Why Doing What You Truly Love Really Matters

What did you want to be when you were young? I’m sure you have had this question. When you were asked, did you have an answer ready, or did you need to think about it? We all had dreams of doing something we love. Well, how did you do? Maybe you never aspired to be what you envisioned at a young age or what you believed you would do. Perhaps you were told what you had to do and conformed to what was expected of you. What did you love to do when you were ten years old?

I myself followed the interest I had as a young girl of around ten or twelve years. Not by conscious choice or intention, but by following my gut feeling. At the time when I attended high school and had to decide on a path that would lead to a career, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. As a young girl I loved horses and when I didn’t spend my entire time on and around horses at the local riding school, I created magazines about horses at home. I cut, pasted, wrote, and created entire editions of magazines. Little did I know this would be my first profession, following my gut instinct that kicked in when I visited the student counsellor at my school, and discovered that it was actually a career I could make into mine.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned during my life is how important it is to do something you love to do. Why? When you truly enjoy what you make a living at, you end up being happy in more ways than one. Work doesn’t feel like work. It isn’t a chore. It doesn’t, at least for most of the time, feel like something you must do. Life itself becomes much more interesting and fun when your heart and soul is invested in it. When you do something that lights you up and you can be in the flow.

Another important thing I have learned it that it’s never too late to try something new. After many years working as a graphic designer and art director I side-tracked into interior design. Very similar professions in the sense of working with colour, shape, and balance, but three-dimensional. I loved this career too. It gave me many, varied and wonderful experiences and ways to express myself.

Then after many years in the industry, I became stuck, and I didn’t understand why. I was privileged to have just not one but two professions, which I both loved. But one day I suddenly lost my passion. Just like that. If I could lose my passion like this, did it mean I wasn’t doing was I was meant to do? Was there something I was perhaps destined to do instead? I decided I would give myself time to figure out what my life purpose was. I was confused, but I waited patiently for a sign, but nothing happened. I became increasingly frustrated and worried as my finances started to dwindle. Being passive isn’t something that fits well with me either.

Then one day, exactly one year after becoming stuck, I lost my patience and became angry and demanded an answer before meditating. And what followed was nothing short of a miracle. In the meditation I got hit with divine inspiration and I “downloaded” a mission. I had at the time become saturated with design and interiors for the sake of appearances. Now I got hold of the thread I lost, the cause of my lost passion, and I realized, that what I really wanted was to dig deeper and explore what a home really means to us, what the very essence of a home means. I wanted to dig deeper and explore the type of relationship we have with our homes, and if this varies where in the world we live.

It took me less than five minutes to decide there and then, that I would travel the world and find this out for myself. Six intensive months of preparations began, selling my own home to finance my quest was one of them. I didn’t bat an eyelid or question this decision, nor have I ever regretted this. After months of research, a route was decided, countries were chosen, contacts were made, a house sold and emptied, belongings were scattered to the wind and equipment was finally purchased. With a backpack containing one camera, one lens, one tripod, a suitcase for my clothes and a bunch of questions, I set off alone. Seven months and five continents later I came home again.

Two years later my passion project, the book Home Life Around the World was published. I can’t even begin to describe what all this has meant to me. Apart from my children, and now my grandchild, this is the best thing I have experienced in my life! The amazing people I met, some of whom became friends, the fantastic homes and locations I experienced, the different countries and cultures I explored, the food I relished and the adventures I had! Not to forget that I challenged myself and learnt an infinite amount when I undertook to do things I had never done before, which in themselves are several different professions.

Being something of a modern Renaissance woman, I have allowed myself to explore and indulge in experiences that have piqued my interest in many and varied ways. Over the years I have studied art, learnt painting, sculpture and etching. I have learnt to dance. I have hiked alone part of the Camino to Santiago de Compostela. I, who can’t sing, tested to join a choir. I have renovated houses. Learnt to garden. Moved house several times. I became a certified life coach. I became an author and photographer and a solo world traveller. I have challenged myself to do things I have never done before, and my life is so much richer for this. And all of what I have described above, I have done in midlife. Oh, did I mention that I did all this on my own?

Becoming stuck is a good thing I realise now. It’s a sign that it’s time to reconsider. To choose anew. It’s an opportunity to learn something new and to grow in the process. To feel truly alive. To be in charge of one’s own destiny, there is no greater feeling.
 

Do what you love, and love what you do, whatever this may be. Your mission and purpose are the experience you are having. Your unique expression. Discovering ways to express this comes in many ways. Some of us gets divine inspiration. For others it’s a slow unfolding. But if you follow your soul’s calling and your passion, I promise you, you will never look back.

Photo by Anita Martinez Beijer of myself in Guatemala, where I spent a month on my travels around the world.