The Great Blog Reconstruction Project
Looking To Reach You
Hello there dear blog reader. FYI….rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated. I’ve been occupied of late by changing the blog to a more powerful version that can reach out and touch more people. Although I am not quite up and running over there, you can now find me at:
How To Spot Snake Oil
How to Spot Snake Oil
The Real Thing
Some years ago, Coca Cola ran a very successful Advertising campaign pitching their soda pop as the “Real Thing”. Coke was positioned as the “thirst quencher of thirst quenchers”. Millions were convinced that other drinks promised to satisfy, but only Coca Cola delivered. So is Coke the “Real Thing”? Of course not. All the other sugar drinks do exactly what Coke does. The words “Real Thing” should only be used to describe something like a unique key that fits into a lock. Coca Cola wanted us to believe only their product was the key to unlocking our thirst, but in truth, every other soda pop fits just as well.
Bogus Real Things
Coca Cola wasn’t being unscrupulous pretending to be the “Real Thing”. They just launched a great marketing idea that made their brand of soft drink stand out. No harm was done, because Coke wasn’t gasoline pretending to be water in a land where people were dying of thirst. But the Real Thing is such a potent idea, lots of unscrupulous folks have used it. Snake oil salesmen market their elixirs as the Real Cure for cancers for instance. They know full well people desperate to get well will take a chance on their bogus medicines. They also know they can call anything the “Real Thing” and get away with it. When it’s a life or death matter however, calling something the Real Thing….when it isn’t….. is criminal.
Fake “Find Your Passion” Ploys
Snake-oil salesmen aren’t confined to the world of terminal illnesses. People pitch the “Real Thing” pretty much everywhere men and women are hungry for something. Take the self-help world for instance. In this Universe, folks hungry for happiness are offered dozens of “Real Secrets” promising lives filled with passion. As a matter of fact, hundreds of different “Real Things” can be found on the net night or day, each guaranteeing passion-filled lives. And? They don’t work….. because they’re just marketing ploys. They aren’t Real. But is a “Real Thing” even possible? A bona fide map to authentic happiness everyone could follow? Most folks don’t think so anymore.
What If It Showed Up?
Let’s say the Real Thing really was out there somewhere. A simple idea that truly could lead vast numbers to passionate lives. And let’s imagine some everyday soul stumbles into it by fate, accident, or Divine Intervention. An ordinary non-guru citizen perhaps, without a huge following or Oprah’s help to get the word out. How would he or she let the world know? The snake-oil salesmen have really muddied the waters after all. No point trying to explain what the “real Real Thing” is and what it does. Pretty much anything that could be said about it has already been said about every Fake. Maybe if a million people could be convinced to test it, they’d realize it was Real and help convince others.
But why would they? So many people have lied about Real Things for so long, who’d risk wasting their time on “yet another gallon of snake-oil”. It looks a lot like that old “Boy Who Cried Wolf” story. But in this case, it’s not a Boy getting eaten by a Wolf. It’s untold numbers of men and women losing out on passion in their lives. If the Real Thing arrived one day then, how could we tell it from snake-oil?
The Real Thing vs Snake Oil
The Real Thing will pass all three tests below. Snake-oil won’t. Here they are.
- Simplicity
The Real Thing would be the simplest of ideas. It can’t be complicated to understand or difficult to put into practice. Why? It’s meant for everyone. It’s there to let every man, woman, child and creature be themselves. The least capable amongst us must grasp it.
- Equality
The Real Thing would make the life of every single soul on earth equally important and exactly the same value. By another name the Real Thing would be Freedom. Freedom from judgment, intolerance, hatred and violence.
- Tallies With Our Knowledge
The Real Thing would tally with all our knowledge of the world. Scientists, philosophers, and leaders of all religions alike would accept the Real Thing as a basic Truth.
What is the Real Thing?
The Real Thing is called “wholeness”. Wholeness means everything in the world, including you and I, are different parts of one whole…..not separate things. Wholeness means nobody can be more important than anyone else…..because we’re all One. Wholeness means your life and mine have to be equal in value…..because we share the same life.
We Can Choose the Real Thing
To release your potentials, all you have to do is choose to see the world as one whole, instead of many different separate things. Just like you don’t see your own two arms as separate things. If you do, you won’t be afraid to be yourself. Why? You’ll know for sure nobody can judge your life worthless. When you believe in wholeness, you’ll be unafraid to come out of your shell to be YOU. You’ll discover that being yourself is what makes you happy too.
