May | 2011 | Jeevidhagandhi

Simple Ways to Impassion Your Life

Do you want more happiness? Has the joy of life fallen flat? Do you find yourself in an emotional funk? Have the happy days become a thing of the past?
I just may have the answer to your happiness blues: Increase your passion.
Four Critical Questions
1. What gets you excited?
2. What do you look forward to doing every day?
3. What brings you immense joy or a sense of purpose or meaning?
4. What are you passionate about?
Passion is Required for Happiness. None for Boredom and Indifference
If in answer to these questions you can’t quite put your finger on anything concrete, your life needs a tune up! Happy people are passionate people. I mean more than that they live life passionately. They also have passions, or things for which they feel extremely enthusiastic in their lives that keep them interested and interesting. The alternative to an impassioned life is an indifferent one of boredom.
There is a huge difference in the quality of life between someone who dreads getting up to begin their day and someone who dreads having to go to sleep to end it.
What is the difference between the two? Passion! What is the effect of such differences in passion? One has a deeper sense of joy, a greater, more durable happiness than the other.

Ways to Increase the Joy of Passion
1. Learn something new everyday. Hunger for education. Thirst for knowledge. Develop the yearning to learn and to know and to understand. Be curious about life and people and history and nature, about the human capacity to build and improve and advance. Quantum physics and quantum mechanics, medicine, law, science, philosophy and psychology. There is just so darn much to learn about and so little time to learn it all. So get started!
Be curious. Be curious about life and why people do the things they do. Wonder about the workings of governments and the atom. Ask questions about life and the universe. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also created hospitals and libraries and computers and jet engines and universities and the cell phone. One day it will cure cancer and further shrink the world in incalculable ways.
2. Do something you’ve never done. Plan something each day or week or month. Climb a mountain. Eat Chinese food. Strike up a conversation on water conservation. Go on a weekend road trip. Read a novel. Write a short story. Write a poem. Cook Chinese cuisine. Learn computer animation. Go on a cycle ride.
The point is to add a little variety to life and get a feel for the alternative. You can’t become passionate about what you’ve never been introduced to. As you try new things, you just may find a passion out there made to fit. Or, you may develop a passion for trying new things itself.
3. Develop your artistic or creative side. If lessons are too expensive for your budget right now, YouTube it, research it online or buy a book about it. Learn to paint or read poetry. Learn woodworking, guitar, piano or flute. Pick up photography or blogging. There is so much out there to get excited about. So go get excited! Feed your creative side! What you do is far less important than choosing something to do and then getting started.
4. Join a group or organization or forum dedicated to those things you love. Being around or communicating with like-minded people is not only very therapeutic, others’ passion can rub off on yours.
Passion breeds passion, so get together with those who share your likes and interests and just maybe you’ll soon discover more passion in your life and more satisfaction and a greater sense of joy because if it.
5. Get a hobby.. Gardening,Painting , boating, reading, writing, whatever. Then get enthused about it. Learn more about it. Tell others about it. Write a book about it. Blog about it. Get downright passionate about it!
6. Decide to be more passionate. Make everyday’s level of passion a choice. Passion is not what happens to you. It is the attitude you choose to have as we confront and interact with the world.
I can wake up, ho-hum around the house until the last-minute I can leave and still probably get to work pretty close to on time. I can take long breaks and lunches, look for ways to waste time and clock out at the end of the day just as the minute hand hits the appropriate time, then turn on the TV and vegetate until bedtime.
Or I can choose to make life matter. I can choose to do something today. I can choose to make a difference today. I can reach out to someone in a worse place than I am and extend myself a little bit. I can love more and be more grateful, get excited more and enthused more often about more things.
Afterthoughts
Happy people are passionate about uplifting and enjoyable things. Life is an adventure and the happiest people love the process as much as anything else. So go find something that sparks your curiosity. Learn it, get good at it, then reap the rewards of a truly passionate life.
It won’t be long before you realize a passionate life is also a life that is happy and filled with more joy and satisfaction.