[Neurons] Neurons Digest, Vol 20, Issue 4

[Joseph]

Joseph at apexleadership.com

Thank you Michael for a great and clean Meta-reflections. My  
experience is that a passion can just hit you, that a purpose can find  
you, alittle like the Meta-State model found you.

  However, I myself have "waited" for passion and purpose to find me,  
and whether it does or doesn't find you, we can generally agree,  
waiting is not a well formed outcome.

Thanks Michael for the tweeking:-)

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 Jan 2009, at 02:47, neurons-request at neurosemanticsegroups.com  
wrote:


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> Today's Topics:

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>   1. 2009  Meta Reflections #2 (Dr. Hall)

>

>

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

>

> Message: 1

> Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:47:08 -0700

> From: "Dr. Hall" <meta at onlinecol.com>

> Subject: [Neurons] 2009  Meta Reflections #2

> To: <Neurons at neurosemanticsegroups.com>

> Message-ID: <B0015712996 at mail.onlinecol.com>

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>

> From: L. Michael Hall

>

> 2009 Meta-Reflections #2

>

> January 12, 2009

>

>

>

> Preparing for a Meta New Year

>

>   Part II

>

>

>

> HOW TO FIND OR DEVELOP

>

> A LIFE PASSION

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> We all know the secret to success, greatness, and happiness, do we  

> not?

> Haven't we been told and seen studies and read the research that the  

> way to

> success, greatness, and happiness is to find and follow your  

> passion?  Yes,

> of course!  That's the secret!  Now that you know the secret of  

> life, have a

> good one!

>

>

>

> What?  There's something else?  What?  Oh the how; you want to know  

> "How to

> find and follow your passion?"  Ah, that's a different question and  

> one

> that's not so easy to answer.  But there is an answer.

>

>

>

> 1) Find your Passion

>

> For many the answer is to simply begin to notice how you answer the

> following questions:  What makes you feel most fully alive?  What  

> naturally

> and inevitably excites you?  What do you dream about doing,  

> experiencing,

> having, or giving?   Or you could begin to recover those dreams that  

> you had

> as a child or a teenager.  What did you continually dream about in  

> those

> early years?  And even if you didn't talk about it aloud or discuss  

> it with

> others, what captivated the inmost places of your heart?

>

>

>

> Now if you, like so many people, have had the dreams of youth  

> extinguished,

> if parenting, schooling, "being realistic," or the hard knocks of  

> life have

> knocked all the dreams out of you, you might give yourself to some

> self-discovery for recovering an awareness about yourself and what's  

> within.

> Or if you, like so many, have had self-knowledge and self-awareness  

> tabooed

> so that you're not allowed to go there, then begin to giving  

> yourself the

> permission that's been taken away.  Then you too can begin the  

> odessey of

> discovering and "knowing thyself."

>

>

>

> Finding your passion will, more often than not, mean discovering your

> natural talents and dispositions.  But you knew that, didn't you?   

> Surely

> you've heard that a hundred times.  "What are you good at?  What do  

> you do

> with ease that others find difficult?  What are some of your natural

> dispositions?"

>

>

>

> Generally speaking, your passion will be inside your natural  

> "strengths" as

> your innate talent or disposition, which if you give yourself to the  

> effort

> and discipline of learning, you can cultivate into a skill, then a

> competency.  And if you stay with it, you will turn it into an  

> expertise and

> after some more years, into a mastery.  No one is born an expert;  

> everybody

> has to learn.  No one is born a master; people become masters in a  

> given

> field after years of commitment, discipline, and effort.  Howard  

> Gardner

> documented this in his work, Creating Minds as he explored the  

> biography of

> seven geniuses of the twentieth century, one corresponding to each  

> of the

> seven intelligences of his Multiple Intelligences Model.

>

>

>

> Now if you find any of the words in the previous paragraph shocking or

> disappointing, that might very well explain your challenge in  

> finding your

> passion.  Passions have to be developed.  They have to be  

> cultivated.  They

> do not just land in your lap full-grown.  "The Myth of the Easy  

> Passion" is

> precisely what discourages many.  When they come up against the  

> effort,

> discipline, and challenge of developing their passion, they  

> experience a

> disillusionment as if they had been betrayed or sold a bill of goods.

>

> "I have to work?"  "I have to put out effort?"  "Why can't it be  

> easy?"

> "Why does there have to be set backs, challenges, discipline?  If it  

> was

> really my passion, it would all come easy, right?"

>

>

>

> Perhaps the Myth begins with the word "find."  I suppose find could  

> suggest

> or imply that you will just happen upon it, and then, "Lo, and  

> behold, There

> it is!"  But find can also imply a search, a hunt, a digging around  

> as in a

> gold mine, filtering through all of the rock and dross to find the  

> gold.

> Find can suggest that you have to look here and there, turn over  

> this rock

> and that, until you discover it.  And this search may take years and  

> lots of

> experimenting to find your passion.

>

>

>

> 2) Create your passion

>

> So what if you can't find your passion?  What then?  Well, the next  

> choice

> is to create it.          "Create it?  I can do that?  Just create  

> it?  How

> is that possible?   What does that mean?"

>

>

>

> Don't let the idea that there is a passion for you-somewhere, some  

> time, and

> that you have to spend your whole life off on some Indiana Jones  

> adventure

> trying to find it-deceive you.  You don't.  Don't be deceived into  

> thinking

> that you can't start living, being successful, experiencing greatness,

> enjoying happiness until you find it.  That's a Myth also.  And it's a

> dangerous myth at that.  It encourages passive waiting,  

> procrastination, and

> path-of-least resistance living.

