What drives you to create and innovate beauty into your life experience? Do you consider yourself a person on a mission? Can you identify at least one thing that makes you light up on the inside so much so that once you engage in that activity you lose yourself in it? If you identify positively with any of these questions, then you are a fortunate person, because you have likely experienced the super power of activating your passion-drive. And as renowned coach, author and researcher Brad Stulberg says, “One of the best feelings in the world is losing your attachment to yourself.”

Human beings are so made that whenever anything fires the soul, impossibilities vanish. A fire in the heart lifts everything in your life.

The Maxwell Daily Reader

I get lost in my passion-drive when I go for long training runs. Or when I sit down to write something meaningful for myself or others to read. While I enjoy losing myself in both of these activities, the goals I have in mind for myself during the activity can sometimes leave me gasping for air…literally and creatively speaking. Even though setting goals is a vital task towards goal achievement, having strong attachments to goal outcomes may often take us to the lands of disenchantment. It is during those times of shortcomings, that we may find our selves despairing if we identify to strongly with the outcome. If we believe that achieving is the ultimate end and reward of our striving, we may give up on ourselves too soon. If we believe that failure is to be avoided at all costs, then the beauty of our striving is stripped of its value to strengthen us in becoming better, more compassionate versions of our selves. So this is why holding our driving desires (goals) loosely is assistive as we journey towards our prize. At least this is what I have discovered.

“In short, when your goal is simply to get better, you set yourself up for a lifetime relationship with your passion, which no longer becomes something you do but rather someone you are. It’s a relationship that can withstand the gravest failures, the greatest successes, and the passage of time itself. For many of the most passionate people, getting better is about becoming stronger, kinder, and wiser.

-Brad Stulberg

While in my goal-driven modes I have found it very helpful to detach myself from the outcomes of any given day’s drive. I have the goal in mind when I begin, but as I go along, if I focus to strongly on an outcome, this mindset blinds me to the joy of the day’s journey and makes obstacles of every interruption which stunt my energy and creative flow. I cannot flow in my activity if I am holding tight to that thing I believe must achieve. However, when I am able to set aside my need to acquire those things I’m chasing, and instead transition my mind towards stillness of purpose, I find myself bobbling along in peaceful bliss-drive. Whether I run or write, I am learning to settle into myself, into my breathing, into my non-thinking and non-judging state of being. It is from this place of quiet streaming that my consciousness (or rather my sub-consciousness) is given wings to escape the cages of impossibilities. In this place of all knowing quietness, this is where I find confidence to believe in my dreams. In this place of streaming consciousness, I am what I am moving towards. So whether I am accumulating miles or word counts, my passion-drive propels me onward towards the promised land of beautiful possibilities.

“I think part of what allowed me to accomplish what I did on Sunday is just always looking forward to the future, so there wasn’t the pressure that this was the end-all-be-all for me. I have no idea where my running career at this level is going to go and where the story is going to end. Maybe the best is yet to come. It’s a beautiful and exciting thing to get up every day and see what I can do.”

Keira D’Amato – new American women’s record holder in the marathon distance (January 2022).