In my post ‘Lesson Learned the Hard Way‘, I explained how I found a money-making way to spend my time while utilizing my talents and working that schedule around my family. The next step in my journey was to find out who I am and what I love to do just for FUN!
It all happened because I read Eve Rodsky’s book ‘Fair Play’ and then her second book ‘Finding your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World’. These books are AMAZING.
‘Fair Play’ helped me understand that I have a partner and two children capable of doing all of the things that are required for running a household. Its due to societal norms that women think that it’s their sole responsibility to shoulder the lion’s share of the tasks while the husband merely ‘helps’ when asked. If you break down all of the tasks required to run a home and raise children then divvy them up equitably, your marriage and life will be much happier. It’s so simple!
Unicorn Space
Once you’ve read ‘Fair Play’, you and your partner have the tools to divide and conquer your child-rearing and housekeeping tasks. This should leave you both with some free time to explore your creative pursuits.
This is where Unicorn Space comes in. To paraphrase Ms. Rodsky, Unicorn Space is a creative endeavor just for you. You love doing it so much that you lose track of time while doing it. It brings you joy and makes you feel fulfilled. You allow yourself to experience it guilt-free. An important part of her definition includes the purposeful sharing of your passion with others. However, I leave that up to you when finding your passion. In certain cases, you can have something just for you that you love and don’t necessarily want the outside world to be involved in.
Who am I?
While I was on my self-discovery journey, I created a group I call ‘The Goal Getters’. It’s a group of 12 women who meet monthly with the aim of helping each other reach our goals. You can read all about how I created the group (and how you can too) in my Goal Getters post.
I introduced the concept of ‘Unicorn Space’ to the Goal Getters and the same comments came up over and over.
‘I don’t know what I like to do.’ Or an even more upsetting one, ‘I don’t know who I am.’
None of us knew what we were passionate about! We forgot the central ‘me’ part of ourselves. We are all mothers, wives, employees, etc. And in those roles, we had defined ourselves. We lost track of the woman outside of those roles along the way. That’s why it’s important that this creative endeavor be something unconnected those roles and something that defines who YOU are.
Finding your passion
Given that most of the women I know were clueless as to what they like to do, how do you go about finding your Unicorn Space, or as I call it here, your passion? There are many questions you can ask yourself to find out. It’s worth it to do some deep soul searching. Here are some questions to ask yourself to get you started:
- What topics are you curious about?
- What did you like to do when you were younger?
- Who did you always imagine you’d be?
- What do your family & friends say are your talents?
- If you won the lottery, what would you do with your time?
- What did you always wish you could do but never made the time for?
- What topics do you love to talk about?
- What gets you excited?
- What kind of activity are you doing when you lose track of time?
Don’t limit yourself
When looking for your passion, don’t limit yourself. Think of what you’re really passionate about, even if it seems out of reach to be able to pursue it. If it is something you very much want to do, ways can be found to get it done. The sky is the limit!!
Don’t fall into the trap of coming up with excuses of why you can’t pursue your passions. You can do anything you want, regardless of age, financial status, talent, time constraints, etc. There’s always a way to give yourself permission to explore creative endeavors.
Guess what?? You can have multiple passions! You can start a passion and decide later that it’s not for you. You can join in on someone else’s passion. There are no rules. Be creative, be curious and be willing to try and fail and get back up again. Once you find what you love to do you will be happy you took the time to explore your options.
Making time for you
If you already know what you love to do or if you’ve figured it out using the tools above, congrats to you!! Our next step is to figure out how to make time to pursue our passions and do so without guilt or remorse.
The most important thing is that we clearly communicate our needs to our family. Something along the lines of ‘Honey, it’s very important to me that I get some creative time away from the family. I would like to take two hours this Sunday to play the piano. Please make sure I’m not disturbed.’
Be mindful that as it’s important for you to have your free time, it’s the same for your partner. If you take those two hours on Sunday, your partner will want to communicate their timeframe as well. Work together to find the best times to step away from family life for creative pursuits. It would be unfair to pick a time when you know it will be difficult for your partner to hold down the fort and you would hope the same respect would be given to you.
Once you have communicated your needs to your family and made a plan for your free time, you need to follow through. Don’t get caught up in what you ‘ought’ to do instead. Those work emails can wait, the dishes will still be there when you’re done, and the kids won’t turn into zombies if they spend the morning watching YouTube. Please don’t let mom guilt get in the way of you rediscovering yourself through creativity. In a fully balanced life, there is time for your responsibilities and your passions.
Evaluate and reassess
After a while of pursuing your creative passions, take a step back to see how it’s going. Are you still enjoying it as much as you were in the beginning? Is there something you can do to make it more enjoyable? Have you done all you can do with it and need to move on? Can you up the ante somehow? As with everything in our lives, we need to take time to reflect on how we are spending our time to determine if it’s worthwhile.
Have you found your passion? What is it? How do you make time to pursue it? I’d love to hear in the comments below or get in touch on Facebook, Instagram or email.
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