Put more passion in your life

Be careful what you live for

Have you ever seen a teenager living for music?

He’s easy to spot: walks with his headphones on, sings when no one’s listening, most likely plays an instrument, and has posters of bands all over his walls.

Let’s say you are a person (a parent, a sibling, a friend, a boss, a.. god?) with the power to grant him wishes, it’s easy to know that he’ll want more music in his life (if that’s even possible).

His life is a statement to what he lives and wants. So you simply look at his life and decide to grant him his wish: “here, have more music in your life, enjoy, dear”. What he wants is what he spends his energy on. Pretty straightforward.

Now let’s talk about that friend, the one who’s unhappy, always complaining about his job, or his relationship (or lack thereof) or anything else for that matter. What does he want? More of his unfulfilling life?
You’d probably disagree, he most certainly does not want that. But who are you to judge whether his life choices are good for him or not? After all, he chose to fill his life with complaining and unfulfilling (so he implies) activities and relationships. He chose that, so that’s probably what he wants. “Here, have some more situations to complain about, enjoy, dear”.

Now you may ask why you (or God) would give him more of what he (allegedly) doesn’t want. But emotion just is, it is neutral, there is no absolute. That friend may desire to experience pain, suffering, or feeling a depressing lack of power over his life. Maybe he needs to learn a lesson from the experience, maybe the consequences of not taking actions so that he can really appreciate when he finally does.

Once again, it’s not yours to judge, your only job is to react to what people are expressing. They live for music, give them music, they live for love, give them love, they live for lack of money, give them more lack.

The Law of Attraction says that you attract what you focus on. And it makes sense. Everything is energy, and everything is neutral. You can choose to experience whatever you want. Your means of signaling the Universe (not only God, but also your family and friends) what you want is how you live your life. By focusing on NOT something, you bring up the same energy (and mental concept) as when you focus on that thing. Whether you actually want it or not is irrelevant. By maintaining active the mental construct of that situation, you attract it into your life.

Take the role of an external objective (and completely neutral) observer, what would the observer say you live for? Is it close to what you want your life to be about? If not, how can you change your life to align the observer’s vision to your purpose?

Your life is your greatest act of creation, and each day, you get to paint a few more strokes. So, what do you live really for?

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It’s all in your hands

by Sylvain

Tweet Quitting the job you hate. Pursuing the love of your life. Putting your health before habits and social convention. Complaining that your life isn’t what you wish… or accepting it as it is right now, then moving forward on the road. You might believe you can’t do “it” because of your spouse, your boss, the government, because you lack a skill, or courage, or because you’re too old (or too young). But in the end, every second you believe that lie, you’re choosing to not do what you’re meant to do, you’re choosing to not be who you’re meant to be, you’re choosing to let fear dictate your actions. But it’s not because you’ve done that in the past that you’re doomed to doing it again and again until the end of time. Any second you breathe, you can choose to think differently, to act boldly and to feel mighty. Maybe one second from now your whole life will change. Maybe the next second it’ll be like before. But each instant you spend being more than you were is that much power given to your true self to shine. Whatever you think and do, remember it’s all in your hands. Which choice are you going to make? Tweet

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How to stop procrastinating and have fun with the things you have to do

by Sylvain

Tweet If you’re like me or anybody I know, you keep procrastinating on some things because you don’t want to be doing them. For example, unless you’re a happy and skilled accountant, I bet you don’t like doing taxes. It’s tedious, there’s the risk of doing it wrong, and it’ll always cost you time and money. So what happens after you’ve been procrastinating for weeks and the deadline gets near? You start dreading the moment you’ll have to get to it, you’re even getting tense just thinking about it. And you can’t stop feeling uneasy about the whole thing. Which in turn makes the task feel even more awful. What is happening for taxes for some, might happen for others when preparing a report, or calling an awful client to tell him his project is gonna be late. Like for hobbies and food, this is a matter of taste and experience. What is a joy for some is a pain for others. And it feels like it cannot change. It’s too bad, because there is one easy solution. Open up However awful one activity seems, there is always a way to find fun in it. But first, you need to be open to the possibility. In lots of cases, the feeling of repulsion is so strong and deep that it seems there’s no way in hell it would be better, let alone “fun”. But if you can find only one people in the world who believes that doing taxes can be fun,…

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The key to appreciating life

by Sylvain

Tweet I’m bearing the world on my shoulders. Though I’m sure you do too. Past a certain age, if we’re lucky, nobody’s taking care of our stuff anymore, which means that we are responsible for our own world. The job to perform, the bills to pay, the meals to prepare, the taxes to (reluctantly) take care of, and all the little things that seem to get in the way of success. At first, it’s harmless, you just have to do that one little more thing. Then that other one. And so on and so forth. Little by little, you start to miss time for the things you have to do, let alone for those you actually want to do. So you go faster, or at least, you try to. And the time flies by even more. It. Never. Stops. The train photo credit: Grégoire Lannoy At the station, you get on the train, find your seat, put your bags down, and finally sit down and wait for the train to depart. You look outside the window at the train next to yours, and suddenly everything starts to move. For an instant, you don’t know which train just started. It lasts only a second, then you get back to reality and know. But for a very brief moment, to you, movement was just that, a movement. One that could get you closer to your goal, or one that’s simply irrelevant. It’s the same for your own tasks and activities. If you go 300mph,…

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48 hours left to join the challenge

by Sylvain

Tweet In my article The 30-day Passionate Being challenge, I started a challenge to help you create a Passionate Life, for free. Now there are only about 48 hours left to join the challenge. After that, it’ll be to late, as I probably won’t make that same offer again. One free session with me (I estimate the value at $100-200) just by filling in the following form with your email and your time availabilities. Good deal, isn’t it? Get more information or fill in the form below to join the challenge. Remember, after September 21st, it’ll be too late. Tweet

