From Existing to Thriving

by Debi Hebel -

Leading a Passionate Purpose Driven Life:

To live with purpose and achieve success, you have to find your passion. It took me many years to find my passion and at one point in my life, I didn’t think I’d ever find it. I always felt I could be successful at something if only I knew what I wanted. 

I knew I had a whole lot of passion within myself. Especially when I was younger, you know the days, when you just know you’ll be the next rock star. But over time I lost that passion and work and bills and expectations of what I should have achieved by now got in the way. 

I allowed the noise of my thoughts keep me from finding my true purpose. With an empty and unfulfilled feeling in my heart, and the contrasting euphoric memory of the passion and bliss I felt in the days of my rock star dreams, I became unsatisfied with simply existing… I wanted to thrive.

I believe we have an intrinsic desire and drive to live in a daily state of happiness. 

Therefore, we go to work, belong to a club and in general do things that we don’t feel passion for because we have been told and have been telling our self that it will lead us to the happiness we desire.

Yet, this creates a clash between our outer picture of happiness and our inner picture of happiness. Hence, creating a vivid contrast because the two do not match. 

With all contrast that we experience, comes emotional suffering. 

This emotion is telling us that there is something not in alignment with our own personal integrity.

The bottom line is that we are not being honest with our self.

If we pay attention to this emotion rather than dismissing it and we begin to move in the direction of what we truly desire, then both our inner and outer portraits align to reflect a beautiful self-portrait that is vividly florid with passion.

Although many of us feel it is easier to dismiss and ignore our more negative emotions, if we choose to not avoid them, they are in reality a remarkable tool that acts as our Guide to Psychological Soundness, or our GPS. 

Now, before I had made the realization that this GPS was actually one of the good guys and not a villain, I would treat my GPS just as my dad use to treat the suggestion from my mom to stop at a gas station for directions.

If he stopped, that would take time and we would not arrive to our destination by his self-imposed deadline. Hence, after wrong turns and backtracking he would come to the realization that he did need direction. 

As they say, “The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.” 

My kids have watched me on more than one occasion ignore the GPS in my car because it doesn’t know what it’s talking about, and it must be misprogrammed.

Believe it or not, my car’s GPS and my emotional GPS, tell me the same thing “recalculating” and shows me a different route to get to the destination I am clearly suppose to end up at… the destination of passion. 

Even when we try to dismiss what we are feeling by burying it deep into the subconscious, our GPS always knows where we are presently and the direction we need to take to get to our life of passion and purpose.

The question we need to ask is, how many times are we will to hear “recalculating” before we turn in the direction of that which is in alignment with our purpose.

We have this GPS throughout our lifetime repeating, “recalculating” over and over. 

Throughout our lifetime once in awhile we will make a turn in the advised direction.

When we do, not only do we hear the unusual silence of our GPS, but now we feel something different… we feel a lightness, an excitement, and even a sense of elation.

This is because when we turn toward the direction of what we are most passionate about, our body reacts physically. 

All of a sudden we feel a surge of happiness and energy. This is what I call an EOS ~ Dawning moment. Eos is known as the Greek Goddess of the dawn. It is her responsibility to ride her chariot through the night sky bringing the dawn with her, thereby creating hope and new beginnings. 

Our physical EOS Dawning moment is made up of chemicals, namely Endorphins, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Dopamine.

The feeling of euphoric emotion that we receive as a result of these chemicals gives us the ability to know that whatever turn we made, whatever we were doing at that moment is what is leading us to the dawning of our life of passion and purpose.

Depending on where you are on your path, there are many processes that can lead you to discovering what you truly desire and have a passion for, believe me as an obsessive self-analyst, I feel like I have tried them all. 

The one I use which I find to work the best I call 'The Follow Self-Love Process'.

With this process, your conscious awareness is put to work. To be able to live your passion on the outside, you need to own self-love.

If you are genuinely in a place of self-love, then the choices you make reflect that. This is true for the everyday, simple choices to the choices that have the ability to change your world, as you know it. Although it is simple, it is very effective. 

