Stolen Words...

Food for thought? Fave!

Rang a bell with me... May just ring a bell with you! Happy reading and happy Thursday-feels-like-Friday!

How Big is your Passion? - “Cary Mullen Caught Breaking and Entering!”

What Happens When You Just Can’t Keep Yourself Out of Something?

Winning Tips:

1. Expose yourself to as many experiences as possible. It is difficult to know what you have talent in and a passion for unless you are trying different things.

2. Know what gives you energy and what robs you of energy. When you can hone in on those activities that fill you full of energy, you are more likely to stay committed to them and eventually develop mastery. Ask yourself, “What is it that I can’t keep myself out of?”

3. Limit activities that drain your energy. These activities are not sustainable in the long-term. Ask yourself, “What do I need to be paid in order to do?”

The room vibrated with the familiar hum of the garage door opening. Turning off the television, I jumped from the couch and sprinted into the kitchen to set the stove top timer for two minutes. Mom was home! Dashing back into the front room, I slid onto the bench next to my brother, who’d just opened the piano.

Just as we settled into our positions, the door opened. Mom walked into the house and smiled at her two children, diligently working through their daily piano practice. Two minutes later, the timer went off. My brother and I closed the piano, announcing “That’s our thirty minutes of practice done” and headed outside to play.

This scheme went on for three years. You see, originally I had wanted to play the piano. At six years old, I thought it would be cool to be a famous piano player. My parents were excited to expose us to as many things as possible, especially cultural activities, so they jumped at the opportunity to set up piano lessons. They believed, as I do, that you cannot find what you are passionate about without being exposed to a variety of experiences.

It didn’t take many lessons, maybe three or four, before I decided that I didn’t really like playing the piano. My older brother felt the same way. That’s when we developed our master plan to cheat our way out of practicing.

Needless to say, our piano skills did not improve much to the dismay of my parents and our teacher. Bewildered, they wondered why we never got any better. After about three years of this charade we finally sat down with our parents and told them that we didn’t really like playing the piano. We did not, however, tell them that we’d been cheating and not really practicing.

My parents were disappointed and tried to talk us into continuing the lessons by offering us $10 a month for an allowance provided that we stuck with the piano and continued practicing. At thirteen years of age, what would you have done?

Well, you might have taken the higher ground, but we took them up on their offer! So for another year, we faked practicing the piano, endured our weekly piano lessons and each earned $120 Even with being paid, it was exhausting. It took us another year of piano lessons to decide that regardless of the money, we’d had enough. We had another conversation with our parents. Fortunately, they let us off the hook

In the meantime, I had started focusing on mastering another skill: skiing. My experience on the ski team in Junior High was about as different from playing the piano as anything could be. In fact, I loved skiing so much that I wanted to have more than the four scheduled practices a week.

One afternoon, looking very serious, my coach pulled me aside after a practice. “Listen, I know you’ve been breaking into the clubhouse,” he said.

Gulp.

You see, I not only wanted more practice, I had taken it upon myself to get it. For months now, I had been breaking into the team club house after school in order to borrow the gates. I’d take the gates up the ski lift and, by myself, set up my own courses. I would continue practicing until it was dark outside and then I would sneak the gates back into the clubhouse thinking no one was the wiser.

My coach continued, “You’ve got to stop doing that!” Just when I thought that I was done for, he paused and smiled. “Here.” He slipped a key into my hand. “Don’t tell anyone that you have this, but start using it.”

Ski racing was something that I just couldn’t keep myself out of. It was ridiculous - not only could I not get enough of it, I was even willing to commit minor felonies to feed my obsession with it. Skiing was pure play. I would have paid money to stay involved in the sport. How different was that from playing the piano, where I couldn’t be paid to continue?

When I compare my experiences of skiing and playing the piano, I understand what true passion feels like. I also understand that spending time in areas I am not passionate about is simply not sustainable, no matter how much I am getting paid.

When I am involved in an activity that I am not passionate about, the best I can hope for is compliance, not commitment. At first, I was compliant with the piano lessons, but even that faded. Ski racing, on the other hand, was true commitment.

I have since realized that trying to motivate myself to do something that I have no passion for is not sustainable, even if I am getting paid for it. Early on, I was lucky enough to be able to spend my career in ski racing. Since then, there have been other times in my career that I haven’t necessarily been passionate about what I was doing, but I was passionate about why I was doing what I was doing (like supporting my family). In the short term, that is enough. In the long-term, however, it is a guaranteed slow and painful death.

What I know is that when passion and talent intersect, magic happens! It may sound crazy, but when we tune into our bliss and explore possibility, the universe opens up to support us. I have experienced this over and over again.

Think about your life. Let’s turn to the dark side first to see if you can free up some time and energy. Think about the areas where you are procrastinating. What do you need to be paid to do? Even better – what would you not do even if you were paid to do it? Are you currently doing any of these energy draining activities? Try to find ways to limit the time you spend in these activities. Would it be possible to delegate these activities or even stop doing them altogether?

Now think about where you find joy. Where does passion exist for you? What would get you jumping out of bed in the morning? What would you do for free? What is it that you can’t keep yourself out of? Look for ways that you can invite more of these activities into your world.

(via my mother's email ... by Cary Mullen)

x's & o's,

L