Apparently the greeks never wrote obituaries, all they did was ask if the person lived with passion. Passion,whether in love, work, life can both make us look foolish but also make us feel and look great. I wonder how many people we know so well today, Gallileo, Einstein, Da Vinci would have still been known if they hadn’t lived lives of passion, passion for what they really believed in and felt.

So what IS the biggest passion killer? Well this past week I’ve come across it twice, in 2 completely different scenarios and its the fear of rejection. On many occasions when I talk to people about having/maintaining confidence it comes down to the fact that to varying degrees we are all afraid of being rejected, there are very few people that can honestly live their lives without caring what other people think about them and without wanting to feel loved and accepted by those around us.

I’ve said before that confidence comes from finding out exactly who you are, your values and beliefs and really liking what you discover, its the acceptance that you are completely true to yourself and you are the very best version of yourself that you can possibly be. What is it about rejection that people fear after all? Do we expect that everyone we meet we instantly like? Life just doesn’t happen like that, we meet hundreds and thousands of people on a continual basis and some we like, some we dont, some we match with and some we don’t. Of course its easy to think about rejection in a logical way in every day life like this but when it comes to big emotions such as relationships and love its a whole different ball game…… (see what I did there with Wimbledon on in the background?)

Even the best of us build new relationships based on past experience, we just cant help bringing our baggage and issues along with us, so what would it take to leave all those suitcases firmly at the end of the road each time you embark on a new journey? Well personally for me its learnings and acceptance. I take the positive out of each situation, what did I learn in that relationship, what do I need to know in order to improve things next time, what would I have done differently? Notice these are all learnings about me, how I can improve myself. I also like to acknowledge and completely accept that I will never know what was going on for the other person in the relationship, I will never 100% know how they felt about me, how they felt about themselves,what their actions meant or what life journey they have planned, I acknowledge that, accept it and let it go because that is about their journey, their life and not mine.

So how can you live with passion? Decide today that there is no such thing as rejection, just go for things 100%, do it from the heart, and throw those fears out the window, because I guarantee that all the times you do, the joy,the memories and the experiences  will make the very few rejections pale into insignificance…..

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living “- Nelson Mandela

Claire xoxo