Today, I’d like to talk about what obstacles we usually find to recover our past passions. We might know very well what we’d like to recover. Our deep passion for painting, from the times we would take a canvas and paint wherever we would go outdoors. Or our joy when we played the violin. Or maybe that love for gymnastics when we were young.

Yes. We remember our passion well. And nevertheless, we don’t try to recover it in our adult life, after decades of having abandoned it. We know we miss it. We are aware that we are lacking a sense of energy and joy in our lives, and we have been remembering how we used to love our passion. We might even have looked at photos, taken out old notebooks where we poured our loved for our passion as a child.

So what is on the way of getting started? We know what we loved. We know it would bring us joy. We might even know it’s the thing that could bring us back to feeling alive again. Why don’t we just do it?

As adults, we are full of fears that we didn’t have as kids. There are a few things that might be on the way to getting started.

Shame and fear of failure. This is a big one. We might have been great at what we were doing as kids. And now, after way too long, we are afraid we will be so bad that we will feel ashamed of ourselves. Moreover, others might just laugh at us, at how bad we paint, draw or write. But one thing we usually don’t understand is that first and foremost, we are doing it for our own pleasure. We are doing it because it’s something that brings us joy. It doesn’t matter if the first time we take it (or the second or the tenth), it looks like the drawing of a 2-year old. Or if the words just don’t come out. That is the way of creativity anyways. Creativity is all about showing up, no matter how bad it is. It’s about writing every day for 20 minutes. Or drawing something. Or trying a couple of cartwheels. The more we practice, the better it will feel, and the more confident we will be. As writers usually say, take out the first draft first, as fast as you can. All the work is later in the editing part. You start with whatever comes out. You will be able to improve it later. But with a passion, we don’t even need to get that far: we are not aiming to be a Beethoven, a Shakespeare, a Picasso. We are doing this because it brings us joy. That is the main purpose to recover a passion.

And if anyone laughs at you or criticizes you, Let them, as Mel Robbins says. They have the right to say or think what they want. Let Me ignore it and remind me why I am doing it. Nothing else matters.

Finding the time, space and budget. You don’t have space in the house. You have no time with a busy life, small kids and a demanding job. You need to buy material, or take a course, and it’s too expensive. Yes, I understand it. I have been there. However, this obstacle tends to be an excuse not to do it, something you tell yourself to avoid getting started, to avoid all the shame and disappointment we talked about before.

Space: it doesn’t need to be the perfect space, that whole room you are dreaming of to have your space for your paintings. To start, you might just find a corner in your house. You might even need to take things away each time you finish. Or you might need to ask a friend for a space at their house. Just find something that works for you and gets you started.

Time: this is a tricky one. We always feel like we don’t have time. But there are always ways to find the time. You can get up half an hour early each day and write. You might find it throughout the day when your partner is taking care of the kids, playing with them or giving them a bath. You can use the time you scroll down the internet, or the TV. You can listen to a podcast or a lesson while driving to work. Time can be found, always.

Budget: you don’t need to get the most fashion things to start with. Start with cheap things, anything that can get you started. As you start feeling more motivated, you might want to purchase something else, increase your space, your time or the budget for your passion.

The problem isn’t always what it seems. Often, the main problem is priority, and it’s usually related to the shame or fear of failure mentioned above. Once we overcome it, once we realize how important it is to bring this to our lives, then we will make the time, space and find the needed budget to bring it back. But often what we need to realize how important it is in our lives is to get started and feel how much more joyful we feel, how our loved ones notice it, how we suddenly realize we are whistling at work, or smiling when driving home, knowing we are getting the time we crave. Or when we manage to fit it early in the morning, how happier our days are because we have done something we love first thing in our day. No matter how stressful the rest of the day is, we have fit in our top priority in our day. And that is priceless.

Stop making excuses to bring your passions back to your life. Starting is the most difficult. Start slow. Maybe only 15 minutes a day, maybe only every other day. And before you realise it, you will be craving it the day you miss it, and one day, you will find yourself doing something you haven’t done for a while: you will bring a smile to your face.

Quote of the week

“If you are older, chances are strong that you may already possess absolutely everything you need to possess in order to live a more creative life – except the confidence to actually do the work. But we need you to do your work.

Whether you are young or old, we need your work in order to enrich and inform our own lives.

So take your insecurities and your fears and hold them upside down by their ankles and shake yourself free of all your cumbersome ideas about what you require (and how much you need to pay) in order to become creatively legitimate. Because I’m telling you that you are already creatively legitimate, by nature of your mere existence here among us.”

“Big magic. Creative living beyond fear”, Elizabeth Gilbert