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Bust out of your funk, regain your passion
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Published: August 9, 2009
Answer this: Are you the best you've ever been?
Let me rephrase that. Looking back over your adult life, are you, today, a better person than ever before?
Are you more considerate, more professional, a better listener, more ethical, more confident, more customer-focused and more committed than ever? If not, why not?
We are the product of our experiences, and as we age, if we do this thing called "life" correctly, we make mistakes we learn from and accomplish successes that give us joy, insight and wisdom.
But too often, after we spend a couple of years in a job and get comfortable, then the twin gremlins of complacency and mediocrity hijack our motivation and we settle for just being OK.
We lose our fire, our zest, our competitive spirit, and we become inferior copies of our former selves. Sound familiar?
How can you break out of the clouds and soar in the sunshine? Let's look.
The combat-hardened general was reviewing an elite squadron of paratroopers. Standing before a line of soldiers, he asked gruffly, "How do you like jumping?"
"I love it, sir," was the reply. "And you?" asked the general to the next soldier in line.
"It's the most exhilarating thing I've ever done, sir!"
And so he went down the line until one soldier replied, "I hate it, sir."
"Then why do you jump?" asked the startled officer.
"Because, I like being around the kind of men who do."
It's hard to excel when you surround yourself with people who are willing to do an average job, or to just get by.
Seek out those for whom every day is an adventure, who truly seek to do great things, and share life with them.
The past can be a bad influence on our motivation in three ways:
- If we live off of prior successes and get lazy;
- If we longingly gaze back to when we were younger, thinner, more motivated, more successful, and we say "why bother now?; and
- When we let past failures beat us down.
I remember a "Peanuts" comic strip where Lucy missed another foul ball.
As she apologetically approached Charlie Brown on the mound, she said, "I thought I had it, but suddenly I remembered all the others I've missed, and the past got in my eyes!"
Don't dwell on past mistakes. Heed English writer Aldous Huxley, who offered:
"Chronic remorse is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time.
"Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."
Do you have passion in your life? No, not Fabio passion, but a zest for living.
As Mary Kay Cosmetics founder Mary Kay Ash observed, "Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try."
Have you played your tune with all you've got?
When it comes to the secret of a life well-lived, American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson notes, "It is not the length of life, but the depth of life."
How deep have you gone? Are you still in the shallow end of the pool?
Take a deep breath and dive in. Remember, you only live once, but if you live right, once is enough.
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