There is a spark in all of us, a desire to create a better world – a thriving future for ourselves and for generations to come. However, it can all seem so immense, what can we as individuals do?
There’s a lot that goes into answering that question, more than can fit in one blog post. What we’ll tackle here is the question:
Where do I start?
The short answer is: you start with yourself and your purpose, your passion. Bringing about a new future, one for a thriving humanity, is a big long-term undertaking. Like any long journey, we need fuel to sustain us. That fuel is our purpose, our passion, our burning desire to make real this new future.
As a way of illuminating this kind of fuel, recall a time when you were doing something and felt fully alive. At those times we get drawn into the activity, we are more focused, we are more effective. We end up in what’s called the state of flow, or in the zone. It’s a natural expression of our purpose.
What fuels these moments?
Being engaged in something important to us. And, to have the fuel of our passion more available to us, what’s called for is greater clarity about what’s important.
What do you mean, you say, I already know what’s important to me! Yes, when we are asked what’s important to us we are pretty quick to answer – things like my family, my health, my career; the environment, gender equality, economic equity.
Yet if I took any one of the items on your list and asked, what’s important to you about that specific item, your answer would likely not be as quick as the first one. What we’ve found is we tend to have a vague notion of what’s important to us. The clearer we are about what’s important to us, the more the flame of our passion is available to us.
To generate that clarity, take any item that’s important and ask yourself the question, what about that item is important to me? With whatever answer you get, ask what about that is important to you? Keep going until you can feel the spark of your passion ignite.
While simple in principle, this can be hard to do. This inquiry usually starts with a dim sense of the spark. It takes work to get it clear, to have the spark grow into the flame of your burning desire. Keep working at it. It may take days, weeks, even months. It’s worth the effort, as this provides the best foundation for generating a new future that will uplift ourselves and all of humanity.
