Feelings Should Trump Emotions

I spent many years working with teens and had countless informal counseling sessions during that time. One of the things I often tried to help teens do was draw a distinction between feelings and emotions. Emotions are fleeting, flashes in the pan that come and go, changing with the wind. Feelings, on the other hand, run much deeper and are intricately tied to our experiences, our knowledge, and our basic beliefs and understandings of creation and the creator.

Remember the first time you held the hand of that special someone? Your heart raced and the butterflies in your stomach went crazy! You would have given anything to spend the rest of your life together!

That's an emotion... and it's fleeting. A month later, holding hands doesn't do anything except get your hand all sweaty. What you felt before wasn't love; it was some form of excitement, but nothing deeper than that.

After you've been married for 13 years, you argue once in a while (but quickly forgive), you hold hands without thinking when you're walking into the grocery store, you really enjoy just being in the same room watching TV or reading a magazine, and you can't even imagine what life would be like with anyone else... that's a feeling. It's love that runs deep, is based upon experience, knowledge of the other person, and an understanding of one's own beliefs. At some level, it is also based upon a conscious decision -- a choice -- and we continue to make the choice every day.

As I look at successful people around me, it seems that passion is an emotion, but it stems from a choice that people have made. And the more deep-seated the feelings behind that choice, the more likely it is that passion will erupt.

It is very rare to find someone who is passionate all the time, regardless of their "cause". But when they've chosen their cause in line with their fundamental beliefs, they will continue to succeed even during those times when the passion isn't there. They will keep moving forward, even when most people would lose energy and fizzle out. They will push, and push, and eventually something will change and the passion will return, for at least a while.

Passion is an emotion and is usually fleeting. But if you make your choices based upon what truly matters to you, then you'll have the drive to make it through during times when passion fails. And that is a critical key to success, because feelings should trump emotions every time.

Train hard and pray harder,
Brandon

Passion!

Passion. It's something you read about all the time. The small business owner who continues to thrive in this down economy. The athlete who does amazing things without the use of performance enhancing drugs. The missionary who braves jungles and armed militia to bring medicine to small villages. All of these people are passionate about what they're doing. They feel so strongly about their chosen endeavor that it gives them strength and energizes them every day when they arise, ready to take on the world all over again!

Passion! That's what we need in order to succeed at following our dreams!

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Don't you wish you felt that way about something? If you do, that's wonderful, and I'm extremely happy for you. Unfortunately, most people don't have that sort of fire in their souls. And when they do find something to be passionate about, those feelings are often far too fleeting.

Want some concrete examples? Start randomly checking out the blogs available on Blogger.com or other blogging platforms. Go back to their earliest archives, and you'll almost always see a flurry of activity, with tons of posts, links and trackbacks. But as you continue through the archives, witnessing the evolution of the blog, you'll almost certainly see the posts become fewer and farther between... until the posts end altogether. Obviously the blogger started out with passion, but fizzled out in the end.

Is passion sustainable? Are there things we can do to stay passionate about something? Or is there something else that drives people, and passion is merely an outward expression of it?

A few things to think about until next time.

Train hard and pray harder,
Brandon