Passion: should I define it?
Or just define my passions for travel? Each and every one of us hear the word passion and we immediately think of what lights our motivation. I’m assuming because you all are reading this article, you have a passion for travel.
I’m going to go ahead and speak to my passions in this post, and ask you to define your own passions by the end.
Passion for travel
If you are reading this, you most likely have a passion for travel. This passion starts when you scroll through the “anywhere” at “anytime” options on skyscanner.com. This is the passion of finding tickets to Barcelona for 2 weeks under $400. You are immediately ready to pack your bags before you even ask for time off work or telling your significant other.
This passion I define as passion lust. It’s the most powerful and motivating of the passion spectrum.
We see this passion when we start a new diet. You go get all the right groceries and get really excited, meal prep everything and the fridge looks like an organized Pinterest post.
You see this type of passion when you first learn to drive. You want to drive anywhere. Does mom need milk? You go to the store. Does Mom’s car need gas? You go to fill it. Dad wants you to pick up the pizza? You are grabbing the keys as fast as possible.
But now you are in your mid-twenties, or forty’s, or sixty’s, and grub hub sounds way better than walking to your car and driving to the restaurant. Or that fridge full of meal prepped food isn’t looking as appetizing, or your boss said you can’t take two weeks off in the middle of April to go to Rome because that’s tax season.
Travel Habits
So what do we call the steady part of the passion spectrum that keeps us completing the cycle of lust passion? No matter how many times our lust turns to slush we are back on the horse trying again. What do we call that kind of passion?
Habit.
Wait, hold on. This is a travel post about passion and wanderlust and traveling to 16 countries before the age of 24. Why are we talking about habits? Because the habit is what you fall back on when your passion lust runs out.
Read it again. I’ll pause a moment.
Habit. Is what you fall back on when passion runs out.
You have a habit of starting things with passion and finishing them with monotony. So what do you do? Start the cycle again trying to reignite that passion. Except you aren’t reigniting the long-lasting passion, you are reigniting the passion lust.
How was I able to get past this cycle? Change. your. habits. And to be completely transparent, I’m still learning ways where my passion lust blinds my habits.
For example, I get really excited to study material at the start. At the start of the quarter, the start of the week, the start of the chapter, the start of a new module, but after about an hour or so I lose my motivation. I’m still learning how to keep moving through dense material after an hour or so. (I’m welcoming any study tips here)
What are your habits?
I do know how I got past the bad habits that were holding me back in other areas. Like traveling. I had a bad habit of asking for permission.
I don’t mean permission from my boss or an authority figure, I mean for myself.
I would do all the research to know all the pros and cons of the country, the time limit I had, the money I needed. The whole trip would be budgeted planned and ready. But I never gave myself permission to follow through. My first experience with this was when I was in a difficult living situation and wanted to take a trip to Mexico.
I think it was Cabo or Cancun or somewhere but I told my housemate at the time how I really wanted to go during a break at school. I budgeted it, I found plane tickets so we could both go, I did it in between semesters, and I could get the time off at work.
But when I asked for permission to book it, his family disapproved of the location. He felt like Florida would be a cheaper option. I had friends tell me it wasn’t safe to go by myself, and I hadn’t budgeted for just myself to go. So because I asked for permission I was given, in loving tones or not, a million different no’s.
I ended up going to Florida with my housemate at his family’s condo. I still went on a trip (at a relatively same cost), but not the one that lit my passion to plan it. My perseverance and bad habits held me back to my follow-through. My want to please others made me avoid what my heart really wanted.
What lights your passion?
As I speak to fellow travelers, I know we all really want to learn new cultures, learn new cuisine, meet new friends. You want to find yourself stretching your boundaries of comfort. You want to walk down the streets and interact with new communities. You want to shop at grocery stores and find all the bazaar amazing things they stock their shelves with. You want to walk into stores full of handmade trinkets and magic lamps. And you can’t really do any of that as an American in Florida.
Stop your Bad Habits.
What finally broke the cycle? I stopped asking for permission. I told my housemate, I am going to Spain for a semester, and in turn, he said: “who am I to stop you?”
I told my family and I didn’t see their input as lack of permission, but rather love laced judgment. Friends would ask me how I was able to do it. and with enough confidence, that I got 3 of them on board to go with me.
Without them, I would have fallen back on my habit of asking for permission, when things got hard they pushed me through reigniting the passion.
And then came the new habits. New habits of looking at flights I could afford, at times I could go, on a budget I could manage. And just going. Asking people if they want to join, but knowing I’ll be going either way. This habit of perseverance and follow-through is what allowed me to travel to so many countries.
I had perseverance when I saved money, I had perseverance when I worked over 13 hour days 5 days a week. Perseverance when my flight got delayed on my way to Spain. I found a way and stopped asking for permission from others. And myself.
That habit, that perseverance and self confidence, that is the passion that simmers on my back burner. That is what I fall back on when I no longer want to work long days, or eat meal prep food, or exercise at 4:30am or drive to go get groceries.
What is your Passion lust?
What is your passion “lust”? Now, what is often the roadblock you hit when your passion is threatened? And what is the habit you fall back on? What’s a healthy habit to replace it with?
For Example, my passion lust is to be a really good psychiatrist to better help my community. My road block is often lack of momentum when I’m studying. The habit I fall back on is checking my phone when I’m bored. A healthy habit I need to incorporate would be switching subjects or reading a different chapter and coming back to my current material in a few hours, or if I have the opportunity to look over it again the next day utilizing the spaced repetition technique.
Edit: This is easier said than done I know. As I study for my MCAT I still struggle with this. But bringing these issues to light and at least knowing what the new habit should be is a good example of how to overcome bad habits. Feel Free to contact me directly if you need some help.
Your turn.
What is your passion lust? what is the road block you hit when your passion is threatened? And what is the habit you fall back on? What’s a healthy habit to replace it with?
Kick ass and follow through on your passions!
-Rach x
Last edited 4/3/2020
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