“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen.
There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.”
~ Frank Outlaw
There are four means by which we can bootstrap ourselves toward happiness through purposeful action. These include:
~ Alexander Green
“Without AMBITION one starts nothing. Without WORK one finishes nothing. The prize will NOT be sent to you. You have to WIN it. The man who knows HOW will always have a job. The man who also knows WHY will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but PRINCIPLES are few. The man who grasps PRINCIPLES can successfully select his own METHODS. The man who tries METHODS, ignoring PRINCIPLES, is sure to have trouble.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The real winners are not just those at the top but those who have come the farthest over the toughest roads. Your victory may never make the headlines. But you will know about it, and that’s what counts.”
~ Ernest A. Fitzgerald
“To practice Zen, you need deep roots.
People with deep roots are rare.
In the past anyone could practice Zen.
But not now.
Zen depends completely on yourself.
It’s much harder, especially now.”
~ Sheng-hi
There are exactly three places you can find your true passion: in your heart, mind and spirit.
Passion is personal, and it’s deep.
It’s about what you love to do without being forced to do it. It flutters like a butterfly within the heart, mind and spirit seeking to show you the way to go.In addition, the spirit of intuition is the very lifeblood of passion.
The things that, without force, light a flicker in your heart are the tell-tale signs of what you are passionate about.Unfortunately, many people choose to push away those signs to the dark recesses of their imagination because they lack the courage or wherewithal to pursue their true passion.
Of course, many people just opt to live within the cushion of comfort zones and prescribed lifestyles, and never really ever live their true passion.However, the major problem with trying to find your true passion is that you already have it, right within you.
Unfortunately, in today’s noisy world, choosing to ignore one’s passions is a cope out to survive life’s demands. Many people’s passions simply sit inside their hearts, mind and spirit as silently as an ignored grave.
For people in this category, the task of truly finding and living true passion can be a life changing endeavor.The starting point to find true passion is inside your heart. That’s where everything that makes up the body of passion lives.
So, simply put, if you want to find your passion you must first look inside.
Sadly, in the world today, there are millions of people who know what their passion is yet they fail to heed to its call.Simply knowing about your passion is therefore different from finding your true passion.
Finding your true passion demands that you do something about it, that you take action and pursue it relentlessly.
Passion is about those things that tickle you, energize you and fill you up with inspiration with very little effort on your part.
Once you know what your passion is - to find it, you must make it actionable so that you do something about it every day of your life.
The following three steps can help you to find your true passion:
1. Look to the little things.
Look to the little things that fire you up and drive you and make your eyes open wide. Things that give you that “Wow!” feeling. It could be anything from collecting stamps, fishing, collecting butterflies to feeding underprivileged children. There are as many passions as there are human beings. So, don’t hold back because you fear what people will say. Do what your heart tells you.
2. It’s a personal thing.
Undoubtedly, someone can influence you to have a passion for something but ultimately ownership of that passion is a highly personal affair. No-one can have your passion for you. To find your passion, just be you.
3. Passion is your heartbeat
When you seek to find your passion, be calm, and listen to the whispers of your heart. If you hear what they mean, then just follow it.
It’s certainly possible to have many passions. But, more importantly, once you have found out your passion, strive to do something about it, no matter how small.
The internet is a good place to start researching what you are passionate about.
And always remember, finding your true passion is not a rocket science: it all begins in your heart, mind and spirit.
“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-196 
A personal crisis usually entails circumstances that may be outside the scope of your usual lifestyle or normal existence.
The crisis - whatever it maybe - usually hijacks your ability to appreciate the greater whole, sucking you into a paralysis of over-analysing your predicament.
It entwines you into an endless spiral that makes you over-estimate the scope of the crisis. It literally leads your into a dark hole filled with scorpions of thought that sting you without any show of mercy.
But in that moment of crisis-induced blindeness, opportunity awaits like the proverbial light at the end of a dark tunnel.
First, you have to thoroughly accept that you are in a crisis, because denial only helps the setback to dig its claws into your being, denying you the opportunity to renew and revive.
Acceptance may seem like a sign of defeat at first sight but in reality surrender - even during wartime - carries with it a sigh of relief and the chance to begin again.
During that stage, it’s necessary to appreciate the fact that there’s nothing unique about your situation in the greater scheme of things.
Almost all personal setbacks have been endured by someone, somewhere, in the history of human existence.
If, for some reason, you blame yourself for the crisis, it is necessary to forgive yourself. Self forgiveness opens new channels that will help you to deal with the situation in a more mature manner.
If you stay bitter with yourself, you only help to make the pain grow, debilitating your chances to spot the opportunity to recover.
Indeed, a personal crisis can offer you an opportunity to assess your values, allowing you to have a second chance in life. In order to capture the opportunity that resides within a personal crisis, you have to be proactive rather than reactive.
Being reactive will exagerrate the situation in your imagination, and weaken your ability to rise up again.
The fact that you are alive, in itself, must be the greatest signal that there is still hope, and by being proactive, you will be able to find that special light and spark again. In effect, a personal crisis can help to give you a clear perspective about who you are.
For example, it can reveal your tenacity to survive against the odds. Thinking of a crisis in this manner can make you grow spiritually and mentally, and in the process, make you strong enough to be able to confront future setbacks. You also have to understand the power of time.
While you are in the midst of a crisis, time may seem stalled. But, thats a mere gimmick . It’s an illusion that the crisis creates in your being. The fact is time will move on.