Happiness Is: Prickles and Goo
Happiness is: Prickles and Goo
Once again I can’t help but be motivated by Lisis at A Quest For Balance (link below) to write this article about “prickles and goo”.
http://www.questforbalance.com/
For anyone stumbling here by fate, luck, or dizziness, I’d recommend first reading the “Passion Paradox” at A Quest For Balance….followed by “Inspiration from T. Alan Armstrong” at the same site. At this latter post you can watch the “prickles and goo” video to prepare yourself for what’s here. Done? Great. Let’s carry on.
First Things First
Before I get all mired in goo and prickles, I’d like to point out something about the Great Passion Debate. Just so we’re on the same page, I’ll summarize it. In a nutshell it’s all about the question “How do we find our Passion in Life and put it to work?”. It’s fair to say this question has caused a lot of headaches and fuzzy blue spots before the eyes over the Ages.
Self-Help Doesn’t Help
What I’d like to point out is this. As we speak there is a humongous self-help industry dedicated to helping us answer this question….and has been for many generations. But it doesn’t help. Thousands of gurus write hundreds of books every year with ever-newer answers to this question. Still doesn’t help. Don’t believe it? Ask a few million readers of these helpful works if they know why they’re here. You’ll be lucky to find one. Does that strike you as odd? No? That’s O.K., but keep in mind, many of these gurus and bloggers and authors have actually found their Passion and put it to work. They’ve been to the promised land themselves and drawn up maps you and I can follow to get there. So how come you or I can’t just take their hands and go find our Passions and put the doggone things to work? Good question.
Everyone’s Passion is Different
Understanding why we can’t follow somebody else to our Passion is easy. It’s because we’re all absolutely and completely unique. Unique means there never was another us and never will be. The mold was created for our birth and broken when we took our first breath. Certainly there is a map I can follow to my Passion, but it’s no good for you. For you to follow this map, you’d have to be me. That seems to make sense, but it’s a bit depressing if you think about it. Why? It sure looks like nobody….ever…..can help us find what we’re looking for in life. Imagine being lost in the wilderness for instance, and knowing nobody is ever going to come find you. You’ll have to find the way out yourself…..or die lost. Sounds a bit scary doesn’t it? Yes it does, but here’s where the prickles and goo come in.
Uniqueness is Like Prickles and Goo
Uniqueness means you and I are one-of-a-kind of course. But it means more than that. It means, like Lisis said in her post, you and I are…..the same but different. And….”the same but different”…. is just another way of saying you and I aren’t actually separate. You and I aren’t like a gooey guy staring at a prickly gal across the room. We’re actually different parts of One whole…..parts of each other. Just like prickles splattered together with goo. I know it doesn’t seem like it to you. But it is the truth. And prickles and goo are the key to finding your Passion in life as well.
Uniqueness is the Key to Passion
Here’s why prickles and goo can help you. First you have to know this. Your passion is hiding inside you and it’s afraid to come out. Why? Because your Passion is your heart and soul and you don’t want to risk putting that most valued possession out on the table for all to see. Why? If you “come out”, in today’s world every man, woman, and child will score you. Should you be biggest or best, you’ll pass. You’ll be a “winner”. But if you’re like me, you won’t be at the top of any heap. Then what? You’ll be called a “loser/failure/has-been or also-ran”. Sounds good? No? That’s why your Passion and mine stays hidden in its shell. On the other hand, if you can see something simple, your Passion will come out and meet the world. What simple thing am I talking about. You and those folks scoring you are really one big mess of prickles and goo.
How to Let Your Passion Out
How does that work? It’s easy really. If you and I and everyone were different parts of one whole……nobody can be worth less than anybody else. To see how crazy that would be, think like this. Ask yourself a simple question. This one. Is the life of a rabbit’s tail worth less than the life of his ears? Uh….it CAN’T be….because there’s only One Life there…..and it’s Mr. Bunny’s. Same with your life. The truth is, there’s only One life we all share.
BINGO
And so. Imagine your poor Passionate soul was terrified to come out of its shell….because it didn’t want to be judged worthless. Then…….suddenly…your soul realized it was just plain impossible it could be worth less than any soul. Because there’s only One soul we all share. Then what? Like I said above. BINGO. There is no fear. I don’t mean that silly NO FEAR like you see on Tee-shirts either. I mean your soul isn’t afraid to venture out. Your Passion is now ready to flow back into your life. And that Passion is what you’ll want to do with your life too. It’s there to help you grow as a Human Being until you blossom. But don’t forget. You gotta see we’re all prickles and goo.
