Why We Left Our Jobs and Started An Online Company Selling Passions

The following is from a blog post that I wrote for our store. Hopefully, the message resonates with the audience here.

Why DId We Start Find Your Passions Bazaar?

Reb and I are a couple that dropped out of the "rat-race" and started to do what made us happiest. We decided to seek out new experiences to help us grow as individuals and as a couple. We constantly try new things so that we know what we like, what we do not like, what we love and what fans our passions. Only by trying and being open to new experiences can we make informed decisions about what we are absolutely passionate about.

More and more we have been asked by our friends and family why we left our jobs and opened Find Your Passions Bazaar. At different times, we have had diferent answers. We were still growing and developing after the shock of leaving our jobs, but, ultimately, all of our answers have had one unifying story behind them, and this is what we have laid out below.

There is something to be said about doing -- about taking action. We always say that "We are going to take care of it in the future"... or that "We will do it when we have the time."

The problem is time is the one thing that we do not have. Time keeps moving on whether we like it or not and move with it. We will never get the time that we lose back. We cannot dial back a day to fix something that went wrong or to enjoy something that went right. We only have now.

If we are not doing what we want to be doing now, in the present, then we can never be happy because we will be doing the things that we are obligated to do instead of the things that we want to do.

We cannot change the past. It is gone. We cannot dwell on it.

We cannot do anything but use it as a record of our choices. We make good choices and bad choices. Hopefully, the good choices outweigh the bad ones. We can, however, use the lessons that we learned to help us make better decisions in the present

We are not guaranteed the future. The future is not real. Not established. When the future becomes the present, it becomes the "new now" and a new future is created. We can look to the future. We can hope that things will change. We can seek inspiration in what might be, but if we constantly look to the future we will not work with or through what the future was -- the "new present" -- or we will keep looking to the future instead of living in the "new now".

And we can get stuck. We can get trapped in the "What Could Be" and "What Should Be". If we are smarter about our future path, we might get to "What Will Be", but even that more definitive hope can break us.

We can get wrapped up in what the future could give us. It is so easy to wait for the future to rescue us from our present. It is so much more inspiring. "The future is not set in stone"..."The future is what you make it"... "Be the future you want to be". Who would not want that? If your past is less than you hoped for and if your present is not what you expected, then the future could be your salvation.

In reality, this mindset could be your downfall. I have seen many people look to the future and never move forward. Possibilities paralyzed them to the point of inaction. The future that they saw was better than the past that they left and the present that they inhabited. The future entranced them. They were stuck there.

They used the future as an escape from what ailed them in the present and hurt them in the past. They used the future as a crutch to limp through the present.

Both Reb and I could see this. It took us awhile to see it because we were just like those people "paralyzed with the possibilities." We wanted our future; we wanted to inhabit our "future selves" so much that we stopped living in our present selves. We became husks of what we could be, drifting through the present, waiting for the future to take us and make us happy.

It took us time and distance from each other to look, really look, at what we wanted from life. We knew that we were not the happiest with our past. We had our grand dreams and plans for our future, but our future days turned into future weeks, into future years and we just never saw the future that we wanted. It did not magically materialize because we wanted it to happen. We could not compel our future to give us what we wanted in the present. We were stuck.

If we wanted to have the future, the "new present" that we wanted, we knew that we had to take immediate and brutal action.

So we left what was. We stopped dwelling on the past. We stopped looking to the future, and we took action. We went out, and we did what we wanted to do. We tried new things.

Every day was a new experience. Every day we added to our life. We stopped taking our present for granted. We stopped living in our past. We kept adding to our "new future."

In doing so, we learned that only by taking action and doing can we grow. Only by cutting out the things that do not matter to us and by trying new things and having new experiences can we actually live as we should live.

We left behind a drab world in our past. We moved into a "present" and "new present" world full of color and possibility. We tried new things, keeping the ones that we liked, discarding the ones that we didn't and adding to our list of the things that made us happy. We found our passions. Every day, we find time to do what makes us happy. Every day, we try something new. Every day we grow a little more.

After we had started to live like this, we became better people. We are a stronger couple. We are happier. We continue to grow. We live every moment in the present to our fullest, and we do not linger on the past or look to the future for our salvation.

We found our passions. We are still looking for our passions. We are still taking action, and we are better for it.

So, to answer the question, "Why did we start Find Your Passions Bazaar"?

We did it because we learned that the only way to live is to step out of yourself and do the things that may not make your attractive or wealthy or comfortable.

We did it because we learned that an examined life coupled with tremendous action is better than a life unexamined.

We did it because we are happier now because we found the things that we are passionate about and we are actually doing them. We are living the life that we wanted. Our present is better than the future that we saw years ago.

We did it because we want to share this feeling with as many people as we can. Everyone can change their present path and create the "new present" that they want. Everyone can become the "who" they see in themselves. Everyone has the option to become who they want to be, if they take tremendous action and examine their lives.

Everyone has a passion or a potential passion. Everyone can find it, but some need a little help getting there. So may need a nudge to start or some options to investigate before they start down that path of awakening and finding what makes them happiest in life and what drives their passion.

Some people need help finding their passions or need physical reminders of what their passions are. Others need a guideline or a catalog of possible passion items to try and live.

We started Find Your Passions Bazaar to help people find their passion. We want everyone that comes here to our store to take tremendous action, find what makes them really live and grow as a person, and leave our store better for it.

Find Your Passions Bazaar is an online store that caters to those that are looking at their lives with eyes wide open or are just opening their eyes for the first time.

We hope that you come to our store and find what you love. We welcome first-time passion-seekers and returning passion seekers alike.

Ultimately, we want to help people grow as we have. We want to help them do it in the best way that we know how.

So to answer the question, "Why did we start "Find Your Passions Bazaar"?

We started this store because we opened our eyes to the probable path of true happiness in life and we wanted to share it with as many people that we could.

Thank you

Reb & Cal