We live in a remarkable world. 200 years ago, “finding your passion in life,” wasn’t a priority for humanity. But then came automation, airplanes, subsidized universities, the internet. Suddenly we live in a world with enough free time, education and movement that we can choose what we do. 

But with that freedom also comes exhausting responsibility. In a world of infinite choices, how do we narrow down what will make us feel the most fulfilled? How do you find your passion AND make money? How do you find a career you love AND have security? It can feel exhausting to begin.

But finding your passion is essential to wholehearted living. Especially now. This recent world crisis has made people stop and think about what makes their best lives. We have become a little more conscious that our time on Earth is limited. We need to make the most of it. 

So it’s time to learn some skills for how to find meaning in life. Here are your 8 steps to finding your new direction.

What more tips on How To Find Your Passion? Listen to this podcast I did with Christy Pritchard on EQ Cast!

How Do I Find My Passion?

1- Explore

How can you know what you like doing if you’ve never tried it? You already know what you’re interested in. It’s the stuff you love to watch on tv, the social media channels you follow, the things you talk about with your friends. 

But liking something is different than doing it. So write a list of all the things you enjoy. Then pick the top 4 things that you feel the most excited about, and commit to trying to do them yourself. Love horses? Take a riding lesson. Obsessed with sports? Join a team. Fascinated by crypto? Invest 20 bucks.

2- Start Small

In the beginning, it’s important to not put all your eggs in one basket. The goal is to cast a web and see how different activities feel. Focus on your curiosity and where it leads you. 

Try each new thing at least 3 times. The first time you try a new thing it will always feel awkward. The second time you will start getting the hang of it. By the third time, you’ll have an idea if this new thing is something you could commit to.

3- Follow Your Joy

Most people have grown up believing that life is about responsibility. We’re taught that it’s normal to hate our jobs and live lives that aren't fulfilling. But the whole point of this new type of life is that it's all about doing what you love! 

That doesn’t mean that it won't be hard (in fact, quite the opposite.) It means that what you do every day should give you a sense of joy. Joy is different than happiness. Joy is calmer, more persistent and more fulfilled. So of the few things that you're pursuing, what makes you feel joy most often? 

4- Find Guidance

By now, you should've narrowed down your focus to either one or two things. It's time to start going deeper. You may feel overwhelmed at this point about how to make this new direction sustainable, but don’t fear! 

The most amazing thing about our world today is our incredible access to information. If you can imagine something, someone else has already done it. And if they’ve done it, they’re willing to teach you about it. Often for free! Find resources online and learn the stepping stones that others use to create success. 

5- Make It a Habit

The only thing that you need to make something work is persistence. The people who are the most successful in the world aren’t the most talented, intelligent or even lucky. What they have is a commitment to show up and do what they love every day. 

You don't need to jump off the cliff and quit your day job yet. Just put effort into this new project daily, with whatever time you have. Never underestimate the power of cumulative results! If you do something small every day for 10 years, when you look back, suddenly you have something huge! 

6- Surround Yourself With the Right People

Fear is a fact of humanity. It is an essential thing that we need to help keep us safe. If we didn’t feel fear when a tiger jumped at us, we wouldn’t run away and we would die. But listening to the helpful things in your fear is very different than letting it drive the bus. 

When we start a new project, the most common response from those around us is to respond in fear. People will tell you all the things that could go wrong and all of the reasons you will fail. Hear this fear with love, they’re just trying to protect you! Then find other people who are used to living fully and willing to encourage you and support you on your new path. 

7- Get Comfortable With Discomfort

It’s not just the people around you who have to deal with their fear! Resilience training is part of following your passion. After all, you’re trying to live in a new way, the newness is bound to be confusing and difficult at times! If you don’t train yourself to deal with this discomfort, you’ll give up your passion before you've even begun.

Do something every day that scares you. It should be something small, but it should make you feel a little nervous. The more you practice getting over that fear, the more you’ll realize that scary things won’t kill you. When you deal with your discomfort, you can take on bigger and bigger challenges.

8- Believe in the Best Outcome

Yes. You can do this! I promise! You may have a hard time believing that living your dream is possible. Research all the people you can find who are living the type of life that you want. If they can do it, so can you!

Ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen? The worst outcome is probably not as bad as you let yourself think. And at the end of the day, it's so much worse to live a small life devoid of daily joy and fulfillment. Think of the life that you’ll have when you accomplish your dreams! 

Go Find Your Passion!

Finding your passion is not the easy way out. It will take commitment and resilience, but we only have this one shot. Having the life of your dreams is worth it to try. 

“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” - Mary Oliver

There are a lot of people I've met who think that travel is a young person's game. It's something that you're supposed to do when you're 20 and figuring out yourself, but after that, you're supposed to stabilize and settle down. However, travel isn't just about having fun. Science proves that it's healthy for you in a variety of ways. 