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How to be better than MacGyver

by Sylvain

Tweet If you’ve ever seen a few MacGyver episodes (and who hasn’t?), you almost certainly witnessed some bomb almost explode. Disarming a bomb with only 1 second left is one of MacGyver’s specialty (along with creating all sorts of devices with chewing gum and duct tape). Though defusing a difficult situation only moments before it’s too late is a great ploy to create tension and emotion in the viewer, it also happens quite often in daily life. Deadlines photo credit: psd You have deadlines, taxes to pay, DVDs to return, meeting presentations to prepare, etc. What all these situations have in common is that they cause significant pain (financial, emotional, etc) if you don’t take care of them in time. You may push them back for a while, but the closer you are to the deadline, the more your brain is obsessed with it. At some point, you will drop everything else and take care of the hot potato. In order to deal with it, you might do it yourself, ask your friends for help or even hire a freelancer. Whatever it takes. What happens is that the mind doesn’t want to be bothered with it, so it tries to avoid it as much as possible, until it gets real, and realizes there’s no way to escape it. What happens when you have to do it? You bring up the big guns. And you make it. Being a hero Being a hero is about having the courage to do what’s right, what…

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How to make me want to punch you in the face

by Sylvain

Tweet I’m not a violent guy. Well, most of the times I’m not. Sometimes, though, I seem to forget all my manners and I imagine I’m grabbing some deeply unhelpful rep called Randal, and shaking him until he gets rid of the crap he keeps in his ears. But I don’t do it. Partly because I don’t feel like going to jail, and partly because somebody has yet to invent a way to do that by phone or email. What puts me in this state of darkness? Glad you asked! photo credit: laverrue The beginning of the story: do you care about the experience? More specifically, do you care about the experience of your clients, customers, and whoever you’re doing something for? You want to provide a service, that is useful and appreciated, so you care. You probably remember a situation when a clerk, let’s call him Randal, was complaining, and you even felt like you were bothering him. You thought “Why are you doing this job if you hate it so much?”. And you really, really, don’t want your customers to feel the way you did. So yes, you care. And you try to make sure each experience is the best possible. You want to improve your service so your customers are happy. But you can’t always know what goes on in your customer’s mind. Where you ask for feedback So you ask for feedback. I mean, you know your customer knows best what she wants in her encounter…

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How a system can help you attain your goal

by Sylvain

Tweet Who needs another constraint in their lives? Between jobs, opening hours, taxes, and other rules, systems have a bad rep. Not surprising, they are limiting your freedom. The magic box photo credit: ralphbijker But systems aren’t all bad, if you learn to use them well, they can be used to help you attain your goals. How come? They give a direction, helping you visualize the goal They create space to focus In time, they provide the comfort of a known situation and process But be careful, not all systems are created equal. Think outside the box For a system to be truly effective for you, its goals and limitations need to be clear, which means, you have to look at it from the outside. No system if all-encompassing, they are all limited. Decide what you want a system for, and look for the limits of the system, so that you are not subconsciously constrained by them. Let’s take an example. If you want to do some exercise to keep in shape, you know that a certain regularity is needed. Depending on how you feel in your body and mind, you could need to show up once a week, or every day. Let’s say you decide to run twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, at 6.30 am, for 30 minutes, before you go to work. So, that’s your system. Sounds good? Take a minute to imagine what its limits are. Done? Here’s what I came up with: I have to…

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What to do when you’re scared of change

by Sylvain

Tweet You want to improve your health, finances, your life. You really want to go forward towards your goals, but you’re afraid of what it takes to accomplish a change. A world of changes where everybody stays the same photo: woodleywonderworks Everybody wants to change something, but everybody is also scared of it. Have you noticed how most people, when talking about change, want the change to come from someone else? The government, a company, their employer, their spouse or friends. Rarely we find someone who truly understands that any change worth making comes from within. And that’s not surprising, humans are creatures of habits, we cherish both comfort and safety, and we find them in routine. However messy and always-changing the lives of some of us are, they still provide habits and comfort, if only by their unpredictable nature. It can be the food you’re eating, the TV you’re watching, but most importantly the image that other people have of you. Change IS scary. Why? Simple: you know you can survive in your current situation, you know you can handle how people see you, because you are! But any change that threatens the status quo begs the question: will I survive this? How much pain might I encounter along the way? Will I succeed? Will I fail? How people will look at me either way? It doesn’t matter whether it looks like a good change or not, if it is significant enough, fear always creeps up. It doesn’t mean you…

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The 30-day Passionate Being challenge

by Sylvain

Tweet Good day, Passionate Beings! How’s life going these days? Pretty good? Not bad? What about making it Passionately Awesome? If you’re interested, it’s your lucky day, as today marks the launch of the Passionate Being 30-day challenge to help you build your Passionate Life. What I believe Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Helen Keller photo: The Wandering Angel I believe that a life lived at 50% is a life half-wasted. I believe that doing something because you “should” instead of because you love doing it is a cry for change. But most importantly, I believe it is possible to live a life filled with passion, creation and pleasure. I believe this kind of life is the best there is, not only for ourselves but for the world. I also believe that if you want to leave a truly positive mark in the world, you have to be passionate about your life. Finally, I believe I can help you build a life that you’ll be so passionate about, you wouldn’t change it for the world. But who would I be if I believed I could help you build a passionate life but limit myself to helping a few friends here and there? It is time to step up and share my beliefs and skills with the outside world. This challenge is how I’m doing it. The Challenge During 30 days, from today August 23rd until September 21st 2010, if you allow me, I will help you get…

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