(Excerpt adapted from The Heroic Path to Self-Forgiveness: Change Your Story, Change Your Life by Marion Moss Hubbard, Ph.D.)

We each have a passionate fire within that is our inner calling just waiting to be unleashed. Many of us have learned from an early age, though, that we need to squelch that fire. When you were growing up maybe your passion felt too overwhelming to others and they told you either verbally or non-verbally, “Who do you think you are to want this?” or “You are acting too big for your britches.”

Maybe you got the culturally fear-based message that you had to play small to keep from being hurt. Or maybe when you felt most comfortable with yourself, you were considered weird among your peers. Whatever the reason that you suppressed your fire within, you can unleash it now and rekindle your passion, so you can heed your inner calling from this point forward.

Here is an exercise that may help you unleash your pent up passion:

1. When you were a child and you felt truly passionate about something, think about the messages that you received either overtly or subtly. Was it OK to express that passion? If not, do you remember what age you were when you hid it?

2. If you received messages that squelched your passion, whose voice was it that you internalized? (Hint: It is often an external authority figure that you relied on as a child for validation.) If someone specifically comes to mind, see yourself handing the “passion squelching message” back to that person, so you no longer have to carry it within you from this day forward.

3. Now, see glowing embers at your core that represent your passion. Visualize blowing on the embers until they catch fire and burn brightly with white hot heat. See the light from the fire permeate every cell of your being.

4. Visualize the light spreading outward until your body can no longer contain it and it radiates into the world around you. Now go forth and live your passion from inside out!