Passion makes us better, but obsession can destroy us

Pbadion can be a force that fills you with energy and wholeness, it is the raw material with which companies are built, art is created and Olympic medals won. However, if we do not pay attention, pbadion can also become a destructive force, leading to pain and anguish. Understanding how this happens, and how it can be avoided, is essential for our mental well-being, as well as for living productively and pbadionately.

We do not usually celebrate the stories of a pbadion that has derailed, but we just have to look carefully to recognize that they are everywhere. In general, the plot looks something like this: you start an activity and you are born with love for it, so you do it more often. With time improvements and start to have positive results. You receive praise, recognition and rewards. Little by little, perhaps without realizing it, you start to be more pbadionate about external validation than the activity itself.

Psychologists distinguish these two aspects of pbadion, one harmonious and the other obsessive. In a harmonious pbadion, you are absorbed into an activity because you like how you feel. A pbadionate writer harmoniously written because he loves the art of writing. In an obsessional pbadion, you engage in an activity through external rewards and recognition. A writer obsessed with the pbadion for writing because he wants to boast published stories and achieve a status of maximum success in sales.

Some studies show that obsessive pbadion is related to exhaustion, anxiety, depression and unethical behavior. One of the reasons is that enthusiasts are obsolete and link their personal value to results that are often beyond their control. Being pbadionate – or, better, being enslaved by obtaining an external result that you can not control creates a volatile and fragile sense of identity. The consequences are often disastrous.

Jeff Skilling of energy company Enron and Elizabeth Holmes of biotechnology company Theranos have led two of the largest corporate frauds in recent US history. Before the scandalous fall of their societies, they were both celebrated for their pbadion and obsessive determination, which Holmes called a very important virtue. Alex Rodriguez and Lance Armstrong, two of the world's most cheating sportsmen, were once two of the most pbadionate competitors. When Forbes magazine asked A-Rod what his top three professional tips were, the first thing he mentioned was: "Discover your pbadion". What all these individuals have in common is that their pbadions have derailed due to an incessant focus on results and, when these have not met their exceedingly high expectations, they have adopted unethical behavior to reduce the gap between reality and their ideals.

Even if you have legitimate success, like these early sports entrepreneurs and heroes, if this success stems from an obsessive pbadion – motivated by the desire for results, recognition and external rewards – the problems will appear soon. This is because people usually want more. More money. More glory More medals. More followers

Once you feel the pbadion for external validation, dopamine, the neurochemical substance badociated with the urge to exercise and addiction, floods your nervous system and almost prevents you from feeling satisfaction. You are plunged into a vicious circle in which you must always work harder and put your well-being in the hands of the whim of your most recent result. Long before psychologists defined obsessional pbadion, the Buddha called it suffering.

Unless you have perfect genetics, deep mental training or years of spiritual guidance, being totally indifferent to external results is unrealistic. All athletes feel excitement when they win. All writers feel good when their books are sold. All sellers like to close a deal. Even Facebook and Twitter users feel ticklish when they receive a new request from a friend, a subscriber or the like. The key is to recognize these emotions from their onset and keep them under control, to prevent them from becoming the predominant forces behind your pbadion.

When you sit down to write, sit down to write without thinking about the number of books you would sell. When you go to work, make a significant contribution without asking if you will be promoted or receive a bonus. When you train and compete, do it to improve and dominate your body, not to win prizes or to have better scores. When you love – be it a couple, a friendship, a child, a pet – do it to cultivate a special relationship, not because you want to represent your relationship on social networks so everyone can see it . In other words, your pbadion should not come from outside, but from your inside.

This type of pbadion, harmonious, is related to health, happiness and, in general, the satisfaction of living. Harmonious pbadion does not come automatically, especially in today's hyperconnected world and with a culture so oriented towards comparison with others. Pbadion should rather be considered as a continuous practice, as a force that must be treated with care.

Some key elements of this practice can be particularly useful:

– Do not judge yourself or compare yourself with others. Compare yourself with previous versions of yourself and with the effort you are making today.

– Follow the 24-hour rule. After a great success or a resounding failure, give yourself a day to celebrate the success or regret the defeat; Then go back to yours. Resuming work on this issue allows to put in perspective successes and failures.

– Focus on the process before the results. Do not evaluate whether you have reached an external goal or not, but how you did the process to achieve it. The results are a very small part of life, almost everything else is the process.

– Accept a slight decline in favor of significant gains. If you plan for the future and focus on a life of progress rather than specific results at a given moment, then failure ceases to be a terrible thing; it can instead become a rich source of information and an opportunity for growth.

– Think regularly about your overall goal. Thinking about why you started with this pbadion helps you to be guided by your intrinsic motivation.

Let's say that pbadion can be a gift or a curse. The good news is that it depends on you.

Copyright: 2019 New York Times News Service