What makes a sense of passion so intense is that, essentially, it answers a question you didn’t know you were asking. It is a solution to something you’ve struggled with all along. It is something that proves a point you didn’t know you had to make. It is self-evident to you. It is some kind of liberation or transcendence. Something about it gives you a high, which means that it’s familiar, and it’s serving as an antidote.
The one true sign that you’re moving ahead with your life is that you don’t know where you’re going. If you knew what you were doing, you’d be circling the same path again. The one true sign that you’re living in the past is if you feel that reckless “high.” (You’re proving something to someone or to yourself.)
05. The passion narrative says you should strive for a life that maxes out your wildest dreams; the logic narrative says you should strive for a life that maxes out your potential.
The passion narrative, therefore, keeps you in a place of assuming your life is “less than” because you’re not doing what you think is ideal. The logic narrative, however, tells you to evaluate why you want those things and eventually brings you to the conclusion that most of the time, you don’t. Rather than maxing out your dreams, logic tells you to max out your potential, which ultimately gets you to the same place that passion could only have you (keep) dreaming of.
06. Passion is born of attachment; logic counteracts it.
Passion is an attachment to an idea, or more often, a particular feeling. It is the desire to keep experiencing that one feeling and to do what it takes to facilitate that feeling no matter what. When
people imagine a passionate life, they imagine doing things and being with people that make them feel a specific way. Not only is that unrealistic, it’s ultimately impossible. Logic tells you that even at a job you adore, there will be hard days. Being in a relationship with the love of your life doesn’t necessarily make it easy (though that’s what people assume and yearn for). When you go in with the
“I will do what it takes, even when it’s hard” attitude, you end up building the foundations, skills, and abilities to cope so well that after a period of time, the initial difficulty ironically dissolves.
07. Gratitude is born of logic; a happy life is born of gratitude.
The reason people “practice gratitude” or make a commitment to reflect on what they are grateful for is that, unfortunately, few people naturally sense it in their lives, and no matter what your current situation, anybody can find a reason to.
Cultivating a sense of gratitude—which is not waiting for a feeling of being happy with your life but choosing it by actively focusing on what you’re fortunate, grateful, and proud to have—is essential to ever feeling satisfied with your life, because it puts you in a mindset to seek more to be grateful for. As anybody can tell you: What you seek, you ultimately find.
08. Logic dismantles emotion. Passion tries to use emotion to dismantle other emotions.
Logic can dismantle irrational, illogical, or painful emotions and bring you to a higher state of awareness by evaluating their roots/determining their causes, deciphering whether or not they are useful, or by actually listening to them and acting accordingly if that’s what’s best.
Passion tries to use emotions to dismantle others. A high to negate a low, a new feeling to replace an old one. It’s like trying to grab at water with your hands thinking you’ll ever get enough to drink.
It is a strong, clear, guided mind that undoes the irrational stress of what Buddhists call the “monkey mind” (the irrational, unprompted series of thoughts that cross everyone’s mind each day, which, ultimately, affect if not construct your emotional state). Logic can tell you how the mind and heart correspond; passion thinks they’re one in the same.
09. A lot of people who want to “pursue passion” and find “passionate relationships” are seeking out of a place of lack.
Things that are soulful, genuine, and loving are rarely, if ever, hysterical or highly emotional. They’re peaceful and desirable and beautiful and sometimes powerful, but the manic desire to do anything is usually an attempt to fill a hole, run from a problem, avoid a truth.
The obsessive desire for a passionate relationship is usually a reflection of a lack of love for oneself. The manic need to pursue a passionate career is rooted in an intense unhappiness with present reality. They are a series of soothing thoughts and deflection methods and escape routes: The monster everyone’s running from, of course, is themselves.
10. Nobody ever got anything from wanting it badly enough.
I really don’t care how passionate you claim to be about something, it doesn’t mean you’re right for the job. Or the relationship. Or the promotion or apartment or whatever the case may be.
But people tend to claim “being passionate” as a qualifying factor, when at the end of the day, the person who gets the job is the one who is most technically capable, both parties need to be convinced the relationship is “the right one” for it to ever be, the promotion will go to the person who worked the hardest and the apartment to the person with the best credit score. Often people focus, and communicate, how badly they want something to suffice for the actual reason(s) they aren’t right/qualified/good enough to get it.
11. It’s doing, not thinking about doing, that creates a life well lived.
If you want your life to be different, do differently. A lot of our concept of what makes for a happy existence is rooted in the abstract: Think clearly, have a positive frame of reference, be surrounded by people you care about, have a sense of purpose in your work. But these things don’t work unless they are genuine, and too many people try to fake it as though they can even convince themselves it’s real.
The alternative is doing the work. It’s the nitty-gritty, ass-on-the-ground, nose-to-the-grindstone hard work that people avoid because
they don’t want to be responsible for their own failures. (Can’t fail if you haven’t tried, eh?)
Confidence is built from what you do, a positive mindset is rooted in what you do, loving relationships are sustained from what you do, purposeful work is cultivated by doing it, not thinking about why you should (and believing that’s the same thing).
12. Passion is the easy way out.
Take $150K in loans to study something you “love” for 5+ years, but not be able to move out/travel/get married/have kids/work a job you actually like because you’re drowning in debt for the next 30. That’s what passion does.
Marry the person you’re consumed by, whose neglect and abuse fuels you in its recreation of your childhood issues. Be so torn apart when they leave you that you convince yourself that they are the only one for you. (How could you ever be so broken over anything but true love?) Base your relationship on how far from reality you stretch when you’re together. Lose friends and work and a sense of self. That’s what passion does.
Or rather, that’s what passion does when it’s not married to logic. That’s what unbridled feelings will do when they aren’t stopped by thought and understanding. That’s what happens when you believe your emotions rather than questioning their origins. It’s what happens when you try to avoid the inevitable suffering of the human condition with a surge of emotion that you think will be the antidote.
Passion is the easy way, the cut corner, the half-assed route to the life you want to live. As with all things passion is born of, it can only sustain an idea, not a reality.
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THINGS YOU NEED
to know about
YOURSELF BEFORE
you’ll have the
LIFE YOU WANT
As C.G. Jung once said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” When it comes to building the lives we want to lead, we’re taught to start constructing from how we imagine we want things to look. Titles rather than roles, images rather than realities, concepts rather than day-in-and-day-out tasks and duties and practices. It’s time to dismantle the ego-frenzied Western obsession with a Big Life and break down what it takes to actually exist in a way we desire.
Here, all the things you must know about yourself so you can choose the life you actually want, not the one you think you do.
What do you want your daily tasks to be?