Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Find Your Passion and Purpose (it’s easier than you think) | Clutterbug Podcast # 191

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Do you know what your passion is? Do you feel like you have a purpose? In today's podcast, I'm sharing the story of how I discovered multiple passions, and I'm offering real-life tips on how you can discover yours.    You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're talking about finding your passion, finding your purpose in life, and it's a lot easier than you think. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I wanted to talk about passion and purpose and like legacy today because it's just, it's on my mind right now. It's something that I feel like, I think it's important. I think it's important as human beings. We feel like, feel like we are making the world better than before we got here. And maybe you don't have this drive. But I do think a lot of us, even subconsciously, want more. We want to be laying on our deathbed at 95 years old and looking back and thinking, that was awesome. I don't have regrets. I had, I did things that I wish I didn't. Sure, we all do. But overall, I'm proud. I'm proud.

of the life I lived. And I think for me, like, that's a big part of passion and purpose and legacy. It's that pride you feel in yourself, not arrogance, not narcissism, thinking you're so great, but genuinely, genuinely liking yourself and feeling like I'm doing a good job. I am proud of the life I'm living. And I certainly didn't feel that way. way before and I want to talk about my past and this is going to be a weird one with this podcast because I'm going to share some things with you that you probably don't know about me and I hope you don't judge me. How can you not? But I hope you don't judge me. And I also wanted to talk, yeah, just give you lots of ideas and look at passion and purpose and legacy maybe in a different

way and see if any of these ideas that I have kind of fit for you. because at the end of the day, what we're really talking about is making you feel energized, genuinely happy and excited about the day. Like, that's what passion and purpose do. They energize you. They make you, they give you that zest for life. They give you a reason to get up in the morning, a purpose, that all encompassing like, oh yes I want you to feel that way everybody should feel that way and we don't have to do these

huge grand things in order to get that okay so I'm going to talk about my kids and so many things so many things it's going to be a weird podcast today uh let's start at the beginning for myself a little bit about myself that that maybe you didn't know maybe you do I've mentioned it maybe a few times, but I was definitely what you would call like a troubled teen. I grew up in a split household. I had my dad and my stepmom, but I lived primarily with my mom and my stepdad. And they worked a lot. They were workaholics. They worked at factories all day on their feet, you know, 10 hours a day, shift work. So they would work afternoons and midnights and day shifts. Then they would come home and they would do yard work and clean and scrub things that to me as a kid didn't even look dirty and

they would have a ton of chores for me to do. And they never did anything fun. I never saw them really enjoy their life. They were working towards maintaining a life, but it was all-encompassing and exhausting. And they, I mean, they would have drinks at night and maybe sit around and talk or on weekends, perhaps they would go out with friends, but I didn't see their life being one that I considered worth living. This sounds horrible to say, but I'm just going to be honest with you. As a teenager, that was not the life I wanted to live. It didn't seem purposeful to me. It didn't seem like they had a real passion for anything other than earning a living and maintaining their their property and their house. And I thought, is this what being an adult is like? And every adult in my life

kind of did this same thing. They went to work. They raised their kids. They took care of the house. They cleaned. They did laundry. Sometimes they'd go out and maybe go bowling or something on the weekend. But it was this, like, what is the point? What is the point here? What are you here for? And I think this is normal teenage behavior maybe to feel this way, but I really felt this way. And I wanted to live a life that was meaningful, that had real purpose. But I had no idea what that looked like. I didn't, I thought that that meant fun or friends or adventure. And my confused, dumb teenage brain mistook that for a lot of really bad toxic things. So I left home at 15 and I was homeless for a number of years living in tents, living in teen homeless shelters, sleeping on people's couches, whoever was

kind enough to give me a home. And this wasn't like I had a bad house. I could have went home at any time, but I was very stubborn. And I was trying to find myself. And I discovered a lot of people who were also homeless teens who had like really troubled lives. And then I became like I wanted to be their savior and take care of them, but I was also influenced by their negative behavior. And I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol and I was breaking the law. I was shoplifting and doing other little crimes. And I was getting arrested and multiple times. So everything kind of changed when I turned 19 because I'm a grown-up now, but I was still doing bad stupid teenage, stupid things, and I actually got arrested. I don't want to get into details, but I got arrested and I went to

