Siouxland Magazine - Volume 3 Issue 1

Passion
energy
intensity
purpose
Shifting Focus Towards Passion
By Stacie Anderson
Words are powerful. It’s interesting how we attach so
much emotion to a word. Then we string these words into
a story that we repeat over and over, often unaware of
how it affects our inner being.
I have been told that I can be intense on more than one
occasion. In my mind, whether it was intended that way
or not, I interpreted that as a character flaw - thinking that
my intensity made others uncomfortable. I equated it to
words like harsh, severe or extreme even though I could
have gravitated towards focused, deliberate or strong.
This word, intense, became a theme that
kept creeping up.
Several years back, I asked someone to describe me in
three words, and you guessed it, one of those words was:
intense. This time, with further inquiry as to why she chose
that word, a new word surfaced. In that process of going
deeper and exploring, she gave me a different answer that
she said better articulated what she meant. The word was
passionate. This word immediately resonated with me.
At that moment, there was a shift. Nothing changed,
and yet, everything changed. I was still the same intense
person, but now with a new interpretation, a recognition
of how my energy could be focused to inspire someone.
How I showed up each day after that was slightly different.
The intensity that I channeled stemmed from experiencing
the loss of my mother as a child. Death is a masterful teacher.
The reality is, life is short, and that no matter how strongly
you wish, you can’t roll back time for even a moment to
make an adjustment that would change the outcome. We
aren’t promised more than this present moment and it’s up
to each of us how we choose to use it.
There is no arguing that I can be intense, but when you’ve
stood in a moment that changes you, that clarifies what is
important in life with no certainty of how much time you’ll
have, you get passionate. At least I did.
I’d like to think that from that deep pain, my capacity for joy
increased, that my awareness was heightened in a way that
guides me to appreciate all the ways life expresses itself.
That I was abruptly nudged to focus on what I have and
not what I lost.
With an intensity to extract every drop of life’s experiences
out of my days, I am certain there have been moments
where I was “intense.” In the past, I’ve struggled with
boundaries. In my attempt to encourage others to live
fully and face their fears, I’m sure I’ve overstepped. I
so desperately wanted to reach people at their core,