Practicing Your Multi-Passionate Purpose
Sustainable Systems • Focal Things
Sustainable Systems provides purpose-focused humans with deliberately designed processes, tools, and practices that are sustainable, meaningful, and beautiful.
Let’s return to our SloDo from a couple of weeks ago.
Take a look at your responses: has anything changed in light of our exploration of multi-passionate lives? What comes up for you as you reflect on the idea that all of your interests are part of who you are, and who you’re becoming?
In last week’s Deep Dive, we explored two different ways of dispersing energy: the sparkler and the bottle rocket. Sparklers pop and fizzle; bottle rockets bang and scoot. We also explored how constraints can shape what we focus on, and how our clarity of purpose can serve as a signal that helps us make choices in a given season.
This week, let’s take a look at how we can navigate our multi-passionate lives. Since our passions serve as “conversation partners,” one of the better ways I’ve discovered for discerning what they’re saying is to cultivate a regular reflection practice.
Below you’ll find a variety of prompts to support your practice of reflection and discernment. Perhaps you’ll find that the sparkler vs. bottle rocket prompts help you put a pause between a request and your answer. The purpose-as-signal prompts may provide orienting questions when faced with major decisions. The prompts for befriending time may help you feel more anchored in your life by honoring the passage of time with your attention.
Choose what resonates most for you in this season.
Befriending Time
Time is the absolute constraint on our lives, and I don’t mean clock time. We have no idea when our years will end, but that they end is no surprise. We can either rage against the dying of the light, or we can make friends and collaborate with this reality in significant and generative ways.
We all too often underestimate what we can do in a lifetime, while overestimating what we can do in a day. Befriending time—and cultivating a multilayered mindset—helps us put our interests and decisions into perspective.
Macro
This is your long game—your life as a whole.
This layer of time holds your overarching sense of purpose that invites and compels you. What lives within this layer changes slowly and provides you with a lodestone for your journey.
Seasonal Assessment
How has the “Venn diagram” of my interests evolved to reveal clearer purpose?
How are my various interests informing my understanding of who I’m becoming?
What themes keep showing up across different areas of curiosity?
Meso
This is where you notice your seasons and rhythms.
This layer of time tracks how the years and months shift and morph, and how you grow throughout them. Different passions may have different seasons in your life—parenting seasons, career-building seasons, creative seasons. Noticing what lives within this layer can help you practice self-compassion by recognizing that everything has its proper time.
Pattern Recognition
Where do I sense momentum building toward something more focused?
Which passions are ready for a season of focused attention?
Which ones are content to simmer in the background for now?
Micro
Here are your days and weeks.
This is where you make the daily choices to show up to your life, and the ways in which you do it. Consciously channeling your energy goes here, while other interests wait their turn.
What is each current project teaching me about my deeper calling or purpose, my truest self?
Which interests are converging into clearer patterns?
What new clarity has emerged about my direction this week?
The Sparkler vs. Bottle Rocket Assessment
Before adding any new commitment or continuing an existing passion project, pause and ask:
The Aliveness Test
Does this increase my sense of “aliveness” and living well in my life?
Does this contribute to others’ flourishing in ways that align with my purpose?
Does this help me feel more present and engaged, or more productive and busy?
The Energy Flow
Is this a “sparkler” (high energy, low progress) or a “bottle rocket” (focused energy, real movement)?
What truly needs to get done now for other passions to flourish later?
What foundation do I need to build so that my vision actually exists in the world?
Purpose as Signal Questions
We all have those moments when we encounter multiple appealing interests and choices, and feel as if the wrong choice has the power to completely derail our lives. Rather than think of such moments as catastrophes, thinking of them in light of our purpose can help us see how they might be stepping stones on the path of our journey.
Purpose as Destination: Instead of “What interests me most right now?” ask “Which of my current passions best serves who I’m becoming? Does this serve who I’m becoming, or just what I’m interested in right now?”
Purpose as Standard: Instead of evaluating projects only by energy cost, ask “How does this align with my calling, purpose, and identity? What is this teaching me about my deeper calling?”
Purpose as Filter: Instead of relying solely on energy or interest levels, ask “Which of these equally good options creates space for my truest self? How is this shaping my character and wisdom, not just building skills or knowledge?”
Multi-passionate individuals need different encouragement than “Focus on one thing!” The goal isn’t to eliminate our other passions or narrow down to just one thing.
Instead, we learn to channel our energy like bottle rockets rather than sparklers—creating foundation and momentum that allows all our interests to flourish in their proper time.
Let me know how it goes for you.
The waitlist for Systems Therapy Sessions is open!
If you found this helpful, and you’re curious about 1:1 coaching, learn more about Systems Therapy and book a Curiosity Call!
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
