Passion Hypnotizes Us
If there is something that moves the human being inside, it is having a passion. Within the concept of passion, there can be great diversity: for some their passion is painting, for others history, music, plants, psychology … No matter what it is, what really matters is that it is something that make us flow, be in the present, want to improve ourselves.
The feeling of being immersed in our passion is so pleasant that the lack of it can even lead us to the deepest sadness. When we have a passion, we put all our energies and attentions on what we are executing, momentarily forgetting about the world.
We then enter what is known as the state of flow or flow, a concept coined by the well-known psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. When we flow with the activity that we are passionate about, we find ourselves absorbed in what we do, almost hypnotized. We enter a state of intrinsic motivation in which we feel capable, enthusiastic, free and committed to what we have at hand.
Who hasn’t started doing something they love at a certain time and when they come to realize it, five or six hours have passed and they hadn’t even noticed? This is the sensation we are talking about, that kind of hypnosis that gives us intense pleasure.
Your passion will make you happy
In many moments of our life we can find ourselves deeply unhappy, sad, with our spirits on the floor. We harbor extremely negative thoughts, either about the world, about the future, or about our own person. Self-esteem is conspicuous by its absence, we believe that we are useless, that no one is interested in us and that this will always continue.
Therefore, one of the strategies that we can follow if we want to get rid of sadness is to find a goal, a passion, a goal. .. something that makes us put one foot in front of the other every day and keep moving forward. The human being needs a motivation to move forward, he needs a meaning, a purpose, be it work, family or leisure.
Look for that reason that makes you enter the state of flow, that makes the time fly, that you do not realize if it is raining or sunny outside, whether or not it is past lunchtime. It may be hard to find it at first or you just don’t feel like doing it. It is something totally normal if you are having a low mood.
The important thing is to know that it is not as relevant as you feel, that emotions do not have to rule our lives. You have a very valuable ability called willpower, and thanks to it you can take the necessary actions regardless of whether you feel like doing them or not.
Beware of obsessions
Having a passion does not mean obsessing over it. You have to know how to distinguish between getting pleasure from doing an activity and becoming obsessed with the activity itself. There are many people who in the end have become obsessed with what they were passionate about: musicians, actors, elite athletes … and what happens is that they end up detesting everything that surrounds that passion and falling into stress, depression and even the drugs.
Why is this happening? Simply, because we are getting the ego in the way and there is the error. When we talk about having something we are passionate about in our hands, we must forget about wanting to be the best, to make it perfect or to reach the top. That is the least and if we embark with that attitude in the activity, we will fall into the obsession and we will never or only enjoy when we win or are recognized.
As we have commented previously, intrinsic motivation produces a psychological well-being that extrinsic motivation hardly produces. With this we mean that what fills us with satisfaction is the task itself, the enjoyment of doing something with passion, with care, for the simple fact of doing it and not the recognition, the economic or the stepping on the other.
It is true that external gratifications are never too much and are also pleasant, but flowing with our passion goes much further than this and whoever manages to achieve it in his life will have reached true personal self-realization.