a grown-up jail. It wasn't for very long, but it didn't need to be for very long because man did, finally, for the first time of my life, I had real consequences to my negative behavior. And I was like, this is bonkers. I'm not like the people in there. I don't want to be like the people in there. And I will never break the law ever again. So I left that experience and then fell into the mundane. Because life, you've got to work. If you're not taking and you're not stealing candy bars and doing these bad things, you've got to work. You've got to work. rent to buy food. And so I found myself in a situation where now I'm working three part-time jobs just to skirt by. Fast forward a few years later, I'm in debt. I'm working my butt off 60, 70 hours a week, just getting by. I wasn't cleaning, so I wasn't fully my mother,

but I felt such sadness. I wasn't being bad, so I was proud of myself for that. I was not breaking the law, but I also had this really purposeless life. I didn't, I felt like, what is the point? I'm just working to survive. And this is what I was running away from my whole life. I was trying to escape this. And now here I am, because the escaping was hard too. And I feel guilt and shame and all these horrible things with like trying to buck the system and not put in a box that society tells us to go into, but then when I'm in the box, I feel like just, I feel like something's wrong and something's missing. And this is what happened. I started working for the city and they were looking for volunteers for United Way as part of this program. So you would still get paid by the city, but you would work for

three months for a charity. And so I started working for this, for United Way and helping them raise money and really learning about this charity work. And then I discovered a program called the Good Neighbors Program that was part of United Way where they were collecting sheets and blankets and beds and old furniture for people in the community who didn't have money. And I got to be part of this program. And I got to get paid for this. And I remember I was at the Good Neighbors Warehouse. People would donate warehouse space and we would, the firefighters would go around and do pickups once a week all over the community, bring everything to the warehouse and I would help organize it. And then it would greet members of the community who could come and shop for free. And I remember there

was this one lady who was in, she was suffering from cancer. She was going through chemo treatment. She had a very physically abusive husband. And she had left him and was in a women's shelter and had nothing but the clothes on her back while going through cancer treatments. I mean, just somebody who was at the lowest possible point in their life. And she was so grateful. And for old sheets and towels and mismatched ugly furniture, and she got like a kitchen. She was ecstatic to get all this stuff for free to start her. new life. And I, that, I bawled. She was crying over, over this free, ugly furniture. And I was crying

just tears of joy for her. And I went home that night filled with something I'd never felt before. Not drugs, not alcohol, not racing from the cops and doing all this bad stuff. Nothing, not working, not turning my life around. Nothing had given me this. energy that I felt helping that lady, like, furnish her apartment on her own and find that things. It was, it was the most incredible feeling that I had ever felt in my life. I had never felt such elation, such happiness, such energy as I did making a difference in someone's life, a small difference. And then that was it for me. I, I immediately started working for United way, then eventually moved to other charities, was working for the Lung Association. I became like,

like helping others energize me. That became a purpose and a passion that was my drug of choice, friends. And that continued on. But after I had Isabelle, I had my, got married, I had Isabelle. I didn't want to go back to work because she was sick all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time. and I was missing a ton of work anyways and I hated leaving her and I felt so bad putting her in daycare because she was constantly like we had to take her to the emerge multiple times for pneumonia and I was just like I want to be home with my daughter but again I felt like I'm not saying that being a stay-at-home mom isn't an incredible job and for a lot of people that is a purpose that is like fulfills them but I I loved it but I didn't feel that.

that energy that I got from helping others. I didn't feel that I loved being with her, but I didn't have that same zest in my every day. Am I making myself kind of clear here? That's how you know when you found a passion. And so when my second daughter was born, I decided to start a daycare. And that gave me a little purpose. I was teaching kids, and toddlers. I was teaching them the letters and the sounds. And that gave, that energized me a little bit, but not the same way. And I started then getting organized because I was a hot mess and decluttering. And, and that was energizing me even more than running the daycare because I was getting like immediate gratification. I was like, look, I'm actually, I like organizing a space. I'm feeling like

so good. I couldn't wait the next day to get up and organize another closet. or organize something else. And then eventually when that started not feeling so zesty or again, I was like, I want to do this for other people. And I would find clients and I would make YouTube videos. And I felt that energy, that purpose, that passion that gave me oodles of energy to do something as I had found it. So let's talk about you for a second.

