Posted on 06 Oct, 2010 -
More on MOVING YOUR LIFE ON
The key to finding passions that will drive you - and keep you happily occupied in life
How to UNDER-schedule your life to find more fulfillment
Why a lot of pain comes from wishing things in our lives were other than they are
Dear Reader,
This week I’m still knocking about with the theme of ‘moving on in your life’.
After all, ‘moving on’ doesn’t have to mean that you want to change your whole life, ditch your spouse or kick a life-threatening habit. (Although of course it can be that major.)
It can also mean something more subtle like re-thinking your attitudes… re-ordering your priorities… letting go of something… starting a new project… or buying a new kitten.
This week, I have two different thoughts to offer you on the subject.
The driving passion of a star like Steve Martin
The first comes from the blogger of Study Hacks, Cal Newport who I’ve mentioned before and who has a Buddhist Zen approach to life and career planning.
At the beginning of an article entitled ‘The Minimalist’s Guide to Cultivating Passion’, Cal quotes the famous comedian Steve Martin on the time he spent developing his career: “I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.”
This, says, Cal, is the beauty of being able to refine your life down to one simple, calm yet driving passion.
“For Martin, there was never any doubt what his Most Important Task would involve each morning, and jettisoning unrelated commitments and distractions came naturally. As he discovered, when you know what your life is about it’s easy to sidestep all that threatens to clutter it.”
But how, many of us might wonder, does one find these beautiful passions - or recognise what they are enough to dedicate more of your life to them?
But how do you know what your life passion should be?
Life passions, Cal believes, are not something you can ‘decide’ merely by frantically looking around your current life. Nor is it something that will suddenly come to you as you walk through the park. (I know, I tried that yesterday...)
In fact, Cal was so keen to find out more about how passionate interests are formed that he searched out and spoke to an expert on the subject. So what did Linda Caldwell of the Penn State University have to say on the matter?
She said:
”You need to be exposed to many things. You should expose yourself even though you might not know if you’ll be interested.” And when you do find something that catches your attention you should pursue it for a bit and see if it sticks. True passion can’t be forced.
“In other words,” says Cal, “discovering passion requires a dedication to unstructured exploration. You have to leave large swathes of free time in your schedule (a technique I call underscheduling) and fill this time with the exploration of things that might be interesting. Of equal importance, when something catches your attention you must leverage your free time to aggressively follow up.”
Loving what is
The second thing I have found for you this week comes from one of my favourite ‘self-help’ books, ‘Loving What Is’, by Byron Katie.
According to Byron, many of the (emotional) problems we have in life come from wanting to change things we cannot - or wishing things were other than they are. Behind a lot of suffering there are normally a series of thoughts that are more destructive than helpful.
When we realise what it is that we’re thinking, however, the good news is that we can often realise how silly our wishes, hates or angers are. And then we can get on with enjoying what is.
To find out where your own thinking may be driving you unnecessarily up the wall, try taking a piece of paper and answering the following questions on any subject that’s bothering you. Don’t think too much about what you write but just write down as much as you can quickly.
(I REALLY recommend doing this by the way. I have just been re-reading some answers I scribbled down some months ago and it is really very helpful to see what your mind is up to!)
1. Who or what is it that angers, saddens or disappoints you? What is it about them or it that you don’t or didn’t like?
2. How do you want them or the situation to change? What do you want them to do?
3. What do you think the situation shouldn’t be like? Or what should or shouldn’t they do, be, think or feel?
4. What do they or life need to give you or do in order for you to be happy?
5. What do you think about them or the situation?
Analysing what you’ve written
Once you’ve done your writing, you may already start to realise what’s happening. Are your desires, perhaps, a little unreasonable? Are you trying to change something you can’t? Are the things you are thinking even true? How does it make you feel when you think those thoughts? Are those thoughts necessary?
In fact, the amazing, simple yet potentially completely liberating questions that Byron gets you to answer next is:
Who would you be without these thoughts?
What would your life be like without those thoughts?
The potential for freedom is incredible…
And as Katie says:
”Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.”
Best wishes for another week.
All the best
