Creating a passion statement

I recently attended a workshop that dealt with discovering and clarifying values and then writing passion statements. While I was at this workshop in a work capacity, I decided I should revisit the thought of a passion statement. Having a passion statement helps individuals make decisions that are in line with their values, ultimately resulting in a greater fulfillment and happiness in life. I have focused efforts on living a more fulfilled life and growing as a person. My efforts have worked as I am a very cheerful. While this is true, I feel analyzing my values and creating a passion statement will be very insightful.

This process started in the workshop as we were given a list of 90 some values and were asked to select as many as applied to our lives. I did this and came up with about 40 values that were important to me. This is when things got difficult. We were now asked to group these values and eliminate any attributes that have the same or very similar meanings. After that, we started narrowing things down more dramatically. In the end, we could only select four values. This was very hard for some people in the workshop. They felt they were making decisions to rate something of higher priority than their friends and family. However, I felt that by defining values you come to understand that if you have one thing you have the other. For instance, if I value intelligence I also value cleverness because in my mind being clever signifies intelligence. Another example that may hit home with people is in the choice between family and faith. One can place faith higher than family without feeling too bad if they believe that having faith means their loved ones will be taken care of. Basically, you believe the important values are encompassing enough to take care of your other values.

I did not go through with completing my passion statement yet. However, this statement stems from these values and the roles we play in our lives, whether as spouses or employees. As stated, this portion of the process will be insightful because it will clearly define my goal and purpose in life. I have passions that I can easily define, but this is different from the passion statement. I’ve never taken the time to craft one of these.