As you may know, I ran into a
challenge with my organization Cheti a few months ago. If you were not aware,
you can read more about some of my learnings here.
The challenge itself was hard enough,
but the biggest hurdle for me was actually the after-effect. After the dust
settled and the chaos calmed… I was left picking up the pieces of my personal
rubble. For almost four years, my self-identity was one with my organization’s
mission; I was dedicated to creating educational opportunity to the
impoverished children in Tanzania. I became this person that represented this
organization who was chasing this one goal. My personal achievements were
aligned with our organization’s successes, and my happiness and sadness was
reliant on its' ups and downs.
It was overall a great feeling and
brought upon my biggest sense of self-pride, (so far). I created something
amazing, and it felt awesome.
But then we hit a turning point. I
struggled to keep my personal composure, and as I started to step aside from my
organization, I watched the personal “identity” which I had become, begin to
fall apart. Who was I if I was not running the nonprofit? What did I stand for
if it wasn’t education in the developing world? What was I doing with my life
if it wasn’t creating and running this organization?
Months ago I had a conversation with
a new friend, Emily Kerr, after reading her blog, and asked her
how she overcame similar struggles. She explained to me that she finally
realized her organization was an execution, but her main purpose and goal in
life was larger than just one project. It took her time, but she finally hit the nail on the head
when she realized what really makes her tick is creativity; finding it and enabling others to discover theirs. She said, as hard as it
was to close her organization down after years of it ruling her life; it wasn’t
over for her. She wasn’t done creating, developing, helping, and giving, it
would just take a new form.
This message really resonated with me
and since that conversation I’ve been wracking my brain to find my own personal
mission. What’s my theme… that one overarching passion that really lights my
fire?
For months I’ve been pondering…
reflecting, reading, painting, writing, yoga-ing, dancing, running,
pinteresting, and mostly struggling… trying to find this passion back in
myself. Had I lost all of my passion? Could I possibly be void of this drive
that used to rule my heart, mind, and soul?
I almost began to believe that
passion is fleeting. I thought that passion, like puppy-love, could come in and
out of our lives; seeming ever-important one day and gone the next, leaving
nothing more than memories, pictures, and a small flame where a fire once
stood.
Then, the other day, I was doing
research at work that led me to reviewing what drives human behavior. As I’m
reading back on Skinner and other behavioral theorists, it dawns on me… the
root of all of my interests is exactly that: driving and changing human
behavior.
With a background in advertising
and a passion for international development (across education and health), I
kept thinking; how can I make this all work together? How could I have missed this?
Human behavior and changing it
for the better... and just like that, I hit an internal spark.
What's your overarching passion? What
do you do to reflect?
