Becoming Emboldened
“I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying heights, the creamy middles. ”
Passion is one of those magical words that lifts our spirits just to hear it.
The idea of living passionately, fully and with boldness stirs something in our soul. Indeed, passion is a state of mind that fills us with an inner fire and makes us feel alive.
I know that when I’m fully engaged in a passion – writing or dancing for example – I’m more balanced, happier and productive than when my days feel monotonous and pointless. I take good care of my health. I organise myself better and eliminate distractions so I can stay focussed on what I truly love doing.
Passion is something unique to us as individuals
Living passionately involves caring about how we spend the precious hours of our life and going about our days with a sense of purpose. It emerges when we find ourselves fully absorbed in what we are doing. We feel we are in the right place at the right time; and that we are doing exactly what we were born to do.
Passion is something unique to us as individuals. Despite what the romance novels tell us, we can’t really be passionate about a person. Obsessed? Addicted to or trauma-bonded with? Yes. But another person is their own individual entity. If we really love them in a healthy way, we have to let them be free to totally be themselves. Passion is more like a path – a journey of approaching some activity in our life with a view to mastery. It’s not about overworking or over-achieving – that is perfectionism and not passion. Passion embraces failure as part of the journey because without failing and trying again, there can be no mastery. In that way, passion makes us more resilient. (That’s something I write about in Emboldened: On Finding the Fire to Keep Going When All Seems Lost. I share how developing a passion for flamenco dancing gave me the strength to overcome an enormous challenge in my life).
How have so many of us lost our sense of passion and our sense of purpose?
Yet, a passionate life seems to be something that only a few people get to experience. This is a paradox because we are now living in an era where we should be able to pursue our passions with more zest and personal freedom than previous generations. We are more prosperous; we enjoy better health care and have longer life spans. There is a wealth of information and classes available to us at the touch of a button, and technology was invented to save us from spending hours on menial tasks so that we could (theoretically) enjoy more leisure time.
So how have so many of us lost our sense of passion and our sense of purpose? There are several reasons, but for the sake of this article I’ll share what I think are the most common ones. Firstly, we have lost our sense of mortality. In Victorian times, when the average life expectancy was forty years of age and you could die from a sore throat or a cut finger, people had a high awareness that life was short and fragile. Our safer, longer lives mean we are under the illusion we are going to live forever, so we squander our time on meaningless activities thinking we can get to the more important parts of living later. And of course, as there is a smorgasbord of meaningless, time consuming distractions on offer, we never do get to those important parts.
There is a smorgasbord of meaningless, time consuming distractions on offer
The second thing is that we have become so obsessed with our ‘individuality’ that we have forgotten that we live in a community and the contribution of our unique talents and abilities matters to that community as whole. The instant gratification we have on offer has taken away our discipline to focus on one or two activities and develop mastery over them. Mastery takes time and discipline before it pays the dividends of joy and excitement.
But the third thing is the one I believe is killing our passion the most. We are simply all too exhausted with minutiae to pursue the grand. Even the idea of expending energy to live passionately can seem overwhelming. There is a step we need to take before we can pursue our passions ardently. We need some rest and white space in our lives.
Sara Blakely – the founder and CEO of underwear giant Spanx – credits ‘white space’ for the ideas that turned her into a billionaire at a young age
Recently I was travelling by plane to Melbourne for an event. I was the ONLY person on the plane reading a book (and a print book at that). Everyone else was scrolling their phones or answering emails on their laptops. I remembered twenty years earlier when I was writing White Gardenia. At the time I was working long hours for a conference company and travelling all over the USA and Europe. When I was at home in New York City, I lived in a noisy apartment with five other young women. It was hardly an ideal writing environment. But I was fuelled by passion and was able to write a full-length historical fiction novel despite my unsettled and chaotic life. The reason, I believe, was I still had some ‘white space’ to play with: I was busy but I wasn’t overwhelmed and constantly occupied. Twenty years ago, we weren’t stuck to our mobile phones. (Carrie from Sex and the City – the most popular TV series at the time - was still using a payphone to call her friends). Twenty years ago, we stood in lines at the bank, the post office or supermarket and had nothing we could do except stare in front of us. I wrote much of White Gardenia when I was flying for work, but I also spent a large part of those trips staring out the window at the clouds passing by. Email was a new thing that people used mainly at work and even those who had mobile phones and laptops couldn’t use the internet on the plane. My boss and other workmates used that time to catch up on sleep.
Sara Blakely – the founder and CEO of underwear giant Spanx – credits ‘white space’ for the ideas that turned her into a billionaire at a young age. In fact, even today she creates it by undertaking a ‘false’ commute. Although she lives only six minutes from her office, she leaves her home early just to drive around the city listening to music on the radio (not taking phone calls) because that’s when her best ideas come to her.
We must stop exhausting our brains
I’m not anti-technology. I love my phone and all the things it does for me. I enjoy connecting with my readers through social media. But the trick is to approach it prudently and use technology intentionally. We want to approach social media like sitting down to dinner and enjoying our meal rather than scrolling mindlessly which is the equivalent of binge-eating. Scrolling without intention can become an addictive escape in the same way gamblers sitting in front of a poker machine can waste days of their lives hoping for the dopamine hit of a jackpot that may never come.
We must stop exhausting our brains by making them switch from one activity to another and never giving our minds a chance to wander. A simple way to do this is to consciously decide where we could put ‘white space’ back into our lives again. I love to go walking in nature and these days I do not take my phone with me. If I survived without it as a child walking about the neighbourhood, I don’t think my life as an adult is at risk. I don’t listen to podcasts, or try to learn a language, or catch up on phone calls with friends when I’m walking. I simply walk and look at the sparkling world around me – at the trees and the sky and the little bush creatures going about their daily activities.
Recently I was learning a drum solo routine with my belly-dance teacher. She pointed out a section where she said the moments of coming to a complete stop and pausing were as important as the sections where there was movement, ‘And harder to perform,’ she added, ‘Because our minds and bodies don’t like to be still.’
To find and fulfil our passions, we must see our lives as something like a beautiful piece of classical music. We need the slow and the fast, and the loud and the soft movements to create a thrilling experience.
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