Celebrating Our Passions

It’s around this time of the summer that everything hits its peak: the celebrations, the travel and activities, and the heat. For those of us who allow ourselves to think about it, the beginning of July is also the marker that summer is halfway over. While it would be very easy to expend energy bemoaning this fact, instead I’m going to try to reframe this as a reminder to savor the time that remains and celebrate all the summer and vacation-related things I feel passionate about. Which brings me to July’s theme: passion.

It’s interesting to me that so many of the concepts surrounding mindfulness and self-care have qualities that overlap one another. Celebrating our passions, whether for activities we don’t get to engage in during the school year or just something as simple as a balmy summer evening, has a great deal to do with savoring and appreciating the little things. This idea of pausing and deeply enjoying an experience overlaps with the idea of gratitude, as well. Whichever word you prefer (gratitude, savoring, or passion), the invitation this month is to aspire to feel these experiences more deeply and more fully.

One way I plan to hold myself to this aspiration is to post one thing each day for the month of July that I am passionate about. Since today July 5th, I will list my first five here:

· Waking up to the sun

· Riding my bicycle as a means of transportation

· Being outside so much more

· Having more time to read

· No makeup days

If you’d like to follow the next 25 posts, please follow me on Instagram and Facebook to see my daily Passion Posts for July.

Here’s to making the most of what remains!