Dear Life, I Intend To Live With Passion

Dear life. I want to tell you that I’m sorry all the times I’ve neglected you. I’m sorry for the times I have not taken advantage of what you have given me. Now that I have overcome my fears, shyness, and prejudices, I promise you to live with passion and dance with you until the sun rises. I promise to love you, listen to you and make you laugh until you have a stomach ache and can barely breathe. Because you and I understand each other, and we deserve that joy.

Telling ourselves this at some point in our lives suggests a turning point. Or as any spiritual person would say “an awakening”. Nevertheless,  we do not always manage to utilize all our resources and behaviors to create a firm commitment to ourselves so that we can enjoy the  days ahead.

Perhaps the goal of living so intensely may seem hedonistic. But there is a simple idea behind this vision that everyone from anthropologists to sociologists (including positive psychologists) agrees on. That all actions that humans perform have two very basic motivations: to survive, and when it’s over, to be happy.

To exist, to open our eyes every morning, to put one foot in front of the other and to relate to each other are things that answer a continuing process of “try until it succeeds”. From this process we gradually learn to achieve what we want most: stability, inner peace, well-being and in essence… Happiness. To achieve our goal, we must add another ingredient to the mix: passion.

The secret is to live your life with passion

Humanistic psychology continues to be one of the most important and useful schools in the field.  At the same time, we cannot understand it without the help of the great thinkers, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They were the first to emphasize that we are the masters of our own fulfillment. They said that it is ourselves who must work daily on our personal growth and happiness.

Before Rogers and Maslow,  other schools, such as Freud’s psychoanalysis, or even behavioral psychology, defined us as passive beings,  unable to influence our surroundings. This is very far from the truth. As Rogers taught us, few things are more important to humans than perceiving themselves as functional and able to change what surrounds them, using four basic components: a flexible mind, a sense of freedom, self-confidence, and being open to experiences.

Many psychologists with the same focus have added another component which they call “passionate purpose”. To achieve the self-realization that is at the top of Abraham Maslow’s pyramid, and to have a good and positive effect on our own lives, we need passion. With passionate purpose, a stable and faithful dedication takes place within ourselves that allows us to face adversity, forget our fears and worries, and live our lives full of motivation and the promises of our dreams.

From now on, I will live my life to the fullest

We can say with a degree of certainty  that today’s consumer-based society has convinced us that happiness is a short-lived and fleeting state. It is almost always associated with ownership of certain products. A nice car, a specific phone, comfortable furniture in the home, a specific style and designer clothes… All those things give us interchangeable happiness, a false sense of well-being that turns us into addicts.

Maybe it’s better to look at things from a different and more logical perspective. L at us for once accept that happiness does not have to be brief or fleeting.  To help us achieve the life we ​​want, which can give us permanent well-being, we must work hard every day on certain aspects of our lives.

Let’s reflect on them.

Keys to living with passion

• Passionate purpose. To become happier on a daily basis and guarantee that our well-being is permanent and satisfying, we must find the inner passion that defines us and that gives our lives meaning.  We must ensure that everything we do is satisfactory and in harmony with our values, identity and personal interests.
• Rational thinking. We understand that emotions and intuition play an important role in understanding our behavior. The number Nevertheless, we should clearly understand that our efforts to be happy must consist of rational, rigorous and objective decisions.  This means, for example, distancing ourselves from certain people, leaving a job to start a new project, etc.… All these decisions require logical and rational thinking. They also demand one more thing: courage.
• Self-discipline. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, living life to the fullest requires some degree of self-discipline.  Sometimes we have to forget about instant gratification in order to get better long-term results. 

The conclusion is that living a more meaningful and positive existence requires strong will, discipline and courage. We all know that sometimes we have to make some serious decisions that will help satisfy our long-awaited desires.

To have the courage to open the door and be our true self for the first time in a long time…