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Adrenaline — or Inspiration?
One of my clients commented recently that intensity isn’t socially acceptable. People who are deeply passionate about something, whatever that “something” is, are often looked at with raised eyebrows.
We think we’re supposed to be calm and cool about our work, even when we deeply believe in what we’re doing. We think we’re supposed to sit quietly in the theater, even when the performance is so moving that we want to laugh, dance, cry — or all three at once. We think we’re supposed to be logical about our choices, even when our inner voice is screaming that we’re headed in the wrong direction.
We think that anything else is weird. Embarrassing. We politely avert our eyes and pretend not to notice.
Or do we? Isn’t there something inside you that’s wishing it were you out there, acting on your passions? Isn’t there something inside you that remembers — remembers that you have a natural intensity of your own — and longs to set it free?
But ... you have to live up to all those expectations that you’ve set for yourself, and all those expectations that others have set for you. You have a to-do list that needs attention. You have responsibilities.
And so you live on willpower and adrenaline.
What if you could stop fueling your life with adrenaline and “shoulds”?
What if instead you could be inspired by your natural passion and intensity?
You can.
And contrary to what you may believe at first, your world won’t suddenly come to a screeching halt. That super-responsible part of you can rest assured: I’m not suggesting staying home from work, lounging around, eating bon-bons.
Instead, when you act from your authentic enthusiasm, you’ll have more energy, more support for your ideas and projects, more joy.
But that intensity, that passion for the things that matter to you, has been buried for a long time. My clients tell me that when they first start seeking it out, they feel artificial, as if they’re acting a part. Like you, they’ve spent years telling themselves that it’s not normal to experience the exhilaration and power that comes when you’re fully expressing all of yourself.
Relax
Adrenaline is the fight-or-flight hormone, and it’s just as addictive as any street drug. It keeps you wound up, knots your muscles, tightens your forehead into frowns, crawls headaches up your spine, puts butterflies into your stomach. It keeps you focused outward, listening to the expectations, the shoulds, the gotta-do list.
It keeps you from stillness.
Relax. Pat a cat and watch it purr. Untie your Gordian knots. Get a massage. Sit, close your eyes, and relax. Relax into your discovery of what you really want. Relax into stillness.
Be Still
Listening for the voice inside is hard when you’re wrapped up in the adrenaline-driven world of busy-ness and doing more faster. Taking time to be still, to listen to stillness, seems impossible.
Being still doesn’t mean being passive. It’s one of the delightful contradictions of life: when you are most still, you have the most potential for inspired action. You are poised, balanced at the center, allowing your natural voice to arise, and dancing into movement from that place.
What’s Real?
What lit you up as a child? What have you tried to explain to your friends, only to meet with baffled stares?
Was it poetry? Find poetry readings in your area and let yourself go. Was it music? Pull out your CDs and allow yourself to feel the emotions that you’ve suppressed. Go dancing, by yourself, with friends.
Is it nature? Find a park, walk on the beach, seek out forests and hug a tree.
Animals? Volunteer at the Humane Society, and let yourself weep for the abandoned, abused fur-people there — and delight in the creatures that respond to your touch, to your spirit, to your love. Gardens? Call the Extension Office in your area, sign up for Master Gardener classes, get your feet in the mud, your fingers into the greenery. Art, pottery, photography? Sign up for classes, put your hands in the clay, frame your world in a viewfinder.
Whatever your secret passion is, bring it into the daylight. There’s nothing more alive than passion, intensity, excitement. Dance with it from the stillness. It’s yours, and it’s beautiful.
“Beyond happiness or unhappiness, though it is both things, love is intensity; it does not give us eternity but life, that second in which the doors of time and space open just a crack: here is there and now is always.” Octavio Paz, 1914-1998, Mexican author and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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