Unlocking Passion (part 2)

Butterfly Lovers: Performed by BeiBei

Welcome everyone to part 2 of Unlocking Passion. If you haven’t read part 1: Unlocking Passion (part 1) then please take the time to do that one first. These are exercises and creative thought processes to help people find their passions in life and make them more than just passions. I am not a teacher just another person with passions giving my personal insight that has helped me move forward to happiness. Now for those continuing with the series let us do a brief recap of one! First it was recalling our first childhood dreams of what we wanted to become as kids. Went into our teen years and did the same. We discovered that the list changed and some became refined. This is a very normal process but it also got us to explore other options such as what we held on to and what we changed completely. Then we explored degree choices we wanted to obtain and lastly taking a deep reflection of our current work space. 

Lord of the Rings: Elven Music and Melodies

Well now that we recapped we shall explore the next segments of this Passion. I want you to grab that list you made last week and I want you to study it. Keep all your Passions in mind because we will revisit them again. Now the list I asked you to make about work I want you to take a good look at it and think about it. If you have not made it please take the time out to do so. At my current employment I enjoy these key qualities: The main people I work with, Including a few managers, sometimes the people I encounter, the fact I am helping people look for something and seeing them leave happy. Now for me I am in retail so my list will always remain short. Looking at your list you should come up with some questions. Why you like this quality the most does not count as one. Why? It is too broad of a question which in turn gives too broad of an answer. Almost like finding a needle in the haystack sort of metaphor. You want to pinpoint the said quality because this is what will help you with building a support network for your Passion.

Something like this should be asked per quality: Who is it that you love working with the most? What makes this person approachable? What is one word you could use to describe said person? The deeper the question the more intuned the answer. These key triggers are what helps you find the people you want the most to work with you and traits you should always carry when talking to clients. To protect identities I am not going to name people I actually work with but I will name their traits. Person A: Always makes me laugh to keep spirits high when the workload tends to make me depressed at times. Person B: Understands when things are too overbearing and despite being a manager they always help out while managing their own tasks. Person C: Always teaches me something new since company policies change very frequently. Person D: Looks for guidance and yet gives challenges that help me see things in a different light. Customers who actually know what they want tend to ask questions about said product and sometimes teach me something new about it as far as other uses. Many customers tend to be somber but the ones who smile back and chat even for a little tend to be happier people and brighten my day as I brighten theirs. Helping others is something my grandparents and my mother embedded into me at a young age. When you help someone you make the world smile even if it is for a moment. One smile leads to another and in turn more smile back.

Fantasy Music Compilation #3

Make your list yet? Please do not worry if the list is small or if this is not a strong suit and ‘I don’t know’ seems to be the common answer. We are human and sometimes we do like something without even knowing why. It is a subconscious occurrence and the ‘like’ has a far deeper meaning than we know of at the moment. As I was told likes are the easiest descriptions we can give and it usually tends to make us smile. Now look at your meanings and what do you see that stands out? For mine, in the order, is as follows: Laughter, Understanding, Learning something New, Challenges, Knowledge, Happiness, and Helpfulness. To some people this list may seem irrelevant and to others not as important but these are qualities I love to carry with me all the time. Save this list and we will come back to it later. 

Now we will think of something that tends to boil our blood as a figure of speech. What qualities about your current ob seem to piss you off or upset you a lot. It can be small or it could be major but it has to be something that you would love to see change. I will answer why in a little bit but make your list. Being asked to handle one task and believing there is a time table to have one massive task done before tackling another. Rudeness, which is very common among our higher level managers, not just to me and other employees but to our customers as well. Trash customers leave throughout the store. Customers opening packages and destroying items. Children running around unsupervised and something happens. Now majority of the times I have noticed our negatives will very much outweigh the positives. Now again no broad questioning you have to pinpoint what it is you don’t like about said quality. This is important because this is what follows many around and don’t know it. But we will get into that soon. My peeves are as follows: Time tables, Rudeness, Uncleanliness, Property Damage, and Endangerment.

