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 continues with a focus on developing the mastery mind-set by worrying about being the best at getting better.
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Here are a few gems from today’s reading:
- Becoming attached to the ultimate goal—getting better—is an inherent part of internalizing the mastery mind-set and living with harmonious passion.
- When your utmost goal is simply to get better, all failures and successes are temporary because you will forever improve, given more time and more practice. You don’t define yourself by any single moment in time; you define yourself by an entire body of work in service of ongoing growth and development. Your pursuit ceases to be something you are aiming for and becomes a part of who you are.
- When you make this shift—your pursuit transitioning from a verb, something you do, to a noun, someone you are—you’re more apt to harmoniously hold on to your passions for life.
- Adhering to a goal of “getting better” can be especially powerful when it seems that you are destined to get worse. That’s because in the grand scheme of things, “better” is less about objective results and more about the evolution of your relationship with your passion. For many of the most passionate people, getting better is about becoming stronger, kinder, and wiser. “Better” is about how the practice of your passion transforms you as a person. This shift becomes especially important as we age, losing some of our physical and perhaps even cognitive abilities.
- When your goal is simply to get better, you set yourself up for a lifetime relationship with your passion, which no longer becomes something you do but rather someone you are. It’s a relationship that can withstand the gravest failures, the greatest successes, and the passage of time itself. Whatever your passion may be, set aside a moment to take stock of your goals. If they are pointed toward concrete objectives or win-loss outcomes, consider reframing them in the spirit of mastery. The ultimate goal is to get better—stronger, kinder, and wiser—than your past self. If you can maintain that mind-set, given time, you will reach every goal you can imagine, and possibly some you can’t.
Those gems lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
Don’t define yourself by any single moment in time; define yourself by an entire body of work in service of ongoing growth and development.