Here’s how it works, keeping mindful of when a choice presents itself is the first step. 

Then, when looking at the choices you are going to ask yourself, “What would a self-loving person choose?”

This question will not steer you wrong. When you ask yourself this question, wait for the feeling.

Do you feel a sense of excitement, relief, happiness, lightness, or fulfillment more so with one over the other? Then choose that one. 

This even works for a decision as simple as choosing to eat an apple or a candy bar… What would a self-loving person choose?

Once you begin to do this, you will find that the decisions you are making are increasing the number of EOS ~ Dawning moments in your life. The more EOS ~ Dawning moments you have the greater passion you feel and this is the breadcrumb trail to your purpose.

Even when we know and can feel the choice of self-love sometimes we still choose another option that doesn’t feel as good, or worse yet we do nothing.

What then? What is it that is stopping you from making the choices you need to make to experience EOS ~ Dawning moments and ultimately lead you to the passionate, purpose driven life you want? 

The surface answer is different for each of us, but usually involves fear… the fear of change, the fear of disappointment, the fear of failure the list of fears can be quite lengthy but no matter what or how many fears we have that have held us back, there is a second process to work through them. After all, the opposite of love is not hate; it is fear. 

Therefore, where there is love there is no fear.

If we have fear, then there is a part of us that we are unhappy with or are resisting, which is not self-loving.

We move past any of our fears by being self-accepting and self-loving. This is not like the usual “self-help” material that helps you to change a part of who you are. You are not here to change even one thing about who you are. 

The reason self-help programs don’t typically work is because we can’t change who we are. To do this creates conflict and resistance within us. Not to mention, if we were to change who we are, then how is it that we are going to find our individual purpose? 

The point is, we shouldn’t change even one iota of who we are, but we should accept those aspects of our self that we would have otherwise not loved. One of the ways we do this is through a process of self-acceptance. 

By changing the way we see these aspects that we don’t embrace, we create an entirely new self-loving perspective. Therefore, our energy is not spent self-loathing, but rather self-loving.

5 STEP SELF-ACCEPTANCE PROCESS

 1. Choose something that you don’t like and don’t accept about yourself.

• I don’t like that I am more of an introvert and am uncomfortable at large functions.

2. Think about and write down the exalted aspects of what you don’t accept.

• I am able to observe and learn more about people and their behaviors
• I can see how my quiet reserved nature can lead people to see me as poised, calm, and emotionally intelligent.

3. What does the above feel like in my body?

• EOS – increase heart rate, excitement-butterfly flutters in my stomach

4. Treasure hunt – What good, beneficial thing would being introverted serve?

• I have healthy boundaries
• Keen observance of people
• Heightened awareness
• Ability to be fully in the moment
• A knack for making others feel calm and peaceful
• Good listener
• Good friend and therapist
• Trustworthy with confidentiality
• Counted on
• Seen as having high integrity
• Well respected
• Others value and ask for my opinions and advice
• Others value me
• I am loved
• I love and value myself because others can’t love us if we don’t truly love our self.
• If I love myself and I am introverted at gatherings, then I accept and love being introverted at gatherings

5. Look at the original aspect of our self that we stated in #1 that you didn’t like about our self. “I am introverted at gatherings” – How does that make you feel now?

• I feel confident and proud and to be introverted
• Because I am introverted I am (back up to #2) poised, calm, emotionally intelligent.

Today I have given you a couple of very useful and proven tools that I have not only used personally but also use with my clients. Applying these from this moment forward will support you in moving toward the passion you feel bubbling just below the surface. 

In addition to these two life-coaching methods, there are others that I offer which focus on leading a passionate, purpose driven life through self-love and self-acceptance. These programs work in unison to provide you with a concrete plan to go from existing to thriving. 

In addition, I am also offering webinars to teach additional methods and techniques to support you in achieving and receiving through your purpose. One last item, I also offer one on one coaching sessions in person, on the telephone or through live streaming. 

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