Decades ago, public thought didn't grasp the link between diet and exercise making you healthy. Researchers are now saying the same things about travel adding to lifespan and capacity. As these benefits become more widely studied, t's not too far-fetched to imagine a time where doctors will prescribe a trip as a necessary part of a healthy life.

1. Travel Makes You Physically Healthier

You may not feel very healthy when you're throwing up in some foreign land from some lousy food you just ate, but travel substantially boosts your immune system. When you travel, you expose yourself to new bacteria that help you create stronger antibodies. When you move between different locations, you force your body to adapt to thousands of new bacteria, which will make you stronger in the long run.

When you're on the road, you're also proven to be less stressed. Studies have found that after only three days, travelers feel more rested, less anxious and in a better mood while increasing their overall activity and fitness levels. Some studies also show a compelling connection that in certain groups, this change in stress lowers the risk of heart attack and disease. These improvements don't immediately go away after returning home either but will add to lifespan and overall wellbeing.

Travelers are also more active and less stationary on trips. Because there has already been a buy-in to get to your new location, people are more motivated to get out and experience it. You're likely to walk more than you would at home, try a new sport, or engage in a physical activity like hiking or swimming. It's also more likely that these things become a part of your daily experience while traveling, and you're less likely to do sedentary actions like watching tv.

2. Travel Exposes You to Healing Properties

When you travel, you tend to visit sites that you don't have access to at home, and many of those have healing properties. Soaking in the mineral-rich waters of a hot spring, swimming in the salty waters of the ocean, or even just getting out into the sun can expose you to things that will add to your overall wellness. Getting outside exposes us to many properties that can heal, uplift, and rejuvenate. Health and Wellness Tourism has even become a huge part of the travel industry, with a resurgence of people pursuing health-related amenities. Resorts and spas have surged in popularity, as well as activities like yoga, fitness, and lifestyle retreats. Whether that's the focus of your trip or not, you're more likely to participate in a wellness activity while you travel than you would be at home.

3. Travel Creates New Neural Pathways

When you explore, you naturally have to problem solve and adapt to more situations. You have to meet new people, encounter new languages, deal with other cultures, and solve new problems. Neural pathways are created due to environment and habitat and are sensitive to change. When there are new sounds, smells, languages, tastes, and sensations, you're telling your brain to be more aware and to spark new synapses.

When you put your brain in different experiences, it is proven to increase your cognitive flexibility, creativity, ability to make connections and integrate ideas. It's has been shown that those who work and study aboard are more open and emotionally stable. So the more you engage with new environments, the more activated your brain will become, and the more likely you are to stave off brain degradation and disease.

4. Travel Creates Meaningful Social Experiences

Humans aren't meant to be isolated creatures. A crucial part of our physical health comes from having meaningful social connections with others. When we don't have functional interactions, it increases the chance that we'll feel sensations of loneliness, depression, and pessimism. When people stay home, they are more likely to do similar actions every day, which lessens the change of getting out of unhealthy patterns of isolation.

When you travel, it forces you into situations where you have to connect with others. Even if you're alone traveling or backpacking, it puts you into scenarios where the only way to solve specific problems is to meet people and make new friends. You will also be encountering other travelers who will be in a similar state of openness to connection. Engaging in this process will increase your confidence in human interactions.

Travel also deepens the connections with those around you because peak experiences make for more intense and lasting memories. It will also make you less biased as you connect with others who are different than you and increase your skillset for communication and conflict resolution. All of these things are lasting skills that will improve your quality of life, even after your trip is over.

5. Travel Broadens Your Perspective

Travel helps you broaden your view of the world and yourself. By putting yourself into new situations, you have to learn to live outside your comfort zone and find the beauty in different circumstances. While this may make you uncomfortable at times, it allows you to transform how you understand the world.

Studies even prove an increased chance of epiphanies while traveling. There is also an increased ability to problem-solve issues we otherwise have been stuck on. When you're in the middle of a problem, it's often hard to detach yourself from it enough to come to any resolution. By separating from a familiar environment, you gain psychological distance from a situation at hand. Getting away from where you live is important because it's often the only way you can achieve a new perspective.

Travel Helps You Live Longer and Better

With all of these aspects combined, travel is one of those rare things that not only increases your life expectancy but also increases your quality of life. When you take a trip, even if it's short, it boosts your immune system, heart, brain, capacity, connections, and mood, keeping your body healthy inside and out. All of this means that travel increases your chance of living longer and having more fun doing it.

Want more travel content? Follow me at @jodithesharp for daily updates! 