>

>

>

> Because passions never come to you full-blown and at a red-hot  

> temperature,

> they have to be develop.  But there's more.  We have to develop them  

> and we

> also have to be developed for them.  This is true for both the  

> passions that

> you find in your natural talents and gifts and for those that you  

> choose to

> create.  So how do you just "create" a passion?  There are several  

> steps.

>

>

>

> First, take interest in something.  Anything.  In fact, if you look  

> around

> to see it, you will find human beings highly interested in all kinds  

> of

> things.  And many, many of these things are things that you might  

> scratch

> your head wondering "How in the world could anyone be interested in  

> that?!"

> Take anything and you'll find someone somewhere is interested in  

> it!  Take

> anything and someone finds it absolutely fascinating and  

> interesting!  Now

> isn't that fascinating?

>

> Don't write that off as a pathology.  That's our usual tendency,  

> isn't it?

> That's what I often do.  But when I'm at my best I know that this  

> strange

> fact that anything and everything can be interesting to human beings  

> is a

> gateway to finding and creating passions.  This realization first  

> struck me

> a few years ago and when it did, I made a trip to the dictionary to  

> find out

> what the word "interest" really meant.  And that's when I discovered a

> jewel-a real jewel.

>

>

>

> Interesting enough, the word interest is comprised of two words- est  

> (to

> exist, to live in) and in  (to be inside of something).  So interest  

> means

> to exist inside of something or to put oneself inside of something.

>

>

>

> Wow!  Did you catch that?  We typically talk about something  

> "getting" our

> interest, "catching" our interest, or of something as "being"  

> interesting.

> And when something is interesting to us, we get involved.  We get  

> inside it.

> We are inside it.  And we want to be more inside it!  After all, we're

> interested in it.  Yet the word itself reveals the secret of why and  

> how you

> find something "interesting" or "boring."  And what is the secret?   

> The

> secret is whether you put yourself into that thing or not.  If you  

> do not

> put yourself into it and live there, you will find it boring.  If  

> you do,

> then you are in-ter-est-ed in it-you yourself will be inside it!

>

>

>

> Think about something that you find interesting and notice how you  

> think

> about it.  You probably have a movie playing in your mind in which  

> you are

> involved with it, you are inside the move seeing, hearing, and  

> feeling.

> Compare that now to something that you consider "boring" or un- 

> interesting.

> Do you have a movie or just a snapshot?  And is it in color or  

> compelling?

> Typically you represent one so that it is colorful, close, and that  

> you are

> inside it whereas boring things are black-and-white, at a distance,  

> and you

> are just observing it.

>

>

>

> Now we have the key question for creation a passion:  Are you  

> willing to put

> yourself into something and to live in it?  If you are, you will  

> begin to

> become more and more interested in it.  In fact, most things are  

> like this.

> Think about all of the things in your life that you are not  

> interested in

> that you had to learn how to take interest in it.  You had to learn  

> the

> distinctions, the rules of the game, the key factors.

>

>

>

> So what would you now like to take interest in?  What would you like  

> to

> create a passion out of?  I remember when I first got involved in real

> estate.  I say "involved" because I was not interested.  So why did  

> I do it?

> One reason.  Because I figured it was something that I could do on  

> the side

> to build some equity and create an investment.  And why did I do that?

> Because I was sick and tied of debt and of living paycheck to  

> paycheck.

> That aversion pushed me kicking and screaming into real estate.  Not  

> exactly

> a passion, right?

>

>

>

> But today, these many years later, real estate has become a passion  

> for me.

> Ask my friends.  I'm always talking about it.  Always asking  

> questions about

> real estate in various places, reading books on it; taking workshops  

> on it;

> watching real estate channels on television!  You'd think I'm a nut  

> about

> it, and I guess I am.  It has become a passion.  I created it as a  

> passion

> by taking more and more and more interest in it.

>

>

>

> Second, once you've begun with an interest, develop a strategic plan  

> for

> cultivating your passion in that area.  With real estate, I began  

> with one

> rental property that was an owner-carry loan and I put in a lot of  

> physical

> work cleaning, painting, repairing, etc.  Then I got burned.  I didn't

> select the right people. So I had to learn how to get them out.   

> Then I got

> burned again.  I selected more wrong people, again!  Now I was getting

> interested.  One facet of the rental business really got my  

> attention and

> interest: How do you select the right people?  Knowing NLP, I began  

> asking,

> "How do I 'read' people and their meta-programs to pick a  

> responsible person

> who will be straight-forward from one irresponsible and refuses to  

> be held

> accountable?"  That's what I wanted to know.  And that drove me to  

> figure

> that one out, which I eventually did and briefly wrote about in the  

> book,

> Figuring Out People (1997/ 2007).

>

>

>

> I developed my passion in that area by attending workshops, reading  

> lots and

> lots of books, and setting out a plan for buying one investment  

> property a

> year.  Doing that, in turn, cultivated my interest in that.  It is  

> not my

> biggest passion, but it is one.  And definitely one that I was not  

> born with

> nor a natural gift.

>

>

>

> As you cultivate your passion, be sure to constantly check that you  

> have

> given up the non-sense and stupidity of waiting for a moment of  

> magic when

> some passion hits you up against the head and gets your attention.   

> It does

> not work that way.  You have to go after it.

>

>

>

> Summary

>

> There's no need to miss the joy and meaningfulness of a life lived

> passionately.  You can create one.  A life passion can be found and  

> if not

> discovered, it can be developed.  And passion in life is not merely  

> nice, it

> is essential.  It is especially essential for living life fully and  

> with

> vitality.  It is essential for joy, ecstasy, and meaningfulness; it is

> essential for unleashing your potentials.

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

>

> International Society of Neuro-Semantics

>

> Meta-Coach Training System

>

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>

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>

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