In part 1 of this article, we discussed passion versus mission, as well as what it means to live by your lower values or priorities. If you missed the first article, read that here.
Avoiding the very thing you need to get ahead – the CHALLENGE.
When your attempt to live in your lower values, and seek pleasure and avoid pain, you activate your amygdala which results in immediate gratifying addictive behaviors and consumptions.
As a result, instead of having a mission that serves people that builds a brand that makes you wealthy, you may find that you keep banging your head against the wall, trying to get ahead but not being able to because of ungoverned impulses and consumptions. Why?
Because you keep trying to avoid the very thing that you need to get ahead – the challenge – and instead become a slave to your passions.
Anything you infatuate with occupies space and time in your mind.
Anything you resent occupies space and time in your mind.
You have probably been in a situation where you’ve been highly infatuated with someone and couldn’t sleep at night or felt resentful towards someone and couldn’t sleep because they were occupying your mind.
Anytime you have an imbalanced perspective or a subjectively biased, distorted perception of your reality, it’s likely to occupy space and time in your mind and be stored in your subconscious mind.
Your subconscious mind stores all conscious or unconscious splits and causes you to avoid and seek, and therefore be externally driven and run by ungoverned polarized emotional reactions.
Extrinsic motivation is a symptom – never a solution – for mastery.
You may end up becoming a slave to your passions because when you’re infatuated with someone, and you minimize yourself to them, you are likely to want to change yourself to be more like them.
When you resent someone, you tend to want to change them to be more like you.
Anytime you try to change yourself and live outside your own highest values and in somebody else’s highest values or try to get other people to live in your highest values away from their highest values, you will experience futility.
So, passions are futile, but inspired and meaningful missions are utile.
Utile means “utility”, where you contribute and go out and make a difference in the world. You also awaken your highest value, which is unique to you, allowing you to be an individual, the essence of your being, instead of just existing and surviving.
If you live congruently with your highest value, you end up thriving.
If you attempt to live according to your lower values, you end up only surviving.
Surviving with your passions is not the way to become a master of your mission or to master your own life.
So, when you hear self-help people encouraging you to “find your passion”, you might consider replacing the word with “inspired mission”.
I’m a man on a mission, not a man with just a set of passions. I’m not interested in being governed by the outside world, being reactive, and getting out of control and distracted. That takes no effort. It does, however, take effort to have a unique and inspired mission and live authentically in a world attempting to make you conform or just fit in.
The challenge is that many people don’t want to put in an effort but instead want an easy ride towards an unattainable fantasy.
In my mind, the work is more than worth it because the fulfillment of living congruently with your highest value, doing something that contributes a service and getting remunerated for it with sustainable fair exchange is one of the most fulfilling things an individual can do.
When you make a contribution and spread and exemplify that as a possibility for other human beings, it draws and synchronizes people, places, things, ideas, and events into your life to help you fulfill your mission while also inspiring them to carry on with theirs.
In conclusion:
- If you want to go out and do something amazing with your life, it is wise to prioritize your daily actions and live congruently with your true highest value(s).
- People who are clear about their mission tend to go farther, set real objectives, not fantasies, accomplish and achieve more and have more fulfillment.
- Fill your day with high priority actions, activate your executive center and, become the executive so you can be paid more, have more self-worth, have more fulfillment, wake up your leadership, you’re not likely to be subject to the external world running your life.
- If you want to run your own life, prioritize your daily actions according to you highest values – your inspired mission.
- If you want other people to run your life, allow your passions to run wild.
To read more on this and other topics, visit https://drdemartini.com/blog/are-you-a-slave-to-your-passions-or-a-master-of-your-mission