerves into excitement • how to turn a threat into a challenge • turn adversity into a resource • turn self focus into bigger than self goals As an experienced coach, with over 20 years in the fashion industry at director level, I love helping and supporting women to explore and understand the real underlying causes of their stress that undermines their resilience. My aim is to bring clarity, motivation and purpose by helping them challenge their attitude to stress and move from a fixed mindset towards a growth mindset. To learn the skills to respond to their thoughts, feelings and behaviours in a positive, powerful and sustainable way. This enables them to strengthen their resilience and increase their self-esteem so they can more confidently deal with the challenges that life throws their way. Running a business, whether or not you employ people or not is often isolating and very challenging at times. You can easily become overwhelmed by the workload, constant change and the responsibility it involves. Stress and burnout can creep up on you. I understand what burnout is like that having personally experienced severe stress in my twenties. I have also experienced some major challenges and changes in my life, including redundancy, severe injury and divorce so I appreciate and value the importance and benefits of developing resilience and self-care. Women want to manage their lives better, both practically and emotionally and achieve their goals and aspirations. As an owner and manager of people it is important that you create an environment where you, your people and the business can flourish and thrive. This requires focusing on becoming resilient by developing a growth mindset and accepting and embracing stress rather than trying to avoid or reduce it. In addition to I speak on how to rethink and transform attitudes to stress to empower women and build their resilience. I also write articles on the subject. www.finerthinking.com