Today I met with one of my favorite clients and discussed their passions. They recently reunited.
With their PASSION, that is.
What a funny thought, isn’t it? Connecting with ones heart sounds like something we all would not only want to do, but would DO. What would be the point of living apart from your heart? Why would we want to simply “play the hand we were dealt,” unless, of course, our life’s work was playing that hand?
U2’s new song, Moment of Surrender, has now officially gotten “under my skin.” The song is all about the human condition, about our need for providential assistance, about our personal “wake up” call, about our awakening to our vision over what we can see today, and about the alternative.
About the alternative.
It really sucks. Sucks the life out of you that is. The alternative to playing with the fire and finding your passionate purpose and vision for your work and life is quite simple. The most common alternative is simply to spend your life in pursuit of a buck and busyness. Just “taking care of business,” like so many around you. Sound fun? Sound fulfilling? Or does it sound like another F word?
Choices.
You can choose to wall off your passions and chuck it all for some near term comfort. Amazingly, you will survive apart from your heart.
For awhile, that is.
Sadly, you will, most likely, have moments of misguided “hot flashes” along the way. You will have some form of “crisis” brought on by your buying of something artificial over someone genuine and something REAL. You will only slowly die taking this, well traveled, route. AND, you will hardly notice when you finally do…
Die.
Or, you can choose to play with your passions and choose some near term pain. You can look in the mirror and wake up all your senses. You can begin to play with them like you were a child again. As you develop this habit of reuniting with your heart, you will gain more energy than you will lose comfort. You’ll see. But only if you allow yourself the time to discover what really feeds your fire. At BTL, we call this part of discovery your “love to’s.” Go ahead and play with yours by just writing out a lengthy narrative of the things you love. What you would love to do, if you only had the time. Write what gives you energy and simultaneously lose your sense of time. Then put a few in play. Go on. It’s really NOT that hard. It just takes a little time to jump start most HEARTS…
Or you can simply get on the next subway and as U2 says, find yourself…”Speeding off the subway through the stations of the cross. Every eye looking every other way. Counting down till the pain will stop.”
The choice is yours and mine…
BUILT TO LEAD 
Part of my passion for doing this work is exactly what this topic is about.
The story of so many broken families like the one I grew up in is of a parent (or parents) who realized sometime in their 40s or 50s (mid-life crisis) that their heart was dead.
Since hearts are born to burn, either depression sets in, or our heart goes out to “play” — usually in the form of an affair or some other escape that completely wrecks their own heart and the hearts of those around them.
The need? It was real. The solution? Not thought through — beliefs, passion, vision, purpose and action were way out of alignment. The result? A crash and loss of integrity.
If I’m not inspired by love, lust is all too ready to drive me right off the cliff. And of course usually there’s a little extra alcohol involved — at first it’s just a little turn down Flirt Ave, which turns into Temptation Drive, which turns into Passion Place, which dead ends into the cliff.
There’s a lot at stake. Guarding your heart by becoming BUILT TO LEAD for work AND life could be the most important battle you’ll ever fight. All the more in a climate of fear and uncertainty.
This is a great topic. It really resonates with me when you consider how, when we were young, we would just go out and play. Whether it was sports, digging in the mud, or some other form of engagement, it didn’t matter. We would do what we wanted to do and the day would fly by. We were fully engaged or we did something else. We took our ball and went home and found some new friends and a new game.
Why does life have to be any different? Who told us somewhere along the line that we had to go out and “work” and this just meant making some money? Why can’t play be our work and vice versa? Why can’t we try one game and decide we don’t like it and then try another? There is no reason why. There is no reason that we can’t find play that rewards us in all the ways we need rewarded…it just takes more thought and bolder action.
Yea BABY…”get to play” Jimmy. Get to play, NOW, Jimmy. Doesn’t that just feel so much better than saying…
Get to work Jimmy!