passion is a powerful feeling. It can drive a human being to great lengths, climb mountains, cross deserts — and keep going to the goal when there’s no water left, no food, but only hope to keep the spirit pushing at the last remnants of strength a body might have.
Passion is all inside, it gets us through the tough times in life, and it helps us to find hope, at least, when knowledge and savvy no longer make sense.
Follow your passions is an oft quoted axiom which promises the beginning of a new adventure where the world will flock to our doorstep and want what we’ve got.
But really?
It doesn’t work that way, many people have discovered, through time wasting activities that passion alone will not show you the way forward to the promised land.
A good plan, well thought out and tested will be about as good as it gets when you want to create change in your life.
Savvy thinking is underestimated, and I think it’s time it came back into fashion.
The problem with passionate feelings is that they are just that, feelings.
Feelings can quickly become like a boat without a rudder.
If we allow feelings to dictate our actions, then it’s likely that our “feelings plan” will take us into rough waters and finally smash us against the rocks.
I know, there are countless people who would disagree about this, they may have the proof that their business and lifestyle has been a wonderful passionate ride through the years, and everything went well – because they followed their passion first.
Sometimes, these savvy characters, successful, doing great with the money, claiming to be driven and passionate, aren’t that good at articulating their feelings about what they really do to make things work.
I don’t believe passionate people who claim that they follow gut feelings and find success every time. To actually do this without at least a smattering of brain power kicking in and making a plan, wouldn’t make sense.
The problem with feelings is that they are impermanent and tend to change with the wind.
When the wind comes and feelings begin to drift, life becomes messy.
The next problem with feelings is that they are not the same as our deeply rooted emotions.
Emotions make us come alive, emotion helps us to know what’s good for ourselves. Feelings fake this process, and then take us for a long windy ride across the hills and far away.
Passion is feeling based, as well. It can be presented through feeling and raise our spirits to the point of euphoria. That can be disastrous.
Passion is also attached to emotions. Except, it’s got a brain when its working in conjunction with solid emotional drivers.
Those emotional drivers are what make us who we are. We aren’t dead-wood floating on the waves of life.
We are feeling, emotional, thinking, planning people. We react to the world around us, we try our damnedest to make proper connections with our drives and what’s on offer within our own environment.
Mastering life and learning to keep going with an intention is partly about mastering our feelings. Overcoming them in spite of ourselves.
Emotions, the ones that are always there, always driving towards the same needs, are what we know as our values.
For those emotional values to be changed, it takes time and effort.
Mastering life means being able to overcome the rising excitement that we feel when confronted with a new idea. Not allowing ourselves to be caught up in the wind just because it feels good.
The cherry blossom is a Samurai symbol.
Cherry Blossoms can be found as a crest on the breast plate armour of the samurai warrior. I’ve always been impressed with Samurai zen attitudes to life, the thoughtful way of seeing life as valuable but fleeting, is fitting to our world.
The cherry blossom is beautiful. It inspires many feelings that seem important, it can be a small prize given as a symbol in love, hope, or to inspire a sad soul.
Cherry blossoms for the samurai were a constant reminder that life, when not protected by intelligence, will be swept away by the wind.
Just because something seems to be beautiful, it doesn’t mean that nature will protect it as being special. Many beautiful cherry blossoms have been sucked up through the grotty tubes of a street cleaning machine.
A plan based on real needs, and real world scenarios allows us a solid base from which we can work effectively.
We may feel happy for a while, but our savvy ways tell us that if we have a task to follow and accomplish over time, then we must battle through tiredness, doubts, set-backs and a host of other unknowns that may ambush us as we follow our path in life.
Interestingly, at the very moment problems occur and doubt raises it’s objections to our activities, the wonderful feelings we had disappear like cherry blossoms up a vacuum cleaner tube.
If we had based our activities and plans on the mere whim of feelings, then when the storm began to blow up our plans and ideas would have been dragged from us and swept into the gutter. This is what happens when we mistake feeling good about an idea with knowing that it has potential.
There is a whole industry making a comfortable living from people who are messed up, feeling weak and tired of life.
People need guidance in getting back on track. Psychology and coaching practices help here, to a certain extent. Any psychologist worth their salt should help their patient understand that it really is down themselves in the end.
To understand oneself is a key component in understanding life and mastering the ability to make progress when we decide upon a new venture. To risk our feelings, and feed our deeper selves with the sustenance that can be gained through experience.
Our feelings are the domain of our whimsical likes of taste, want, obsessive behaviours, fidgety lifestyles where we hop from one idea to the next like a bird looking for food.
Passions are feeling based ideas. To follow them as if they are rock solid paths to success, is to go on a fools errand. Try it once and learn.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.