What I Believe About Passion
What I Believe About Passion
I’ve been motivated to write this article by Lisis at “A Quest For Balance”, http://www.questforbalance.com/ whose post about the “Passion Paradox” is near and dear to my own heart.
I Got-A-Good-Job
I don’t know about you, but I was brought up to “get-a-good-job” that would put food on the table, pay the bills, and earn enough to raise a family. The goal was money for food, shelter and a few toys. Work was nothing but a means to those ends. If cutting down trees with a feather paid enough, it would do fine….never mind the pointless frustration of it. If I could get a “government job” slaying trees with my downy axe, so much the better. It’d come with a good pension. Come retirement time I might be brain-dead from whipping trees with wet noodles…..but so what. My keepers would appreciate the good pension that kept me fed. Needless to say, work for work’s sake was pretty much foreign in the family I grew up in. Of course, like all moms and dads, mine told me to choose a career I loved. Unless it was something that didn’t pay much. In that case I was supposed to “get real” and forget it. “Fun, passion, or a love for what you’re doing is a luxury” they said. “We couldn’t do what we wanted to do with our lives either” they’d often add, “because we had to make a living and so do you”.
“Good Jobs” Aren’t Real Work
I did. I went to school, got good jobs and made some nice figure money. But eventually I discovered things about “work” my parents didn’t tell me. The first is this. There are two kinds of work, real and unreal. Unreal work I just described. It’s about making money. Real work is a lot different. Real work is all about making….ourselves. Real work is all about creating a fully blossomed unique human being. To put it bluntly, if we don’t find “real work” we’ll stay stunted all our lives, never realizing the potentials we came with. If people were houses, those without real work would be little more than a hole in the ground where the basement goes at the end of their lives.
How Do You Get Real Work?
So how do you get Real work? You have to have a Vision of who you are and can be. You must “know thyself”. Considering Real work is making yourself…this makes sense. You can’t make anything if you don’t know what it is after all….including you. This is where the word “passion” comes in. Everyone’s passion in life is for creating……themselves. Work is how we can exercise our unique skills and talents to grow the potentials we came with. Our passion in life is for becoming all we can become. Nobody’s passion in life is for a “thing”. It’s for growing human, otherwise called “growing up”. Someone “passionate about art” isn’t passionate about paintings or sculptures or other artistic creations. They’re passionate about growing their artistic soul. A person “passionate about cars” is passionate about becoming knowledgeable about autos or discovering their unique mechanical, pop-cultural, adventurous person.
How Do You Find Your Passion?
How do you find this passion? It’s “inside” you right now as we speak. To understand how to know your passion (thyself) imagine there’s a pipe going from your mind down “inside” you, with a tap on top. There’s no way you can go “inside” yourself….but you can make what’s inside come to you. How? You learn how to open the tap. If you educate yourself on how to open this tap, ideas about who you are come to you. They give you a Vision of who you are and can be. They tell you what your passion in life is.
What I Believe About Passion
This brings us to what I believe about real passion. Real passion is a stunning and magical thing that literally makes dreams real. Real passion is a gigantic power at your center and mine that drives us to be ourselves. True passion is strong enough keep you and I trucking ‘til we find a way to make a living being ourselves. It’s this kind of strength of “Cosmic Will” that has put men on the moon and invented lightbulbs.
Authentic Passion has enough strength to get to the top of Everest and Make Abraham Lincoln president after failing dozens of times to be elected to office. If your passion doesn’t feel like a bulldozer at your back then, maybe it’s not your real passion. Passion is big and strong for a reason too.
The Way Ahead is Tough
Make no mistake. Finding a way to make a living being ourselves (living our passion) is not easy. In fact, it’s not supposed to be. It’s tough so we struggle and stretch and try and claim failure as true success. It has to be hard to exercise our own unique skills and talents to make them grow. Do you think weight lifters would get stronger if weights weren’t tough to lift? Would marathon runners get more fit if training for the long run didn’t push their lungs and legs hard? Even mathematicians must struggle for years to learn their craft to prepare themselves for their own creative work. Same holds with growing the unique person that is you or I. Our passions come with tough assignments and even parts we don’t really enjoy. Why is that? Because we’re all multi-faceted human beings. Nobody is a one note song or flower with a single petal. Yes your aim in life may be in one direction…..like becoming a writer or fireman. But the person you are and can be is much more like an amazing quilt of many colors, aligned with a single purpose. To perfect this fabulous creation then, writers may have to learn computer skills, editing skills, marketing skills and other things less fun than banging out words. Firemen don’t just heroically enter buildings and save people either. They have to bone up on medical lessons and read scientific books on how fire behaves.
