What Lights You Up?

Posted March 5, 2021 in Thoughts

What are the things that not only bring you joy, but actually light you up? What are the things that dim your light? It’s time to give yourself permission to want things and delight in them.

Here’s a way to start – write two lists – things that light you up and things that dim you. Include many different areas of your life – relationships, work, home, fun, spirituality, health, etc. Writing them helps you see the threads and patterns. For some of you, especially if you have low Workability Energy, you’re saying, eek, not two lists! That’s ok, feel the eek and do it anyway.

You will see where you get bogged down. For example, at work – What parts of your job light you up? What do you slog through and wish you never had to do again? How can you shift the balance so you’re doing more of the former and less of the latter?

Can you have someone do the parts you hate? Maybe they love that part! It boggles the mind to think someone actually loves those parts. And yet, they do. On the flipside, they don’t like doing the parts you love!

Your lists will be like a trail of breadcrumbs for you to follow. The lists help you remember those things that truly delight you. Perhaps you have forgotten because you have a judgment that it’s not ok to show up with passion and excitement about things. You may have been toning yourself down for a very long time.

So often we stop ourselves because we think we’re being irresponsible by not doing all of the parts. Or, we feel like we’re shirking our duties when we delegate part of a task to someone else. I’m going to repeat myself – some of those tasks you hate are the exact same tasks someone else loves. Think about that! What if you focused on your strengths and the parts that light you up? What if you did that at work and in your personal life? What do you imagine might change?

You Have Permission

Start increasing the things in the “light you up” list and decreasing the things in the “dim your light” list. Yes, I give you permission to do that until you can give yourself permission. Sometimes it means being creative about how you approach your process. It might mean hiring someone to do the parts you really don’t like to do. Then you can focus your time on the parts you love and are really good at.

I could talk to and interact with people all day long. And, for people with low Aliveness Life Energy, that is the absolute third ring of hell for them. They would be happy if they could be in their own space with very little interaction.

If you give me a form to fill out, I will find every excuse to avoid it. My friend, Sue, would say, bring it on and fill out those forms lickety-split! The good news for us in our business partnership is we each only did the parts we loved. The even better news is we loved opposite parts of the process, so together we made a great team!