Uncover your Purpose through your Passions, Burden, and Themes
I truly hope in time the word damage will come to represent strength instead of weakness or a problem in your life. As long as we strive to pretend to ourselves and others that we live a pain-free, problem-free, damage-free life, we keep others from being themselves around us and we continue to believe the lie that in order to be okay, we have to look good. Crazy stuff there.
Before we move on to today’s topic I want to touch on a few more points about your story.
• Often we think less or miss our own story because we are too busy watching other people’s stories. It’s okay to watch reality TV read biographies and fantasy novels and hear about other people’s lives. However, your life and story have no less value than the ones you read about or watch. What are you going to do with it?
• Often the very areas of our greatest pain, shame, obstacle, or tragedy become the very areas that steer the purpose and passion in our lives for our future. Don’t overlook or despise the damage in your life, use it. It is there for a purpose.
• Your story’s continuation and completion are always in the process of being re-written through the choices we make. Everything is a choice. The level of greatness depends on the level of risk we are willing to take.
Today, we are going to move into one of my favorite areas; passions, burdens, and the themes of our lives. These three areas are vital in connecting your story with your purpose. If you don’t know how to read your story you won’t know how to use your story.
What are the passions, themes, and burdens of your life? Let’s first define them.
Passions – the word passion has a few different meanings. It means suffering such as the suffering of the cross, the passion of Christ. It also means an ardent affection for an activity, object, or concept such as having a passion for music, animals, conservation. The definition we are focusing on is the third meaning of passion which is an intense, driving, overmastering feeling or conviction such as a passion to influence, encourage, help people, write, etc.
NOTE: In general, your passions will be actions, the ways in which you display your purpose.
Burdens – the word burden is much deeper than passion. It is something that you carry, a duty, a responsibility. While burdens are often negative, in the case of your story, it is positive. Your burden is something that you must do, tell, reach out to, impress upon others, fight for, etc. because of your story. It’s a good thing. Your burden is the thing that if asked, you could talk about passionately for hours. It is more than a cause; it is a part of you. In other words, if you only had one day to live and had a platform to speak to the entire world for 5 minutes what would you want them to know.
NOTE: In general, your burdens will make up your purpose in part or whole.
Themes – themes are simply those reoccurring events, situations & people in your life
These are mine:
Passions:
Encouraging, Influencing, Speaking, Writing, Exhorting and Teaching others
Burdens:
For people to walk unencumbered from their past, exploring possibilities in the present, while renewing lost dreams and visions for their future.
For people to realize no past situation or present circumstance will ever predicate the possibilities and potential of their future.
Themes:
1) Being a black woman in leadership in predominately white environments
2) Not quite fitting in
3) Constantly being uprooted
4) Being placed into leadership positions unsolicited
Now, it’s your turn. Make a list of your passions, burdens, and themes. Remember when writing out your passions think about action words and the ways you love to move in other’s lives and how you communicate your burden. Passions will be actions you love but will be for others. Remember when writing out your burdens think about goals and the aches of your heart, those things that if you were paid to stop talking about or doing you couldn’t stop talking about or doing. Burdens will be bigger than you and will always be about the greater good. If you have a burden to be rich or to see a group of people harmed, that is NOT a burden. That is something else that we don’t have time to discuss now.
Huh, is it starting to click that our stories were never meant to be just about us? Just a thought.
Take care
Charlotte
Dream Madly, Pursue Wildly, Trust Completely
www.charlottehunt.com
Copyright © 2022 by Charlotte D. Hunt
All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, or otherwise- without written permission from the author except for brief quotations in printed reviews.
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