Passion is powerful! It rests deep within you and passively drives your feelings, choices, and courses of actions. It can’t be ignored, and it shouldn’t be ignored.
Your passion will likely become the sole source of your greatest achievements and your finest moments. The fevering excitement of love. The joy of work that moves you. The clarity of your purpose. The ecstasy of letting go and being one with the present moment. In a nutshell, this is what passion gradually does for you. Without it there is little peace of mind in the end—just a hollow existence of unfulfilled dreams—a lifetime left mostly unlived.
That might sound a bit melodramatic, but it’s the truth.
If your life is going to mean anything to you 40 years down the road (or even 10 years down the road), you have to actively and passionately live it every day until then. You have to deeply engage yourself in activities that move you. But the key thing to realize is that almost any activity can move you if you let it. You don’t need some massive, life-engulfing passion to suddenly appear in your life. Because real passion comes from within, and the source of passion in your life may be as simple as having a job to do—a job that feeds your family, for example—and feeling good about doing it right.
So my challenge to you is this: Live your life not as a bystander. Live in this world, on this day, and every day hereafter as an active, passionate participant.
Many of us are still hopelessly trying to “find our passion”—something we believe will ultimately lead us closer to happiness, success, or the life situation we ultimately want. And I say “hopelessly” primarily because passion can’t really be found. When we say we’re trying to find our passion, it implies that our passion is somehow hiding behind a tree or under a rock somewhere. But that’s far from the truth. The truth is, our passion comes from doing things right. If you’re waiting to somehow “find your passion” somewhere outside yourself, so you finally have a reason to put your whole heart and soul into your life and the things you’re working on, you’ll likely be waiting around for an eternity.
On the other hand, if you’re tired of waiting, and you’d rather live more passionately starting today, and experience more meaning in your life in the long run, it’s time to proactively inject passion into the very next thing you work on. Think about it:
- When was the last time you sat down to work on something, with zero distractions and 100% focus?
- When was the last time you exercised, and literally put every bit of effort you could muster into it?
- When was the last time you truly tried—TRULY tried—to do your very best?
Like most of us, you’re likely putting a half-hearted and half-minded effort into most of the things you do on a daily basis. Because you’re still waiting. You’re still waiting to “find” something to be passionate about—some magical reason to step into the life you want to create for yourself. But what you need to do is the exact opposite!
When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tell me, “Stop waiting for better opportunities. The one you have in front of you is the best opportunity.” She also said, “Too often we spend too much time making it perfect in our heads before we ever even do it. Stop waiting for perfection and just do your best with what you have today, and then improve upon it tomorrow.”
Believe it or not, recent psychological research indirectly reinforces my grandmother’s sentiments. For many years, psychologists believed our minds could directly affect our physical state of being, but never the other way around. Nowadays, however, it is widely documented that our bodies—for example, our momentary facial expressions and body posture—can directly affect our mental state of being too. So while it’s true that we change from the inside out, we also change from the outside in. And you can make this reality work for you.
If you want more passion in your life right now, act accordingly right now.
Put your whole heart and soul into something!
Not into tomorrow’s opportunities, but the opportunity right in front of you.
Not into tomorrow’s tasks, but today’s tasks.
Not into tomorrow’s run, but today’s run.
No comments:
Post a Comment