Contributed Post
Building a passion is one of the most important efforts you can take part in. This goes for anyone, the world over. Getting better at a craft, no matter how humble, no matter how small can fulfill your life with joy. The word ‘discipline’ brings with it many troubling connotations. We think of ourselves being lauded over by a drill sergeant, or perhaps struggling to get out of bed in the morning. But discipline isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can bring our lives plenty of joy and meaning. Having zero discipline is the thing that should worry us the most.
A passion you adore needn’t be a hobby, or something overly complex. It might be your working career that functions in this manner. Even for those who find themselves unable to access certain passions due to a physical disability can find their own competency and thrive at it. Perhaps you’re wheelchair bound, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create beautiful art, or elucidate your opinions on a chosen topic, becoming a respected member of a certain niche.
The development and passion of a care you adore is a worthwhile journey for anyone, no matter where on Planet Earth. With the following advice, you’re sure to prosper in these realms:
Respect
When you begin to form a passion, you start to realize that respecting it is an important part of enjoying the process. For example, let’s take someone who has really started to love the habit of weightlifting. Instead of heading to the gym to improve their physique only and feel attractive in the bar that weekend, they might feel that the art is something they wish to perfect. As such, instead of using the gym to work out their ‘mirror muscles,’ they instead read about the physics of lifting, what moment force means and how to implement a lift correctly and perform it flawlessly before they up the weight. All real passions will start off with a basis of respect. Without this, it’s incredibly easy to fall by the wayside and only stay interested in the art thanks to the end result. In other words, falling in love with the journey is the most important part of taking something both seriously and sincerely, and that’s what will lead you to mastery.
Celebration
Celebrating your passion is also important to help you see the full value of its presence. When interested in something, it’s not uncommon for highly motivated types, or perhaps those there by a working contract to only focus on the duties they have, and ignore the full celebratory enjoyment of recognizing the excellence of their place. A few great ways to celebrate this passion or working interest might be crafting artifacts to commemorate your involvement. You might choose to read more about challenge coins to honor the members and principles behind your military regiment, which by itself is a form of celebration. You might decide to commission large art piece to celebrate an achievement you have experienced with others. It all depends on the context of your situation, but you may find that celebrating a passion can help you keep it renewably interesting and fresh in your mind.
Social Connections
While a passion is often sustaining by itself, it can be very worthwhile to consider the social connections you may craft along the way. If you adore writing, it might be you decide to join multiple writing groups and contribute to discussions on Reddit, or even reply threads on Twitter. If you love baking, connecting with home bakers via Facebook and maybe even joining some amateur classes could help you make real friends.
This can even work for your career. You may decide to join a coding class to help refine your competencies out of hours, serving a double purpose of furthering your working future while also injecting some fun and life into your skillset. Social connections are not always required, but even solo efforts like weightlifting can be immensely serviced by crafting some, and when you have something to bond over like this you always have something new to learn, and a new perspective to consider. Who knows, it might even get you through a skillset plateau you’ve been experiencing for some time.
Learning The Craft
Of course, there is no way around deeply embedding yourself in the craft of something if you hope to get good at it. Learning its fundamental parts, beginning to gain a skillset and natural feeling for it, and then designing your own interpretations is an essential part of getting better. While you may not need to head to film school and learn plenty of the stock rules to become a great director, you can be absolutely sure that you’ll need to watch plenty of movies to get a great feel for the art.
Besides, you need to learn what the rules are before you can subvert or refine them. Learning the craft means you need to fall in love with your passion. For example, if you hope to become great at replicating accents, you need to fall in love with the culture from which those accents originate. If you don’t, you’ll be unable to put in the real specific time in order to enunciate yourself correctly. This is a highly specific example, but it helps us understand the motivations behind method actors and their ilk.
The ‘Suck’ Stage
No matter how we begin, in work, recreation or compulsion, a passion developed will not be fully fun for the first ‘however-long-it-takes’ as you build your competencies. This could also be known as ‘the suck stage.’ Soldiers experience the most mistakes they will ever make in basic training, until those enlisted are ironed out of those mistakes. Keeping a good attitude means knowing that this suck stage will happen, and taking steps to try and counter becoming demotivated. Before long, pushing that rock up the hill will lead to a form of respite, and you’ll be better off for the effort. Then your real work can begin, and you’ll notice just how much you have to learn. But instead of overwhelming you, this will fill you with interest and courage for more.
With these simple tips, developing and caring for a passion you adore, in many different fields as evidenced by this article, is sure to be your new normal.
