Over the past couple weeks I have been discussing how to maintain a positive outlook while overcoming smaller difficulties in our lives with the help of my handy 4 P’s (Peace, Perspective, Passion, Purpose). Up until this point I have discussed both Peace and Perspective in separate posts. If you haven’t checked them out or want a refresher here is a link to both:
I like to look at those two steps as the foundation of achieving our positive mindset. If we think of the most beautiful building we know, the foundation will never be the first thing to come to your mind, but is arguably the most important part. It keeps the building strong and stable even during the toughest storms. Our positive mindset can be thought of a lot like a beautiful building. To have this beautiful building we have to spend the proper amount of time building our foundation. This often requires lots of digging and self reflection, but by doing this we build a very sturdy platform to begin the construction of the beautiful aspects of our building. And what makes up beautiful the aspects of our building; our passions.
It is so important for us to have passions in our lives. They are what make our soul sing, and put infectious smiles on our faces. They are what make our true beauty shine through because they ultimately make us happy. So when we are going through difficult times it seems only obvious that we should use our passions to help us get through. The problem is we often don’t always see this obvious remedy because outside stressors aren’t allowing us to think correctly.
This is why building our foundation is so important. If we were to just jump right into using our passions to combat of our difficult situations without building our foundation, (“the storms in our lives”) the passions might provide a temporary relief, but ultimately our building would crumble from the storm. What could make it worse is it might create a sense of doubt towards using that passion again in combating future storms.
You may notice the photo at the top of my post for today is a photo I have already shared with you. The reason I did this is this picture has a story behind it that illustrates using passion to help overcome my struggles.
As many of you know I was struggling with the confinement my recovery was placing on me awhile back. As the weather began to get nicer, I had already built my foundation because I knew the nice weather was comingJ. This meant it was perfect time to start adding the beauty to my building and I decided to start back up one of my favorite passions, photography.
I got my camera and went out for a walk one afternoon to the park on the water near where I live. To my surprise I found nothing I wanted to take photos of; I just couldn’t get inspired or see creatively. I went home a little dejected, but completely upset because I did achieve my secondary goal of exercise. But my building wasn’t a beautiful cathedral after that walk, more like dilapidated bungalow. J
I didn’t let it get me down; I realized since it was my first time out my creative eye completely wasn’t firing on all cylinders yet. The spring colours hadn’t come in yet, so landscapes were fairly flat. This made my choice of only bringing my shorter lens not the best choice. In addition, there was lots of wildlife around, so again my longer lens would have been better. This ability to perspective into my disappointment was only possible because I had already a strong foundation from doing it before. The more often we practice these steps, the more natural doing them will become. So instead of the storm crumbling my building, my foundation was strong and which allowed my passion to not be destroyed.
I decided to go back out the next day with my longer lens to get some bird shots. While out though I decided to do something I had never tried before. This ended up becoming my favorite shot of all the photos I shot that day. I had never tried candid street photography or black and white before and this image I decided to do both. This one image has sparked such a renewed passion in my photography. I was actually out yesterday trying to get some more black and white shots.
The reason why I shared this story is in the past I have been a big promoter of pushing ourselves to get new passions and hobbies. But this week I learnt we don’t always have to make huge changes to our passions to reap the rewards. Just some minor tweaks with our existing passions maybe all we need to look at them from a different perspective (I sure love my P words J ) and help add more beauty to our buildings.
For me, this one photograph has changed everything. Now when I out and about my creative eye is coming back in full swing. I see potential photographs all over the place now, which for me means I am seeing the true beauty of our world and I am at my happiest. Now my passion is even greater, which has only helped to create that much stronger of a positive attitude and much more beautiful building.
Are there any times in your lives where you just needed a re-charge on a passion to rekindle it? Or did you ever not focus on your foundation first only to have your building toppled by the storms in your life?
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