Alright we have out list of positive traits and negative traits. Now I want you to go back to your Passion List and select just one for now and I want you to imagine you are finally working your dream career. I won’t call it a job because a job is just for money purposes with no attachment or passion to it. A Career is a passion you love to do no matter the hour or your current condition. So being in this career job lets say you put out a survey to your clients and your positive traits are all mentioned. So Sally loves the fact that we meet and we can laugh and have a great time together. As I work on her image she gets to see all the works in progress and she and I can discuss changes to make the image look more appealing. Sharing the knowledge of why I changed a rose into a lily or swapped the colors of the vase to make this work much more in harmony is important because I want to have this client return. But to me I don’t want to see you as just a client I want to see you as a good friend who supports me and loves my works.

Positive qualities are just that. Positive auras that emit from us when we feel great and people around us react to it. Now lets say in the comment section of what should change lists all your negative qualities or your pet peeves list. Sally may love my art but my time to see her may be inconvenient for her. So I need to learn to be more flexible with making time available around her schedule. I may not be a rude person but I come off a bit standoffish or how I respond is rude. Even what I say, although may not be meant, came off as rude. Now I would never leave trash at someones house but I might have said something to Sally that may have seemed like her input was nothing but trash. The negative traits make us feel bad right? That is what it is supposed to do when you point out flaws and with sincere hurt comes sincere change.

Now this leads us to our part 2 Changing Negatives into Positives! No matter where you work every job has positives and negatives. If you can’t find a negative in said job then you aren’t looking and you are just blindly following. Everyone has a peeve and most companies tend to work that peeve although not intentional. Now looking at the list you may very well be thinking I don’t do these hings at all but I deal with it every day. Well a part of us actually do this every day although it is not the same. We have to change ourselves to see this change occur around us. Now lets take my Time Table peeve. At my current location I can have 8 pushing arts of items that need to be placed back on the floor in order to be sold. Most managers, at least those who don’t do the amount of work you do daily, will give you a time limit to put said items away. Lets say I was told to finish in 1 hour and a half with 8 baskets. Most of the time we try to remain positive and state we can do this. But the basket contains small items like pens, pencils, folders and individual markers. you technically have 8 baskets of small items compared to it being toss pillows and bed sets.

Celtic Music – Legend

Despite them wanting me to get this done in their allotted time I have no help and more push baskets are brought making my work load past the amount the manager wrote before hand. I maybe a little sick but deny to miss work because I need the money. Now when the manager returns they are upset because I managed to only get 2-3 baskets out of the area and yet have so much to do when I should have been done. Flexibility is apparently not there along with other factors but I make it known to a manager that I can trust about my situation and when I have a coaching I saved myself from getting into trouble. When I constantly inform someone that I am far more comfortable with about my time table I was given and what the load actually is the flexibility becomes visible and they work with me to help ensure that said manager understands that I am doing the best I can alone and that other things come up. When i work in said department I am no longer given a time table but, “Please do the best that you can while here.” I changed my negative into a positive. 

Now you maybe looking at this and you might be slightly confused. Here is where positives work hand in hand with a negative to eliminate the problem and boost your morale. My negative is the time table and my positive was a manger who is far more understanding and someone I can trust. I talked to this manager privately and told them my situation where they in turned talked to the manager who gave me the time table to where they removed said time table so I can focus on placing all items in their correct locations and help the customers without worry of being in trouble.

Any negative can be changed into a positive. Now although I have done this my new challenge is I don’t work fast enough. This is the cycle we all face. We are presented with a challenge and we have the 2 options available. We either figure out the problem and break through or we run from it completely. This Karmaic Cycle is what everyone faces. If you run it will return and it will be harder to solve. But if you try and figure it out, with or without help, you can change this problem, negative trait, into a positive one. This is not always an easy thing to do so please keep that in mind. It is never meant to be easy it is meant to be a growing experience because when you grow you will know what you need to do. 

So what does this have to do with your Passion? Everything! When you see your passion as a career that you love no matter what you want to make sure it grows and that you succeed correct? Where we are currently is the consequence of past actions and how we move into what we want we must conquer what is in front of us now. What challenges you face now can be over come but it is up to you to see what needs to be changed. It is a challenge that is hard to see at first this is why I had you do your current job with positive and negative traits.

I want you all to be aware that everything even careers have their high and low points. All positive and negative is around us but you have to know what to do when it happens in your career. Passions again will come and go. Some fade and others become finely tuned. When you know how to approach your negative traits now they won’t be so problematic later. Look at your list of Passions currently and I want you to make a positive trait and negative trait  branch for your top 3-5 passions. You don’t have to list everything for each one but at least 3 would be a good start. In part 3 we will start to formulate the Passions into a deeper level.