Dispassion? Yes.

"Happiness is the joy you feel in moving towards your potential," says Harvard teacher and researcher Shawn Achor. Really? What about the advice to find and follow my passion? Or this fave question: "What are you passionate about?"

Think about this thing passion, though. It's essentially painful. The word itself means suffering. We talk about passion as if it's a fixed thing that we must pursue. Only for it to consume us. Burn-out.

Dispassion, then: Which could be the simpler choice to do the right thing. To care. To care and apply myself. No longer me pursuing blinding desire. Rather, looking outward with kindness and skill. Clarity.

Happiness: Some research suggests that happiness is fifty percent genetics, ten percent external circumstance, and forty percent intentional. Intentional choices for meaning, reflection, learning, solitude, contributing, creating versus consuming. No mention of passion. Just exploration, process, discoveries along the way. Opening into wonder. 

As for the right thing: For me, I know what is right when I let in my genuine goodness. Not an easy knowing, but available nevertheless. This love. This dispassion of merely knowing love-ability and goodness. This quiet happiness. A path to contribute, to make healthy choices. Because I genuinely care. 

Happiness flows from dispassion, which is nothing but deep care beyond personal attachment. A way of being that's independent of external conditions. Just us ever moving towards our potential. We can do the greatest work from this space. (Can you imagine, for a job interview: Plus points for your dispassion?)

Dispassion lands you in what the Japanese might call your ikigai. Your reason of being. To live in ikigai is to wake up everyday with your blood singing, ready to get out of bed. Because it is the right thing to do. You want to.

Over and over again, resilient, consistent, deliberate. Alive and dynamic. The late celebrated diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (1754-1838) advised his team: Surtout, pas trop de zêle (Above all, not too much zeal).


Questions then: What if for the next week you practice caring without attachment? What will you discover?  


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Listening as responsibility.

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Loving the clay