The Passion Test: the Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose by Janet and Chris Attwood is self help nirvana. Passion has always been the missing ingredient in my life. I haven’t done many things with passion, not jobs, not hobbies. This book gave me a framework and process for figuring out my true passions and understanding that they are real and want to manifest themselves in my life. As long as I suppress them, they’ll weigh down other parts of my life. Passion wants to live.
Like many of the self help books I’ve read, I first checked this one out of the library. (If I’d bought all the SHBs I’ve read, I’d never have any money. That said, I still own a lot of SHBs.) I knew after the first few chapters I needed to buy it, so I could underline key statements, write in the margins, keep it as a reminder of my true passions.
The authors Janet and Chris Attwood (formerly married couple. Now that’s interesting) do a couple of things that I hadn’t seen before, especially in terms of determining what your real passions are. One, the authors define “passion” and make a distinction between passions and goals:
Remember, passions are how you live your life. Goals are things that you achieve. Living a life of peace could be a passion. Creating peace in the world is a goal. Living life in abundance could be a passion. Eliminating poverty on earth is a goal… Do you get the difference? Passions are about process. Goals are about outcomes. (page 26)
I had never understood this distinction before. I don’t think I realized there was a distinction to understand. Once I read this, I understood on a deeper level what living with passion really is. I don’t (necessarily) have to have goals, I can just be on my path. What’s the saying? “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” A saying I really hadn’t applied to my own life until now. I always assumed I needed a strong, defined, worthy destination to even begin the “real” journey. Not so. How you live your life, day to day, is more than the goals that you may (or may not) reach. Or at least that’s now my interpretation of it.
The second thing the authors do, unlike other SHBs I’ve read (see: the best year of your life by Debbie Ford or honestly, anyone’s therapist), they really stress that you put down your ideal life, even if it’s being a rock star:
When most people take The Passion Test, they start to write down a passion, but if they can’t immediately see how they can practically manifest it, they erase it (especially the really big ones! ) and put something down that they can easily put their arms around. In other words, the play it “safe.” (page 18)
Their theory is that if you don’t put down your ideals you’re not really putting down your passions. I can’t agree with this idea.
The way I really really really want to live is the very life I avoid because I think I’m not good enough, not thin enough, not experienced enough, not young enough to live that way. So when someone asks me about my job and my life and I say “I’m not happy”, and they say “Well what do you want to do?”, I always end up saying “I don’t know”. That’s just a flat out lie. I know exactly how I want to live, I just don’t have the courage to give voice to it. And of course if I don’t have the courage to say it, I don’t have the courage to even try to pursue it, let alone go all out after it.
The authors ask you to list 10-15 passions (not goals) with active verbs, (I am living, thriving, teaching), then prioritze them into your top 5. Those are your passions. This was incredibly revealing for me. Most of these things have been in the back of my head as “one day, some day, if only” ideals for my life, but when I put them on paper I realized I really really wanted to live my life that way.
While I fantasized about them, I avoided actually believing I could live that way, without some deus ex machina like winning the lottery, because it was too painful to think about and not pursue. Honestly it’s still painful to think of my ideal life, because there’s still a little – o.k. a big part of me that believes I can’t really live that way. The authors suggest that you write your passions down, carry them with you, tape them on the bathroom mirror, in the kitchen. I’ve only written them down on a little piece of paper and put it in my purse, my huge purse that I can practically lose my wallet in. So I’m going to write them here. Publish them to announce that this is the life I want, to manifest them.
My Passions
1. Being in love and married in my ideal relationship
2. Living in a beautiful home on the beach
3. Teaching and learning yoga nationally and internationally
4. Thriving as a professional writer
5. Traveling the world First Class
This or something better!
“This or something better!” is a little ending they put on to let the universe know that you are open to passion and happiness. The authors were a part of The Secret so there’s a lot of intention/attention/letting the universe do it’s work stuff. Actually the authors seem to know and be a part of lots of fields of self help, especially the business end. They know everybody! So some of the writing comes off as marketing for some of these organizations. Some of what the authors do and believe in is out there, and this is coming from a chant-loving yogini.
The Passion Test is like other SHBs in that it’s overly long because they mostly have one basic (although in this case really good) idea and the rest is filler, oh sorry, examples from people, famous people in this case. I still haven’t actually finished it as truth be told, I don’t finish most SHBs.
All in all The Passion Test is a great SHB for anyone who’s ever said “I don’t know” when they were asked what they really wanted to do with their lives. It’s the essence of self help books in that it goes right to the heart of why people read these things: to become the person of their (often secret) passions, to actually go after what it is in life they truly want, without explanation, without apology, without asking permission. This is what we’re seeking, all of us, no matter what we call it: Passion.
