Division of hearts doesn’t overcome any difficulty. Only love is capable of overcoming difficulties. Love is a festival. Love is joy. Love is to keep moving forward.
-Pope Francis
New York has been buzzing lately with much-anticipated visits from the Pope and Pres. These governmental happenings, including my recent travels to Cayman, has got me thinking about the way “developed” countries function, and what disheartens me is a noticeable pattern of being fueled by fear.
Think about what is typically featured on the news. Most of it ignites a fear fire from bad weather to local crimes to reports of people/countries at odds with one another. We may subconsciously harbor this information and end up in a constant state of protection out of fear that this or that might happen to us. This autopilot fight or flight mode unfortunately has sneaky ways of seeping into our personal and professional lives.
To which I ask, what if we were fueled by love? What if we ran on the energy that is so pure and powerful we can hardly describe its magic?
Our body and mind are our personal vehicle – do we want our engine filled with polluted gasoline and rusty parts as we drive through life, struggling to make it to the finish line?
A client of mine, media personnel, and others in career transitions have recently been asking me to share my story with them of how I got to where I am today. At first I was perplexed on what about me and my experience they saw that made me “successful” from their perspective, since I am continually working out the kinks and settling into the idea that I am essentially the CEO of my own business – something that often feels slightly scary to me.
Because I clearly love what I do and wouldn’t trade any of it for an experience that I am not 100% invested in emotionally, I was and am still able to work with my fear and not let it ultimately fuel my actions.
Loving what I do does not alone pay the bills – it is paired with dedicated work and is a balancing act, and involves figuring a lot of things out as I go. That being said, my heart feels fulfilled and because of that I am comforted by a little blanket of ease and faith, even when times are tough and fearful.
When I look back at problems and fears that have popped up on this path, I realized that they were often solved by the love I am able to offer myself, others, and my purpose.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of teaching on Grand Cayman Island for my friends’ stellar retreat, Fitness + Foolishness. The founders are longtime friends who love island culture and fitness so much that they decided to create a business out of it. Each of them taps into their unique skills to build this experience that fuels not only themselves, but also the people that are fortunate enough to join the retreat.
It is so exciting watching them work together, coming up with ideas on the fly or working around any issues that come up with relative ease. Whether or not their work is/was easy, they make it seem like a tropical breeze because they are so fueled by the love for what they do and provide.
When your work is doing what you love, things like “having a case of the Mondays” or “TGIF” is null and void. Every day has the opportunity to be interesting and fulfilling if we want it to be; we don’t always have to work for the weekend. Even if your work isn’t exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life, I encourage you to find something about it that fuels you in lieu of crawling through the workweek.
No one should ever be deterred or discouraged from what they want to do, even if it fails sometimes. When we do what we are passionate about it is fueled by love, and love is the greatest gift we can offer. What a magical life it would be if our workforce, our government, our society was fueled by love instead of fear.
Let’s make it so, for our own lives at the very least. We are the CEO, President and Pope of our experience on this planet. We have the ability to advise ourselves when we are at war with something, to pass or veto the policies that govern our mind, body and spirit.
Instead of outlawing anything that arises due to fear, I implore you to take Fear by the hand in your one-on-one meeting, offer it love, and move forward together in a way that benefits the world you’re currently running for yourself.
What fuels your furnace?
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