Doing what you love and doing and what you’re good at…..
mmmmmmmmm, easy to say and difficult to do and the more I experience the more I see the operative word being DOING. It is in the doing that we come alive.
Thankfully Matt has been on to me for ages about this and the penny is just beginning to drop and for anybody who is interested Buckminster Fuller’s concept of “precession” sums up the importance of doing…of being in motion.
Below, is an edited summary of some material I found on dailyhappyliving.com (check it out) which gives a really accessible explanation of precession…….
YOU & PRECESSION
What can You & I do to use precession to our advantage? Let us analyze the example of the Bee Gathering Honey. Does the bee know it is helping the universe in its task of preserving plant life? No! Does the bee need to know that it is helping the universe in order to get its reward? No! All it has to do, is go after its desire or goal (to collect honey) and it will automatically be provided with its rewards!
Similarly I would like to point out that we human beings are also `programmed for happiness’ by nature (or the universe or God)! So all we have to do in order to get good precession is to go after our goals and dreams with a passion – knowing that when we pursue our purpose, we are actually helping the universe in our own unique way!
Just think about it. If you are happy, you naturally spread this happiness: your spouse is happy, your children are happy, your family is happy, your office colleagues are happy to see you! If you are depressed, you spread your depression to one and sundry! A happy person does not get into fights or start wars! So it is good to go after your own happiness.
Imagine what would happen if the bees were to go on strike and stopped gathering honey. The pollination of flowers would not take place and plants would eventually die out! (This idea was explored a little in the movie `Bee Story’.) However this won’t happen because the bees are `programmed’ by nature to go out and gather honey and don’t have a choice in the matter!
However we humans have been given the choice to follow our `program’ and be happy or go against nature and be miserable! If we keep saying that this world is `illusion’ and try to avoid living life to the fullest now – hoping somehow that will qualify us to live a better after-life, then we are not unlike the bees that go on strike! We are going against nature and God! Thus if we persist in living a miserable life in this lifetime (which is against nature), we have no chance of being happier in the next life!
So my suggestion to you if you are an average person is to go after your dreams with your whole heart and soul knowing that the universe is for you. You will know if you are going in the right direction, by the precession you create. If you have good precession, nature will pat you on your back by giving you `lucky circumstances’ and you will achieve success and happiness easily.
If on the other hand you are off track and you create bad precession, then the same universe may give you a `knock’ on the head rather than a pat on your shoulder to get back on course again! Setbacks and lucky breaks are just nature’s way of giving you both`negative or positive feedback’ – so that you can steer in the correct direction!
…..get in motion……Andy
This reminds me of a scene in the Tim Burton film Ed Wood. Ed Wood is regarded as being one of the worst film makers of all time – yet making films is absolutely what he is driven to do, and the energy and happiness with which he pursues it is infectious.
At one point in the film he is suffering a knock back and meets the young Orson Wells who elevates him once more with “Why spend your life making other peoples dreams”
This post is beyond awesome. I am always wondering what to do and what not to do so I will follow some of these tips.