To live in this world 

you must be able 

to do three things. 

to love what is mortal; 

to hold it 

against your bones knowing 

your own life depends on it; 

and, when the time comes to let it go, 

to let it go” 

-Mary Oliver

Photos from a grieving ritual, performed Montreal, 2017

So this weekend, a good friend of mine unexpectedly passed away. A key member of my community, it was a shock to all of us to lose him right now. One of the things that I keep hearing people say is, "how do I deal with death?" Many have no idea how to handle his passing. For many people I know, it was the first close friend they lost.

It's not the first friend of mine who's passed, and certainly won't be the last. It doesn't get more comfortable, but I think that it's often even harder than it should be because we come from a culture that's terrible in dealing with death.

As a western culture, we like to ignore that death exists at all. Until it confronts us, we go through life with the perspective that our loved ones and we will live forever. And when death happens, it blows us sideways because we'd forgotten all about it as a possibility. We become wholly distraught and at a loss for how to handle it.

But death is the only real certainty of life. And building a skill-set around how to deal with it is an essential part of being human. Everyone deals with grief in their own way; it's never going to be easy or comfortable. Here are a couple of things that I've found have worked for me.

Give Yourself Time

In dealing with death, there is no timeframe for your grief. After first losing someone, the pain may be constant, or it may come in waves of intensity. Let it happen when it comes, and be gentle with yourself.

If you need to take a couple of months off work or away from people, do it. If you need to go on a spiritual journey to Tibet for four years to handle it, do it. If it only takes you a week before you feel a sense of stability, that's okay too. There are no rules for how long any of this should take. Let the way you feel guide how much time you need to dedicate to sitting with your feelings. 

Let Yourself Feel It

It will hurt. It is supposed to hurt. It is a big fucking deal to know that a soul has left your waking life. You will miss them. You will be surprised by the finality of it and the hole that they've left.

When you're alone or with people who can support you, do whatever you need to do to realize your emotions. Yell, scream, cry, punch a pillow, laugh, write, stare into space. Any feeling you have is valid. Don't keep it inside your body. Feel your emotions. If you don't give yourself time to feel them, they will come out in times where you may not be in a supportive space to handle them. 

It's Okay to Need a Break

There will be times when the grief is too much to handle, and you can't sit with it anymore. At this point you may need to turn on a tv show, or go out for a drink, or go dance and laugh. It is okay to need to numb the pain at times. It's okay to take a break from the heartbreak.

It's common to need to take a minute, and then it's common to feel shame around needing that time. There have been situations where I've gone out and had a good night and then felt so much guilt about trying to be happy when something so tragic has happened. But speaking from experience, that guilt is not useful. Sometimes you need to cap the pain and remind yourself that even in tragedy, the world is still a beautiful place. 

This pain may be with you for a long time, you need to find sustainable ways to feel it and still live. Your friend wouldn't want you to live in misery for the rest of your life, so take the time to enjoy your life if you need it. It's okay.

Be Around Others Who Are Feeling the Same Way

If you're feeling this distraught around the loss of someone you loved than other people are feeling it too. It's easy to feel like you're going through this alone, but you aren't. Coming together as a community during this time is essential in staving off the hopelessness.

Make sure to share your memories and joys about the life lived. The soul you've lost may be gone, but their memories are not. Tell the people around you how they positively impacted your life, how they made you feel joy and love. Look through photos and feel the gratitude for the connection that you had. By honouring their life you extend their impact. In this way they will still be with you for as long as you have memories in your head. 

Rituals Are Useful

You may feel like the stuffy form of funerals doesn't do life justice, but don't discount the healing that rituals can have. The point of a ritual is to acknowledge the impact of that soul and release some of the pain. The goal is to help start to bring closure to that loss.

There are many traditional rituals around death. You can look at them and see if something resonates with you, or you can make up your own. The goal is to do a set of actions that brings you into remembrance of that unique life. The focus of the ritual is to let go of some of your intense feeling around the loss. A feeling of releasing them into the unknown, and coming to a sense of peace is the ideal outcome. You can do whatever you need as often as you need it to try to get to a sense of peace around it.

Do What is Right For You

No matter who you are or who you've lost, you are allowed to grieve in whatever way works for you. Do your best to stay in touch with what you need, rather than doing what you assume grief is required to look like. You may feel these feelings for a long time, or even in waves throughout the rest of your life. It is good to feel whatever you feel however you need to handle it. 

The Point of Death

It is important to keep things in perspective as well. Because at the end of the day, death has an essential job. It reminds us that life is fleeting and that every single moment is precious. The goal shouldn't be to live forever but to create memories and contributions to the world that will be meaningful.

My friend knew that. He contributed to his community deeply, he loved his friends and family so much, and he was always up to living a full and vibrant life. Even though these feelings suck real hard right now, I wouldn't trade my friendship with him for anything.

Death is a part of life, but I always want to keep in perspective that death makes our lives meaningful. I will use this incident to feel so much gratitude for my connection to this person, and as a reminder to make sure I live life to the fullest.