Don’t let your rational mind stand in the way of your passion. If you found – or at least glimpsed, even occasionally – something that thrills you, you’re there. You don’t need a confirmation on this from anybody. Just follow your passion.
Following your true passion isn’t always easy. In fact, if you really look at other people stories, following your passion was never easy. It’s difficult. Really difficult. And one of the reasons for that is what I call “the risk / reward ratio”: following your passion carries a big risk / reward ratio. Meaning that if (and when) you mitigate the risk, the reward is huge. You really made it. And I’ll talk about the risk a bit later.
Living a life in passion will tune your being into the most authentic vibrations around. Every lived passion is in fact a way of the Universe to tell you you’re in sync with your true self.
Doing things without passion is like dancing without music. You may have the moves, but you’re missing the whole point.
What Follow Your Passion Really Means
Now, let’s take a step back.
The internet (and, to be honest, a significant part of public libraries too) is full with bogus information about following your passion. Every personal development blog, every self improvement seminar, every self help program will have at least one big part dedicated to “the passion”. You will find, like a red string, in all of them, the “follow your passion” mantra.
There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. Like I said, following your passion is a wonderful thing.
What is wrong with this abundance of information about following your passion is the angle. The approach. And the biggest flaw of this angle is to believe, or, even worse, to spread the word, to sell, to make it sound like the ultimate truth that, in order to live a fulfilled life, all you have to do is to “follow your passion”. Just like that. Follow your passion and you’ll instantly be a happier person, the bills will pay themselves, a perfect soulmate will be self-generated from thin air, instantly healing your wounded heart and a dream house will blossom near you in a second. Just follow you passion and, just like that, your life will be just bliss. Pure bliss. Always bliss. No problems. Just bliss.
That’s wrong, people. That’s denial. That’s wishful thinking.
Life is not the dream we dream about it. Life is what we actually live. Right now.
We’re so blinded by this indiscriminate desire to “make it big”, that we trade the direct experience of living for the dream of it. We cover each and every second of our lives in delusions, in carefully crafted sentences with the ultimate goal to obfuscate the one and only thing we really have: our direct experience of this existence.
Now, if you’re still here after all these ramblings, it means you’re really persistent. Or you want to explore at least one new angle about how to follow your passion.
Lucky you. Because you’re gonna have that angle… right now!
For me, living with passion means being in sync. It doesn’t necessarily means money. Or a partner. Or a career. Or fame. Being in sync means contributing to a greater vibration. Adding significance to your existence here. Adding to life in some way. Be relevant, somehow. Be useful to other people. Make them better.
Don’t get fooled by the wording, “being in sync” is a very pragmatic approach, it’s no new age mumbo-jumbo.
“Being in sync” means that you have to do whatever you can to pay your bills first. To honor your commitments. To keep your promises. Even if this makes you feel uncomfortable. Even if you get tired. Even if you, sometimes, don’t like what you do. It means you have to stick to your goals even when the going gets tough.
Every wave has a high and a low. Riding a wave means you have to accept both the top of the wave and the bottom of it. And, when you understand that, you also understand that a vibration is made of thousands of tiny waves following each other. You can’t be in sync if you get only the highs. That’s not sync, it’s jumping around, chasing the top of the waves. It’s physically impossible.
But if you manage to get that sync, if you manage to catch the wave, if you manage to ride the wave like a surfer, something magic will happen: the power of that wave will empower you back. Almost magically, you will feel pushed forward. The energy of the wave will tune in with your energy and the result is that going forward will not only feel, but it will actually be effortlessly. The wave will take care of everything for you.
You know that saying with the Universe conspiring to fulfill your wishes, if you really want something? Of course you do. Well, that “if you really want something” means you’re ready to cope with the lows too. It means you’re in sync, it means the wave will adopt you, will carry you, will push you forward.
And here comes that thing about the risk / reward ratio I talked at the beginning of the article.
The real risk here is coping with the lows. If you don’t understand that lows are part of the bigger wave too, if you don’t trust that you’re on the right wave, you’ll lose the sync. You’ll go down. The wave will lose faith in you and it will reject you.
That’s the only thing you need to know when it comes to “follow your passion”: keep faith that you’re on the right wave. Even if you’re on a low right now, the wave will get back up again. Just stay there. Do everything you can to keep the sync.
Once you set course, just keep sailing.
Photo credit: By The Last Minute (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