Passion Makes Tough a “Challenge”
Real passion makes the mountain ahead a challenge rather than a daunting nightmare. It makes the hard stuff a kind of fun. Why? Because the mountain challenges us to grow. With every tough step in the long climb ahead….comes more growth. Imagine climbing a ladder and getting a delicious treat at every new rung. It’s something like that, except each hard obstacle overcome pursuing our passion in life treats us to becoming a more mature human being. This makes the way up a real adventure, because the very purpose of passion is growth. The difficult struggle to become all we can become is “pain with a purpose”. It’s hard work done to create ourselves. If obstacles feel like punishment to you then, perhaps you’re going the wrong way.
Your Passion Can’t Fail You
If you know your passion, but despair of ever “making a living at it”….don’t give up. Surround yourself with like-minded people trying to grow up. Seek encouragement from those who have went before you. Be inspired by men and women of every Age who have stuck it out until they’ve found their place in the sun. Here’s something encouraging about true passion as well. You can’t fail by following it. Here’s what I mean. Say you know you’re an “Elvis on velvet” painter at heart. You quit your job in a retail store to paint Elvis but can’t support yourself. Reluctantly you get another job. Did you fail? No. You tried something, and….hopefully….learned from it.
Now what? Try something else. How about “Elvis house parties”. Maybe you can become the “Mary Kay of velvet paintings”. And? Flops big time. Alright, so perhaps this time you research on the net and find communities interested in Elvis. You try to build a little business speaking to small groups about Elvis and selling paintings from the back of the room. Works a bit. But not enough to support you full-time. But your little bit of progress is encouraging, so you keep on exploring and failing and trying. Your passion keeps on pushing you. And, eventually something good will become of it. Like what? Nobody will know until you make it happen. But don’t forget. Every single step of the way you are….. being yourself. It is not possible to fail by growing more human. The only way you can fail is by not trying.
It’s FREE…Come Get It
NOW BACK TO THE CONTINUING STORY
As always, I should mention this is a continuing story….so it might be worthwhile going back and getting a hint of what’s happening. What’s that? You don’t want to go back and read anything? Jeepers mister or missus. It’s like a free book. Why not snap the darn thing up before I start charging? Still not interested? Okay, I’ll give you a BINGO synopsis to help you out this time. What’s a bingo summary? It’s so quick and dirty it’ll make you yell BINGO! Then we’ll carry on where I left off last blog. Here we go. Here’s some things you missed.
- Is This Blog For You?
If you want Bliss, you came to the right place.
- Do You Know What To Do With Your Life?
Hardly anyone does, that’s why there’s a self-help industry.
- Does the Self-Help Industry Help?
Hardly ever, but this blog will tell you what to fix so it can.
- Don’t Want to Listen to Me?
No problem, you can pick goals off the shelf like I did and go get ‘em.
- What Happens if You Adopt Dreams?
You can die never knowing who you are, or turn to booze, or go postal. Your choice.
- Did I Scare You With That Last One?
Good. Maybe it’ll make you want to follow me to find your calling.
- What’s a Calling?
A calling is growing yourself your way until you blossom into a fully mature unique person who’s fulfilled all their potential….by listening to your inner voice.
- How Do You Discover the Way to Grow Yourself?
You follow the Plan you came with.
- Pardon Me?
You heard me.
- What the Heck Plan Am I Talking About?
If you don’t know the Plan I’m talking about, you have to dissolve fears of being judged to have it released back into your life. Yes I’ll teach you how here.
- “Who Cares!” You Say?
Fine. Do what I did. Give up Growing Completely by the age of ten. Which brings us back to the story. Now we’ll carry on with me lost in space.
- Yes I Left A Bunch of Stuff Out
Ticks you off does it? Gee whiz lazy-bones…..go read the doggone other blogs. Still don’t want to? Alright, come back tomorrow and continue watching me wander aimlessly.
