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Friday Reflection: Chock-Full of Passion
Weekly Show Reflection:
Oh, today everybody is going to be chock-full of passion.
For those of you who are new to the show, Motivate Me! is a podcast designed to inspire listeners to incorporate a passion of some kind into their lives. We do this through the experiences of our guests. Our hope is that you can take bits and pieces from the passion, the experience, the wisdom, tools, and techniques of our guests and apply it to your life, to your own interests.
Today’s episode is number 179, and so, there have been well-over 150 guests for you to listen to and learn from, over 150 different passions, over 150 different circumstances and challenges that our guests have had to overcome in order to make their lives a life they love. Some guests have added excitement into their lives and some have added meaning. Some added something into their lives that they do on a part-time bases, and for others, it has turned into a career or a lifestyle.
I seem to have, unintentionally, become the Love Your Life Girl, because that is what I want more than anything: For all of you to be excited about waking up tomorrow because you are going sailing on the open sea, or you are planning a new performance as a hypnotist or mentalist; or your book is being published, or you’re hiking one of the mountains on your bucket list.
For my mom, it’s making quilts – she REALLY loves making quilts. She loves picking out the fabric, selecting the design, challenging herself with each one, bestowing it with love. My mom could be quilting at 3am, 4am, 2pm. She’s obsessed…and it’s awesome. We all deserve to have this kind of passion in our lives. Something that has us plotting and scheming, anticipating and creating.
This is something you are going to see so whole-heartedly in the guests of this week: their undeniable passion. So much so that I have selected a separate quote to represent each of these guests.
On Monday, I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with athlete Daniel Hayes. Daniel is obsessed with competition. This obsession not only landed him in the 2016 Summer Olympics where he will represent Trinidad and Tobago in the boxing arena, it has inspired him to find creative ways to compete well into his seventies. This is a twenty-something man with a serious plan. Even if athleticism is not your passion, there is much to be gained from listening to this episode. Daniel is a motivational speaker himself, and he really reaches out to you in hopes to inspire. The dedication and sacrifice it takes to earn a spot in the Olympics lead me to select this passage from Donovan Bailey for Daniel: “Follow your passion, be prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, don’t let anyone limit your dreams.”
I agree with Mr. Bailey, don’t let anyone limit your dreams – including yourself.
Tuesday, Gerdi Verwoert was on the show. Now, if you are someone stuck in a corporate job that you excel at but don’t enjoy, this is an amazing episode for you. Gerdi gives us step-by-step details about how she walked away from the monetary success she was achieving in the Netherlands to live her passion, which is being a mountain-hiking guide in Austria. She tells us how she did it, how long it took, what her strengths and her challenges were, and how she is doing now. That is why I feel the words of Sheryl Sandberg really represent what Gerdi is all about. Sandberg said, “We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.”
Gerdi really had to battle the perfect sense her parents made when they were concerned about her pension and financial stability, but in the end, she chose what she felt her body and person was craving for instead.
On Wednesday Kat Ellis McIntyre was on the show. Kat is a Shamanic astrologer from Australia who had personal barriers to overcome in order to believe in herself enough to fully embrace her passion for astrology. Despite the fact that this has been a life-long passion of Kat’s, and that she is certified in both astrology and Shamanism. Richard Whately’s words, “To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air” could never truer describe Kat and her perspective on how it takes self-belief to live a life that is authentic.
Thursday, Cody Lister came on to teach a lesson on content promotion. The reality is: If your passion is to create content, such as Internet blogs, articles, podcasts, any of it, but you don’t get your work out and seen, you might as well be filing it away in a dark closet. So, if you are passionate about the time and effort you are putting in, and you feel your content is valuable, it’s vital that you take the next step and figure out how to get it seen – or find people like Cody who can help you. The other part of this equation is Cody’s passion for what he does. Having a finance degree in Fordham leads me to believe that Cody is not afraid of research, application, and analysis. Which is why Dave Ramsey’s idea “In order to be a great marketer, you have to be focused and intense and look at scarcity, urgency, activity and passion in the marketplace” is a great fit for Cody. But his intentions go further than that. Cody is inspired to help others with the knowledge he has gained, which is why this statement by H.G. Wells is so powerful: “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”
Isn’t this the truth? The idea that we can “alter someone else’s draft” or have an impact on the writing of someone’s life story.
What is your passion and what role does it play in your life story? If you look at this week’s guests, their passions were not something that started later in life, it’s something that has always been a part of them – in all stages of their lives. Daniel says he has always loved athletics and been competitive, Gerdi has always been adventurer who loves the outdoors, Kat has always been fascinated by astrology, and teaching people how to market their content is new for Cody, but writing is not.
This brought me back to one of the most commonly quoted poems of all time. It was written by William Shakespeare and the title is The Seven Ages of Man. Now listen closely here as I talk about this poem, because I am about to read it to you, and the more you know about it before we start, the more impressed you will be by it.
In The Seven Ages of Man, Shakespeare uses the stage as a metaphor for life. He says that “All the world’s a stage” and that we are “merely players.” That we are but actors in a play. We all have our “exits and entrances” into this world, and that in life we play “many parts.” It is here that Shakespeare breaks life into seven separate stages. Stage one is the infant, two is a schoolboy, three is the lover, four is the soldier, five is the justice (think plump judge who can afford fine meals because he has earned this and is later in his life), six is what we would term a senior citizen, an aged person who has lost the robustness of their voice and stature, and the final stage, seven, is what Shakespeare refers to as the “second childishness.” This connects to a thought I have often had that we go out of the world in the same way we came into it: bald, toothless, in diapers, and unable to feed ourselves. Shakespeare will say the same thing here, and all you need to know is that “sans” means without.
So, for your listening pleasure and a little literary culture, let me present to you:
Seven Ages Of Man
by William Shakespeare
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.
Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.
And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
So that is without teeth, without eyes, without taste, without everything.
Shakespeare is doing so many things here. He is telling us that we are all the same and will travel the same road. He is showing us that life is merely a play and that we really shouldn’t take it too seriously. He is showing us that while it is inevitable for us to travel through these life stages, and it is inevitable for us to grow and change, we are in the end the same person we started with.
So, I say, what we do with our passions may vary throughout our lifetime, but our passion is connected to our process, and our process is connected to our purpose, and our purpose is a feeling we get and not a role that we play. So what are our passions telling us and are we willing to listen?
I would like to leave you with a final thought by Maya Angelou, because I feel it is the one that best represents my life’s mission and what lead me here to you. I invite you to join me on this mission. Maya Angelou stated, “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
Are you with me?
Call to Action:
The Motivational Go-Do!
Maya Angelou stated, “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
Are you with me?
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Let us help you live a life you will be excited about…
the only regret you’ll have is wishing you had started sooner.