Maybe you've never felt that, that real, that real zest, that real energizing passion. And you're like, how? How do I feel that? I want that. What does that look like? How do I find my passion? So I want to talk about some tips for you. and give you some suggestion so that you can feel like that because for me it was like a thunderbolt,

but a lot of people I've talked to, it's not. It's just the thing they kind of like more than the other things. You know, the thing they would do if the internet went out and there was no screens and you were really bored, what's the thing you'd probably do? Would you craft? Would you work in the garden? would you exercise, would you read a book, would you go for a walk? That's like a little, a little, a little passion baby. That's what that is. That's a little passion baby. How do we ignite it into a fire? We throw some gasoline on that thing. And what I found is the gasoline for your little passion baby fire is making a difference with this. Helping someone. Making, like, It doesn't have to be full-blown legacy, but like making the world a better place in some small,

tiny way with this little passion baby thing that you have. So here's an example. Okay, you love to read. You love books. Why not build a little library in your front yard? You know, those boxes where you put books and like everyone in the community can come and pick a book and share a book? Starting one of those as a book lover, giving free books to people right in your neighborhood, kids' books and all these incredible. That's like, that's passion-inducing. That's making a difference. That's changing a life with something that you love anyways. Or start a book club.

Do you know how many lonely people who also love to read books, but people who are craving connection and friendships and and a shared love of reading and there are people out there you can put a Facebook post up for in like a community Facebook post for people that you don't even know just like I'm starting a book club anyone interested that's that's taking your passion for reading and and igniting it and making a difference in people's lives and bringing people together and creating something bigger than yourself. Incredible. It doesn't even have to be that big. You don't even have to do something that insane. You can do something small like help be like, what am I going to do today to make somebody else's life easier? Help bring the trash cans of your

neighbors, if you have elderly neighbors to the curb. Maybe bring in someone's mail to them and just like knock on the door and say, hey, here's your mail today. Maybe don't do that. Hey, maybe you love cooking, okay? Ha ha, ha, this is a good one. You love cooking. You love making big meals. If you reach out to a local, like a local funeral home, and you can say, hey, can you reach out to me and let me know if there's anyone who had a loved one passed away and they don't have a big family, I'd love to make a meal for that widow. I'd love to just provide someone who's in need with a home-cooked meal.

Here's my number. Give me a call any time if you have a family that you think would love a home-cooked meal. Man, just the thought of it's, if the thought of doing that for somebody else lights you up inside passion. And it doesn't have to be every day. I was talking to my hairdresser, and she loves doing it. hair. She's been doing it for years. She's like, that's her passion, but it doesn't energize her the way it used to. It doesn't fulfill her in that same way that I had talked about earlier. Like, like, I'm going to be proud of myself for this thing. So what she does is one day a year. That's it. One day a year. Her and a few of her girlfriends

who do hair, they volunteer at their high school. They called a local high school and said, hey, can we in and like teach people who are interested some different hair techniques, how to curl, how to straighten, maybe how to cut your own bangs, things like that, to maybe ignite some passion and other kids at the high school who never thought of hairdressing as an actual career choice, or just to teach people some cool skills. And she like, when she talks about this, she lights up. She's like, and there was all these kids, and I was teaching them those different things, and they had their phones, and they were making TikToks, and they were so, excited or, you know, volunteer to do nails at a nursing home and paint fingernails for elderly

people who are in a nursing home. There is so many little ways that you can share your passion, your love with other people that will ignite this energy in you. That will make you really proud of yourself. That will feel like a legacy without you having to start a business. and do these huge grand things. There are little things that you can do right now, right now, to feel that same zest. Okay, I'm going to give you more examples in just a second. I'd like to take a second to thank KiwiCo for sponsoring today's podcast. Speaking of passion, my daughter Abby is 14, almost 15 actually, and she has a real passion

for like building and tinkering. And this is something she didn't know she had until we started getting Qico crates. So every month, a crate is delivered to our house and it has all the tools, all the supplies necessary to make something awesome. She's built a Bluetooth speaker. She's built a robot and a rocket and so many things that she's a ukulele that actually plays. And she's realized how much she loves to build. She always liked Lego, but this is like a whole new thing. Right now, you can see what inspires your kids.

