What is a life, without passion?

I have been through many ups and downs in my life and in business, but with each experience there is a learning. Feeling passion for what I am doing daily and feeling passionate about people in my life are important but that passion has not always been there. I have woken up many times and thought, I am stuck, stuck in Groundhog Day and this is not living.

So let me give you an insight into what I did to change this.It all started a few years ago, when my business partner Mark and I wrote out four things each that are now cornerstones for happiness in our lives. Each statement started with “Life is too short for……”Here are mine:

Life is too short for boring cars. I have a ‘thing’ for Fiats and I like to drive. It is the experience of hearing the engine, enjoying the look of a car with a considered body design and the physical act of changing gears. This is a great reminder for me that life is about the experience on the way to the destination, as much as it is in reaching the destination itself.

Life is too short for cheap champagne. For me this is a good one, it is a reminder of quality over quantity and champagne is best had with a friend or friends. I make a point now to stop to celebrate an achievement, theirs or mine.My friend Melanie and I even set goals for ourselves with the reward to celebrate together with a good bottle of champagne. Stopping to celebrate is what is important. This ensures you see the progress you have made and is also a chance to acknowledge those around you that you love spending time with.

Life is too short for bad relationships. This is an important one for me. I think there are two types of people, there are those that want to pull me down and those that want to lift me up. I have to remember that I really do have a choice with who I spend my time with. I choose to spend time with those people who inspire me and that I can inspire. These are the people that bring out the best in me, as I do for them.I choose to not spend time with people who are continually looking for the negative things I do or want to pull me back down to their mundane level because that makes them feel better.  Some of these people have been family and that has been an internal struggle that I have had to come to terms with as I consciously choose not to spend time with them anymore. I found myself in a marriage where there was no equality, no love and no support. My mother was a massive negative on my life as a narcissist. Life is too short for bad relationships of any kind.

Life is too short for holidays that are not EPIC! As a way of fulfilling on this statement, I have a book called “1000 Places to see Before you Die” and I am on a mission to get them all done before I am 70. I want to note here, that this statement is not just about crossing items from the book, it is also about remembering to have fun with the people you choose to spend your time with.While I have the holiday goal to see all the places, if I am at work, I like to think about how can I make this day, this experience more EPIC just by being ‘present’. It is so easy to miss the little details of interesting things that happen, but by trying to be present and looking for what Deepak calls your ‘second attention’ you will see things in more detail and these are the things and the moments that are important.I find myself frequently reciting this list to people when I have made a hard or challenging decision in order to get away from the mundane. It is the mundane that sucks the life out of living a life with passion. So here are three things that could be present if you feel you have lost that passion for life or in your business. 

1. Nothing NEW seems to happen anymore.

2. You find yourself living in the past because there is habit and conditioning.

3. Your perception is that of only a boring world coloured by shadows of the past. 

In order to be alive – (and aliveness is essentially the essence of passion), your spirit (inner self) needs to be constantly creating something, protecting something, destroying something (so that something new can be reborn), concealing something or revealing something. 

I have just been reading Deepak Chopra and he says that as we move through life, we must constantly ask ourselves, “What am I creating?”, “What am I protecting?”, “What habits or toxicities in my life must I get rid of in order to renew myself?” What will I reveal about my intent to those around me?” and “How can I best find the spirit concealed within me?”.Try answering these questions for yourself, or just write out a few Life is too short for…. and then hold yourself accountable to them.  To quote Deepak again “Passion in life and passion in love keep the fire of life alive and spark the birth of creation”.

I love understanding human behaviour,
Belinda