(By Jeremy Orbell)

The evocative phrase: ‘Living every day with passion’ conjures up wildly different images for many people. Living is life, pure and simple, and your perception or definition of life is determined by your past experiences and your current thought patterns.

What does the word passion mean to you? Apart from the obvious sexual reference or lust, it can be about a very different kind of desire – the drive to succeed. It is an emotional term that can be positive or negative but it a powerful driving force. It could be for a political cause or just a hobby but ultimately it’s about doing what you love to do.

Life can be of heaven for some or hell for others. Then there are those who seem to view life purely as existence whereby they move from day-to-day without any inclination that there could be something more. Where do you fit in?

Take a moment to think about where you are this moment in time. Are you contented, stressed, angry, thrilled, eager or sad? None of the above? Express to yourself now your emotional state and say it out loud.

Well? Did telling yourself outright have any physiological effect on you and your body? Did you slouch, stand up, smile, jump around or nervously chew your nails? When you spoke was it vibrant, quiet, excited or angry?

What does this tell you? The sound of your voice and your posture is giving you an obvious sign of whether you are truly contented or not and you should treat the message being fed to you with respect.

I’m sure some of you will have noticed that I have asked a great number of questions in this article. The writing style may seem cumbersome but I have deliberately been using it to get across the importance of asking questions of yourself.

There is a rule that many life coaches use that says that you should never give direct advice if at all possible. This is because the coach’s viewpoint is mostly based on their own personal circumstances, morals and viewpoints; what would be right for them is not necessarily right for the client.

If you have a success coach of your own or witness a session taking place on TV, listen to how they speak to the coachee. It’s questions, questions, questions. This surprises many people as they often expect that they will be dispensed with some words of wisdom that will suddenly cure all their problems. Not true.

We all have it within us to solve our own problems because, let’s face it, who knows you better than yourself? Keep asking yourself questions and couple your answers with consistent action and you should begin to see some changes. If these changes don’t have the desired response try again, do it differently, until you have results that you are happy with.

Remember that we have options to choose from and decisions to make every moment of every day and we decide how we react to any one of them.

This may all seem to be off-topic but it isn’t really. Passion is an evocative word as we’ve said and when we attach it to the way we live we instantly become more positive and excited about life.

Do you feel passionate about our job? If the answer is no what does that mean? Apart from telling you that you probably shouldn’t even be doing it in the first place, it also asks you to consider your motives for being there at all. If it’s purely because of money are you able to accept that financial gain justifies any unhappiness on a longer term basis?

What activity gives you the greatest satisfaction and fulfillment? Think back now to the last time you experienced the high of doing exactly what you wanted to do, purely for the love of it. Grasp that memory and relive the feeling and do whatever you can to make it part of you.

Living every day with passion is about waking up in the morning excited about the day and the possibilities and opportunities that lay ahead of you. What will I learn, what will I experience, who will I meet?

Ask yourself again: “What is my passion?”. Decide now, take action and make it real. “

Jeremy Orbell wrote this article on Ecademy; I would like to thank him for asking enough questions to get my mind working in a much more enthusiastic way!

Live a life that feels wonderful!! This is what Greg Hicks believes you can do, and he outlines ways of choosing such a life, in his new book Choosing Brilliant Health: 9 Choices That Redefine What It Takes to Create Lifelong Vitality and Well-Being. I haven’t seen Oprah Winfrey’s show – but I’m a subscriber to her regular newsletter, which mentioned a talk about this book last week – you can hear a snippet from the radio show & read a little about the book on the link to Bob Greene’s show on “Oprah and Friends Radio“.

As Bob Greene says on the website:

“What’s the secret to living a long life? According to Greg Hicks, there are actually nine universal secrets to health, happiness and longevity, which he chronicles in his book Choosing Brilliant Health: 9 Choices That Redefine What It Takes to Create Lifelong Vitality and Well-Being. Greg says research has shown that positive emotions play a fundamental role in maintaining wellness, and he shares with Bob a few of the ways we can create positive behaviors and attitudes that will help us live longer.

• Live with positive intentions. While we can’t always choose our circumstances, we can always choose our attitude, reactions and intentions—which in turn affect every cell in our body, Greg says. Not surprisingly, he says people who live longer give themselves positive “commands” for the day, beginning the moment they wake up. “The more we can be successful at choosing these positive attitudes, the more our brain creates these new neuropathways that make it so they become more our automatic responses than whatever our automatic responses [were],” Greg says.
• Be accountable to yourself. Greg says people who live long tend to have a sense of competency and control that helps them tackle life’s challenges, including disease or illness. On the other hand, people who don’t have a sense of accountability tend to view themselves as powerless victims, he says. “Even though we may be victimized in life, if we panoramically see ourselves as a victim, we have shot ourselves in the foot because our body does not like this,” he says.
• Think about the things you love. Because thoughts have such a determining role on our health, Greg says it’s important to identify your passions, envision them in your mind, journal them and share stories about them on a regular basis. “Just thinking about something that you love or a passion of yours activates the same part of the brain that’s actually experiencing that thing,” he says.
• Do the things you love. In addition to thinking positive thoughts about what gets you excited and happy about living life, Greg says you have to do those things too. To the degree that you can, make those activities central in your life if you want to live a good, long life, he says. “Living [your] passions is not debatable,” Greg says.”

Even if you don’t read this book, take these few pointers to heart, realise that YOU are so much in control of YOUR ATTITUDE and thus your outlook on life, and health – and be well!

Blessings
Tracey

P.S. another related link: also from Oprah’s website