To be Passionate or be Safe?

We were passionate. We couldn’t see it then because we needed to eat and sleep. Then we were big enough to get around: somewhere around 18 to 24 months old. The world was our oyster! Life was joyful!

Then it began to wear away: “Behave yourself!” in some form or another. We became obedient or paid the price.

How do get back to that passion? That excitement for life? How we decide that to live with passion is more important than living safely. Before we are too infirm to do so. Do we choose to live from fear or from passion? Certainly, to live and love from passion requires us to experience pain that harbinger of death the we wish to avoid at all cost. Maybe, the cost is too high. Maybe, to live from avoiding pain, we hardly ever get to experience the deeper experiences of joy and love that are possible. What your choice?  What would be the doingness of such a choice?

I know that I have too often chosen to be safe, to survive, to live but not to thrive.

I have lived from the idea that before I share myself I have to have gotten it right. That would be safe. Not much passion there, though. 

More later?

Courage and Principles

Doing the work of organization development takes courage as we attempt to shift a culture that does not want to shift. In particular, the diversity work (as an aspect of OD) takes particular courage as there are sharp emotions in play which give rise to fear. When we act forthrightly in the presence of fear, we are called courageous. What, then, helps create courage? Principle! “Principles are the main ingredient of courage. A (person) with principles can get the better of fear.” This is from a Scott Turow character in his novel Ordinary Heroes.

Why else would we act in a direction other than where our fear would point us?