By trying KiwiCo, go to kiwiCo.com forward slash organize to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first month of any crate line. That's KiwiCo.com forward slash organize for 50% off your first month and free shipping. So I've probably taken my need for a legacy and kind of put it on other people. I want to share a story with you. My stepfather recently passed away of lung cancer. He battled long and hard. And my stepdad was the happiest, most optimistic, just like a work hard, play hard kind of guy. As much as I said as a kid, I looked at him and was like, I don't want to live your life, bro, because all he did was get up and go to work all day and then come home and work

his butt off all night, he never called in sick once. He never let anyone down. He always, like if he said he was going to do something for you, he would do it. He would show up and he would always have a smile on his face. And yeah, he probably drank too much and hung out with his friends and did some shenanigans. But I've never met anyone who didn't love him. Really, truly. but when he got sick and we knew there was no cure and he was passing away, I couldn't help but feel like, dude, I wish, I hope you feel like it was enough. That life was enough for you. That you've made a difference in people's lives. And I'm sure he did, and this is probably me projecting, but I really felt an insane desire to give him a legacy, just outside of being a great stepdad or a great

father or a great husband. I wanted to have his life have real, like, meaning. Again, this is probably my own crap, but here's a story he always shared with me as a kid. My stepfather loved hockey more than anything in the world. But his parents had eight children. He has seven brothers and sisters and they didn't have a lot of money. His dad was a milkman and his mom just struggled. She worked at factories, different factories, but they didn't have a lot of money. And so he never had the ability to play hockey. He would do pond hockey. We leave here in Canada. So it got cold. He would skate on the ice and he was constantly asking, you know, the arena if he could play and is there any way he could play? And somebody who was taking care of the ice told him at four o'clock in the morning,

he could come and skate for free because no, none of this, like he opened at four at the first ice time was until five. So they would let my stepdad as a kid like eight years old. If you wanted to, he could skate on the ice in the arena for free at 4 a.m. So he set his alarm. and he would go at like eight years. I can't get my kids to get up. If I, if it was eight in the morning, and I was like, hey, want to go to Disneyland? They'd be like, oh, I need to sleep. This guy as a kid would get up and walk to be able to skate for free. When he was doing pond skating, he couldn't afford equipment. He said he used to cut pop bottles for elbow pads and knee pads. And the one thing he always wanted to do was to be able to play hockey. And he talked about this all the time. And when my kids

got older and started playing hockey, you would just say, you guys are so lucky. You don't know how privileged you are to be able to play hockey. And I never really thought of it like that before. It's just, you know, it's a sport, but it's expensive. And so when he got sick, I was like, how can we, how can we care how can we give him legacy and purpose and what i thought of was the gordy green memorial fund so i'm going to pledge money every year a bunch of other family members are pledging every year and we're going to pay the registration and buy equipment for children in need in the town that he grew up on and it's very expensive so we're thinking it's probably only going to be 10 kids a year. But what an incredible legacy. And we're calling it the Gordy Green because his nickname as a

kid was Gordy after Gordy Howe because he was such an incredible skater, even though he never had the ability to play hockey. His name is not Gordy, but everyone called him Gordy. And so I felt like that was such a beautiful legacy. But I never shared that with him. Even though I had the plan to do that, I don't know why I never got around to telling him that when he was living. And also, I don't know, I think part of that is almost like for me, so I feel better that he has a legacy because I feel like everyone has to have a legacy, but it doesn't have to be this big grand thing. I think what we could have done and should have done with him was just have him tell us all the things he's proud of in his life, looking back. And this is something you can do.

do right now. What are you proud of? What have you done? It doesn't have to be big. You don't have to pay for kids hockey equipment or volunteer, but I know you've done things in your life that you're proud of. What are those things? And can you write them down? And can we really make these little things that make you proud kind of a priority going forward so that you continually feel proud, that you feel fulfilled, that you feel passion. Because when we are unmotivated, when we're sitting on the couch watching lots of YouTube, or like I felt for so many years, just this ho-hum, low-level sadness, depression, just like mundane life feeling, we don't have to feel that.

