Why You Should Stop Being So Passionate, and What to Strive for Instead

The world is dripping with passion. Everywhere you look, some influencer is telling you to chase your passion. If you’re not passionate about your work people say you’re in the wrong field. Without passion for your art and in your romantic relationships - what’s the point, right? 

Well, yogic philosophy would say very much wrong. *

Vairagya is a concept which the ultimate yogi strives for, and can be summarized as - dispassion or detachment. If you’ve never heard of this term before, you’re probably feeling how I felt when I first heard about it. 

It sounds really, well… 

boring.

But passion is the fire of life?!

Well, If we look at the true meaning of vairagya a little deeper, we can see that the quest for dispassion is really a path to alkalizing toxic, acidic thoughts. We do this by minimising the excess distractions in our life and realising what we can actually control. When we are passionate about a project in front of us, we ultimately become attached to this project. It becomes our life or our baby.

Unfortunately, along with the positive emotions surrounding this attachment, inevitably come the negative too. 

When we are attached to something, it means we are trying to control it. Either its present state (desperately hoping it will never change) or its future state (desperately trying to make the outcome align with our imagination). We’re fixating on the outcomes. Passion leads us to do everything in our power, so that we can get the outcome we are obsessed with. Those pesky all-consuming thoughts create a cage around us. When these fixations remain in the cage, they block the positive feelings like joy and contentment from getting in. 

I HAVE to get this job or I am literally doomed! 

You better celebrate my birthday as always this year or you will ruin my whole day!

Sure, if you get the job, you will feel satisfied. But only until the next obstacle comes along. Or if your best friend celebrates your birthday with you, what if she doesn’t next year? 

And so the spiral of attachment continues to grip you, pulling you to believe that if you allow your passion to control you, you can control your external environment.

These little examples above show how our perception of a situation can completely alter our inner ecosystem. The goal of vairagya is to detach from the situation, so whatever the outcome is, we trust that is the way it’s meant to be. 

Whether I get the job or not, I know I'll be just fine. 

I hope you can make it to my birthday, but if you have too much going on, no problem. We can organise to meet another time. 

No biggie. 

So, with this in mind.

I have an idea. 

What if we were to strive for contentment instead? 

It doesn’t quite sound as alluring as striving for passion but stay with me, I think the yogis are onto something.

Daydreamers

Rather than allowing our emotions to take over our whole being, what if we see them, we recognise them and we …accept the situation.

When something is desperately aggravating, it is so hard not to react and scream and throw your toys out of the pram. But if we were unattached to these dark by-products of passion, maybe we could see the frustrating situation, understand that it has nothing to do with us, and simply step aside. 

Let me break this down a little further.

If you feel an all-encompassing passion in a relationship, for example, and your partner does something that you didn’t expect, you will be lead to the feeling of disbelief. In this moment, your anger will peak and you will throw fury towards them (or create overthinking chaos in your mind) because they didn’t match your made up expectations. 

These reactions are often more frequent at the beginning stages of a relationship because, well, you don’t really know them, do you? At the beginning, we don’t have a full picture of who they really are. And so we fill in the gaps, with imagination of who we want them to be, and this is driven and upheld by your passion for the relationship and it’s potential. 

Bird’s eye view

If we view these situations from an outside perspective we can realise that we have zero control who a person is or how they act and…maybe, we can detach. 

Not quite as easy as pie though, is it?
But even by being aware of the concept of vairagya, maybe that’s the first step to living a more content, fulfilling life…

The hard part about this, I find, is that it means not being overpowered by the good emotions too. Excitement and impatience surrounding something great can be blinding. Think of the excitement you have getting something new. The impatience to buy a new car. Maybe if you’re too hyped up, your excitement will guide you, leading you to overlook rust under the car or those extra miles you know could be a problem. 

The thing with the really high highs is that… 

What comes up

Must come down

And often the rush of passion, excitement and euphoria is counteracted with a painful dip. 

A crash. 

A sinking. 

 A great example of this is a hangover. State-altering substances, whether that’s alcohol or drugs, synthetically force a high upon you when you take them. They alter your perceptions and inhibitions making you feel unstoppable by some count. And no matter how many times you’ve been through this experience, likely the surprise comes the next day when you feel like you could literally die. 

The sad thing about this is that as your perception has sprung back to it’s normal level, now you look back at the high thinking “Oh my God, did I actually say that out loud?” or perhaps worse, a sinking unknowing of what you’ve said at all. That flying feeling that once was, has crashed into a pool of despair, ‘hang’xiety’ and fear. All to level out, a few days later, to your baseline state. 

We can also see this play out in moments when we are disappointed. Say, an event that you were overwhelmingly excited for. Only to be disappointed when we finally get there. Whilst I’ve never been married (ah, one day), I've heard that this is quite a common feeling the day after the big day. So much preparation and a build up like no other - how could any day ever meet our exceptionally high expectations?

Jonny Wilkinson felt empty after finally winning the Rugby World Cup.

Taylor Swift’s emotional plummet after being rudely interrupted by Kayne West at her first VMA win.

It’s everywhere. The immense passion. The high highs. 

The crashing of our expectations. The low lows. 

By diminishing passion, and balancing our emotions, we heighten our awareness. We look at situations objectively. We maintain that baseline contentment and are happy whatever the outcome. 

Not ecstatic, but happy. 

We also learn to listen to our intuition. 

When we’re not clouded by the fixation on potential outcomes - but it would be so amazing if…

Then we can trust how we feel internally, that inner compass. We’re no longer living in a fantasy land filled with what ifs. 

We accept the battles, and tackle them head on, with poise and purpose. 

I also believe that when we avoid reaching the extremes, we can heighten the baseline level of contentment. So our natural state gradually becomes higher overtime, allowing us to live a more fulfilled life. 

The really important thing to remember here is that this doesn’t mean we are neglecting our emotions.

Tap into the body and understand where you feel the emotions specifically. When someone belittles you, do you feel it in your chest, your throat? Is it anger or fear or anxiety? And what’s the real root of this feeling? 

You can be sure someone's outburst isn’t anything to do with you. It is attached to their own passions, their own fixations on controlling their external environment. It is an opportunity to practice vairagya and not get caught up in the passion of the situation yourself.

Moreover, unlearning passion has nothing to do with not putting the work in, or not being dedicated to doing your duty. It’s simply not relying on control of the outcome. 

The more I practice yoga, the more I value peace in my life and the balancing of energies. After a period of extremes that just did not serve me, I’m getting better at detecting moments where that baseline contentment is being compromised, and working out how to regain it. 

Whilst I was initially very resistant to vairagya, to me right now, a constant feeling of contentment by far outweighs the tragic lows that follow the flying highs. 

It is a tremendously difficult feat but I’m sure it’s a journey worth venturing on. A journey that epitomizes every step, not just the goal. My goal is to remain grounded through the changing climates (and yet still stay in the sky). To attend to that complicated inner ecosystem and listen carefully to where it is guiding me.

Are you curious about the quest of vairagya or do you think the variety (of passion) is the spice of life? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Let’s continue the conversation.

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@inthesky.yoga

 *Vairagya, first coined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras