Chris Meistre

People are always talking about passion, and what their passion in life is.  I always wonder if they’re talking about A passion or THE passion?

I have various passions in my life:

• my little family (wife and doggies)
• 4x4ing
• outdoors
• building online businesses
• web application developments
• reading

Those are just a few.  I cannot say which of these or any of my others are THE passion in my life.  There is no ONE BIG passion that I have.

It has often made me sit down and think: does it make you a feel better for having many passions or one big passion in your life.  Or am I mistakenly thinking the things I like in life are my passions?

Anyways, just a thought.  Would love to hear someone else’s take on this.  What’s your biggest passion if you’ve got one?

Each of us lives with our own version of a Rulebook for Life.  Herein are the standards and the rules we have set out for ourselves that we adhere to when making decisions or react to situations.

When you are born, your rulebook is pretty empty.  As you grow up your rulebook is written in by all the people around you.  Your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, preachers and so on.  The rules includes things like being polite, having good manners, respecting elders, and so on.

By the time you’re a teenager you start testing these rules one by one.

It is during this time that we find ourselves and figure out what we want to do with our lives.  The rules you agree with you start writing in your own Rulebook of Life.  This will become the book that you life by for the rest of your life.

Sometimes the rules we write down are very rigid, and this sets us up for disappointment.  If you were taught that someone will always excuse themselves after burping and all of a sudden you find a person that burps without excusing themselves, you’ll go into panic mode not knowing what to do.  This person has broken _THE_ rules, how dare they?  It’s easier if your rule was that it would be good if a person excuses themselves after burping.  That way, if a person doesn’t do it you’re not too worried about it.

Once you’ve been living with a rule in your life for quite some time, it’s going to take a lot from you to change it.  But if you believe you need to change it and once you change it, you will be better of for it!

So… what does your Rulebook say?

Life isn’t about finding yourself.

Life is about creating yourself.

- George Bernard Shaw