We can feel energized. We just need to understand. what it is that makes us feel alive. My daughter Izzy is almost 17 and she's been struggling the last few years with like the same thing I struggled with as a teen, which is what is my reason for being here? What lights me up? Nothing really got her like da-da-da-da-da-da. And she struggled with that. And it was really affecting her. But I could see her with kids. Anytime she was around little kids, She lit up. She'd get on the floor and play with them.

She lit up. And so I encouraged her to do a co-op at a local daycare. And that was it, day one. This is a kid who struggled to go to school every day, would always skip out, would always kind of like, you know, be kind of a hooligan. Started for free working at a daycare every day and never missed a day. I never had to set an alarm for her. Every day before, I would like, is he got to get up. Come on, you didn't miss the bus. Get up. Get up. It was like nag, nag, nag, nag, nag. She never wanted to get out of bed. No longer having. She would pop out of bed early and be rearing to go, come on, time on, we're going to the daycare. It lit her up to be helping children, teaching children, being around children. She knows now that's her passion, whether she's going to work at a daycare, run a daycare, be a teacher, it's kids. Little kids. energizes her. Little kids are her purpose in life. And I'm so glad that she found that. And my daughter,

Abby, she's competitive. Her purpose in life at the moment is to be the best. She wants to get the best grades. She's like, does her homework. She's raring to get to school because that gives her energy. It lights her up. And maybe right now you're just earning money or it doesn't matter. The point is it doesn't matter. it doesn't even have to be helping someone else. Just find that thing that gives you that energy and then pour gasoline on it, friends. Poor gasoline on it. And if you haven't found that thing yet, I'm going to tell you it's most likely acts of service for other people doing something for someone else. I had no idea the joy that came from helping another human being. Collecting coats for the homeless.

Volunteering at a soup kitchen. Right now, I'm volunteering at St. John Ambulance. And every other Wednesday I go and I learn how to save people. And then on the weekends, I volunteer. And I'm always like, I'm going to save somebody. I've yet to save someone. But the thought of like, the thought of that, the thought of that, The thought of, I'm fully trained to have my MFR exam coming up next week, so I'll be a medical

first responder. I'm not going to do this for a living. But it is, it excites me. Any time I'm reading about medical things or trying to diagnose someone, I feel that energy. I feel that like bubbling up. I would read WebMD just for fun. You know, someone would be like, have a cough and I'm like, can I see your ankles? Do you have pulmonary edema? For years. I love house and Grey's Anatomy and all that medical stuff was like a low-key, low-key passion for me. So I thought, why not pour gas on it and volunteer at St. John Ambulance? I don't get a lot of time, but it energizes me. It fills me in a way that clutter bug used to. And it still does, but it's become routine. It's become mundane. I needed something new. And I think you might need something new.

too. Maybe you want to start photography and start taking pictures. Maybe you want to, I don't know, there's so many things that you could do. So many, volunteer somewhere, volunteer somewhere. It feels so good. It really does. And you will discover that maybe making a difference in someone else's life in any way that you can, is that passion you've been searching for? Is that way to energize you? Is that way to fill that void that you didn't even know you had, that whole inside of you, that something is missing feeling could be that making a difference in someone's life is your passion.

And you can also do this and like start a podcast, write a book. do a have a group on start a group on facebook that you monitor it doesn't even have to be a big thing it can be very very tiny but have a really big impact in your life so i just wanted to shout this out there to you i certainly don't want you to feel bad if you're still at the end of this you're like i literally have no idea cass and no ideas and now i feel worse than before i don't want you to feel that way i just wanted to put some like little bugs in your ear That sounds weird. I wanted you to, I just wanted you to think about it differently. Because sometimes we think we have to do these huge life-changing, career-changing,

sell everything we own and move to Bali kind of crazy things in order to feel or find our purpose, our passion, or we have to earn a bunch of money or start a business to have a legacy. And I'm here to tell you that that just isn't it. We just have to find the things that energizes you and know that it's going to constantly change. And when it starts to wane, we find that next thing that energizes us. And very, very often, we can find that by doing things for other people, by leaving this world a little bit better than how we found it. So thank you guys so much and I'll see you next time.