Passion may be the key to many, many areas of success.
Following John’s Post on Sunday about passion, two other items passed my virtual desk that seemed to resonate with the theme.
The first was my regular Sunday ‘newsletter’ from Philip Humbert. Sometime it comes across as a bit too good to be true but that may be a little bit of cultural mismatch from an Englishman’s eyes. Philip describes himself as a “Personal Success Coach!” and offers a free weekly newsletter that is worth trying out.
My passion is working with clients to help them enjoy lives filled with peace, passion, power, purpose,
Philip Humbert
and unusual prosperity.
Two uses of the word ‘passion’ in one sentence!
In this week’s newsletter (Sept. 20th) he advocates the following:
In forty years, our world has sped up that much, and it is a metaphor for our lives. We multi-task. We have music or news on all day long, every place we go—in the car, while eating or exercising, even going to sleep at night. We are surrounded by sights and sounds all day long, on top of the traditional tasks of working, cooking meals, paying bills, running errands and juggling family issues.
Fortunately, our brains have actually learned to function in a world of constant stimulation. I think our brains do this amazingly well.
But I’m not sure “we” can. Between the mental effort, the physical strain and the constant distraction, I’m not sure our bodies and our souls are designed for the demands we place on ourselves.
And so we feel “inadequate.” We are exhausted, frustrated, in a hurry, feeling like we need to be someplace else, doing something else or something more.
I don’t have a quick or simple cure. But I have some suggestions:
1. Do less. Refuse to believe the illusion that every task, invitation or entertainment “must” be done. Practice laziness. Develop the self-discipline to say no and do less.
2. Get more sleep. Studies show most of us are sleep-deprived and that catches up with us. Take naps. Hammocks are good.
3. Savor silence. Turn off the television, the stereo, the radio,the phone and the iPod. Learn to love the sound of silence. It will lower your blood pressure and increase your patience.
4. Love what you do. Treat your work with respect. Give it the passion it deserves. Become an expert and let your work express your excellence. Do one thing, and do it well.
5. Be kind to yourself. Eat well. Delight in beauty. Laugh. Give and get lots of hugs. Play. Spend time with people you love. Avoid stress. Have fun.
Not such bad advice, eh? And did you spot that passion word!
The second reference to ‘passion’ was in the Blog called Pro-Blogger. It’s a useful place to go for all those who want their Blog to grow and be successful, as the Learning from Dogs authors do, and Darren Rowse, a young Aussie, has done an
Darren Rowse
excellent job of showing what Blogs can achieve.
In today’s Post from Darren, he describes some advice he gave to a friend wanting to start up as a Blogger:
There’s no shortage of great advice on choosing a blog topic. Among all that advice about finding a topic with sufficient audience, income opportunities, a growing market, not too much competition and enough to write about, it never says that you need to be an expert on your chosen topic. And you don’t. At least not when you start. The most important ingredient is passion. You can learn enough about your topic to become an expert, but you can’t learn passion. And without passion, you won’t be able to sustain motivation for blogging over a long period.
(My underlining)
This funny old subject of integrity seems to be part of a mix that is passion, truth, honesty, wholesomeness and maybe a few more ingredients.
In a world where so many of the institutions, especially governmental, seem to be broken perhaps integrity is a idea whose time is right!
Learning from Dogs 