Today, we continue our Dadly Daily Declaration series with readings from The Passion Paradox by authors Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. So far, Stulberg and Madness have discussed the pitfalls of passion and the sole focus of pursing your passion. Today’s reading focuses on harmonious passion.
Here are a few gems from today’s reading:
- Harmonious passion is a far more desirable type of passion; the type that you want in your life. Harmonious passion is the best kind of passion. It is associated with enhanced long-term performance, vitality, health, and overall life satisfaction.
- Harmonious passion emerges when you are present in the moment and pursuing something out of love, not out of external desires or fear. Unfortunately, achieving and maintaining harmonious passion doesn’t happen automatically. But with a particular mind-set and some deliberate work, it is accessible to anyone.
- With harmonious passion, a feeling emerges when you are wrapped up in something primarily for the joy of the activity, when your engagement is not merely a means to an end but rather an end in itself.
- Much like a beautiful harmonious sound, harmonious passion doesn’t just magically arise. Rather, it requires deliberate work and practice. This is especially true in a culture that tends to overtly encourage the dark side of passion. Our result-oriented, instant-gratification-obsessed culture tempts us to judge ourselves by the social media popularity contest and trains our eye on external achievements and wins. Creating and sustaining harmonious passion—the best kind of passion—demands going against the grain and cultivating a radically different mind-set.
Those gems lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
Harmonious passion manifests mainly from activities that are freely chosen without contingencies; when you do something because you enjoy it, not because it offers potential rewards, and not to avoid negative repercussions. Not every moment of harmonious passion is necessarily pleasing, but overall, it is deeply fulfilling.