And as the world has known since time immemorial, the passage of time is perhaps the greatest healer of any wound, physical and otherwise.
So accept that time will change, and in its stride, you will be able to find the beauty of life, once again. In addition, while in the grips of a crisis, you have to look deep down to one of the most fundamental of human qualities - choice.
No matter what will have happened, the choice remains in your hands to either crumble or recover in the face of the crisis.
Being humble can also be a power tool in your hands. Humility will help you to listen to the advice of people around you, if there are any.
It’s important to stress that humility in no way means submission to the crisis. Rather, being humble in a crisis will help you to commit to the most menial of tasks that can prove the key cornerstones of your recovery.
It allows you to learn new ways that will make you whole again. Humility is also a way towards inner peace, a way of quietening the demons that will be replete in the personal crisis.
Talking of demons, when you are blinded by a personal crisis, it can help to look outside yourself to a Higher Power.
The world is full of examples of people that looked to a Higher Power during times of crisis and came out better than before. Looking to a power outside yourself will not cost you anything but it can help you to better understand yourself, opening new insights into becoming a better you.
Whether you believe it or not, personal crisis can transform you into a better and stronger person that will have a greater appreciation of life, including people undergoing excruciating experiences in their own lives.
As psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross succinctly puts it:
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep, loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, an internationally renowned Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, said that he had wanted to become a monk at age nine after he saw an image in a magazine of Buddha sitting peacefully.
“The Buddha was sitting so peacefully on the grass, not on a lotus flower, but he looked very happy and peaceful,” said the 80-year-old monk, describing the magazine picture to the audience.
Hanh said the magazine portrait of the Buddha painted an idyllic and attractive picture in his young mind.
In a dharma teaching titled “Live Alive,” the Zen master, poet, peace and human rights activist talked about his background and his understanding and practice of Buddhism to approximately 800 people that gathered to listen to him at the city’s Wat Suan Dok temple.
At the age of 16, Hanh said, he entered the monastery to become a monk with the full support of his parents. But along the way to monk-hood, he hit an ideological crisis.
“There was only one time I wanted to quit being a monk. That was when I realized that many of the high monks around me did not practice what they preached,” Hanh told the gathering.
According to Hanh, though the high monks spoke of compassion and kindness, they did little to offer support to the hordes of people that lived in misery in his country.
“I wanted to quit the monastery to become a Communist fighter because I found the principles of equality and justice contained in that political movement very appealing,” he said.
But upon reflection, he decided not to follow the Communist route because of his firm belief in the process of nonviolence to resolve social problems.
In spite of upholding equality and justice, the Communist movement practiced violence as a means to create a just society.
However, Buddhism strongly encourages nonviolence - a concept that completely resonated with Hanh.
“The most tempting thing in the life of a monk is not a beautiful young lady, but ideology,” he said.
Deep in his heart, Hanh explained, he knew that Buddhism could offer tangible solutions to the problems that were evident in his war-torn country.
So began his journey to make Buddhism socially engaged and relevant through peaceful means, a journey that has made him famous with people from different religious backgrounds around the world.
As a result of his efforts, the monk was exiled from Vietnam to the United States in 1966, at the age of 40. He was banned by both the non-Communist and Communist governments in Vietnam for his role in undermining the violence he saw affecting his people.
While in the United States, he played a key role in inspiring the Vietnamese-American antiwar movement as well as peaceful resolutions to world problems.
In 1967, civil rights leader Martin Luther King nominated Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, describing him as “the gentle monk from Vietnam” whose ideas for peace could be beneficial to humanity, if applied.
“As a monk I have been able to transform the suffering in myself to help other people,” Hanh told the audience. “You cannot help another person to change unless you change, just like you cannot love another person unless you love yourself first.”
Hanh is credited with establishing the School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS) in Saigon after the Vietnam War. SYSS was a grassroots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, and resettled families left homeless during the war.
He also coined the term “engaged Buddhism,” which basically implies applying meditation practice and dharma teachings to situations of social, political and economic suffering and injustice.
“The life of a monk can be filled with love and love can help to make other people happy,” he said. “If you cannot understand the suffering of another person, you cannot offer help.”
Hanh added that many people around the world were sitting on heaps of burning coals, their lives characterized by tension, pain and sorrow.
He blamed stress for the manifestation of disease in people’s lives. “The teaching of Buddha shows how to remove the tension in your body.
The fact that Buddha sat on a lotus flower means wherever you sit in life, you can be free and happy,” he said. However, to achieve this requires a diligent and vigilant practice of mindfulness in moment-to-moment living.
“We are used to running in our lives. There’s a belief that happiness is impossible here, right now, but maybe in the future. We do not live deeply each moment. There’s only one moment when we truly arrive, that is, the present moment,” Hanh said.
The practice of mindfulness, he explained, demands that one be fully engaged with their place in the present moment, relieving oneself of the guilt of the past, the chattering voices of the present and the unrealized concerns of the future.
“If you bring your body to the present moment, you have available to you all the treasure of the world,” he said.
The present moment is the only place you can reach the future, he added.
“Every step you take should bring you home. So invest 100 percent of your mind and body into each step to be able to arrive fully so that you can touch the wonders of life.”
On how to achieve enlightenment, Hanh told the audience:
“There is no way to enlightenment. Enlightenment is the way. Every small step if taken in full mindedness leads to small enlightenment, which will lead to the big enlightenment.”
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Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha
