Z
Zoom your Zeal
Are you passionate about anything? Is there something you have a burning desire to do, learn, explore or develop? Are you following that passion or is it simply a dream, something that you might someday get around to, when you’ve stopped hiding behind all the excuses you’ve got stacked up in front of it? “I’ve got responsibilities”, “I can’t just drop everything and..”, “It’s not as straight
forward as that…” “I don’t have the money”, “It would mean making huge changes…”. Do you every-so-often take it out from behind all the excuses brimming full of zeal and determination and look at all the possiblities it will bring into your life and then talk yourself back out of it and put it back wistfully, full of “if only’s” resentment and fear?
I’ve heard people say “money isn’t important” and heard others retort that “money is like air, it only becomes important when you aren’t getting any!”. That can also be applied to other areas of our lives. A zest or zeal for life becomes noticable when we remember what that felt like to be full of the joys of life, not having a care in the world, having a spring in our step and realising that no longer feel it. Somewhere along the way we lost it and we’re not always sure how or where. Or maybe we do know and are afraid to go back and get it, that passion for living. Perhaps we believe that that type of passion is only for the young and foolish, who don’t know what it means to be a responsible adult. I used to think that, that fun and a zeal for life was only for the young, that when you became an adult you couldn’t have fun, anymore, just for the sake of it. Life was a chore and boy! did I remind myself, every morning getting out of bed reluctantly to yet another tedious responsibility-laden day that I didn’t want to face.
So what changed for me? I got so low, to a point that I decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore and I made a remark to someone who said that I didn’t have to, that I was choosing to. I
rallied against that for a while and slowly came to agree with them and went looking for help to get past me. Yes, me! I was the block in my zeal for living. I had absorbed so many other peoples’ attitudes and beliefs that I had suppressed most of mine and it was crushing the joy from my life. It was an enlightening journey, as well as painful, therapeutic and freeing, with so much soul-searching and many answers that at first I didn’t want to hear. But over time I got to know me, my limitations, my expectations – not someone else’s, my hopes and passions that I could turn into goals. With all of these being awakened I’ve zoomed right back into my zeal for life.
With that zeal for living I now live a life with joy, passion and fun. So just how do you zoom your zeal? Start some serious soul-searching. Are you living your best life, with passion or the life someone else has mapped out for you? If not, make small changes to get back on your life path. Do you do things that you enjoy doing, or is everything a chore, responsibility and a task? If so, take up a hobby you enjoy, simply because you enjoy it, start to put some fun back into it. Are you always at other people’s beck and call? Start by saying no to things you normally get roped into by saying you just don’t have the time right now and set time aside for you, just for you, each day, be it five or
ten minutes. We all need to have time to ourselves just to be at one with ourselves, to gather our thoughts. When we make small changes we start to build the foundations for the bigger changes that will follow.
I remember the first person I went to for help saying to me when I gave excuses for not looking after myself: “how on earth as a mother, can you look after your children if you don’t look after your well-being? Don’t you owe it to them to be the best mother you can be? Doesn’t that mean being the best person you can be first?” By focusing on ourselves first, developing a zeal and joy for living life to the fullest, we then want to share it with those around us.