Do It To Do It

by Race Bannon on May 21, 2011

Currently I am reading a book that’s changed my perspective more than I had imagined it would, and I haven’t even finished reading it yet. Don’t Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now by Joe Robinson offers us the all too often ignored wisdom of pursing our passions and interests in life for no other reason than because they bring us joy and full engagement with life. Common sense perhaps, but few of us do it.

I have historically been a very performance driven person. And I’ve been obsessively drawn to goals, objectives, measurements and life planning strategies that quite frankly have proven only modestly successful at best. My life is wonderful, but I can’t honestly point to my past performance or goal focused mindset as the reason. There just doesn’t seem to be much of a correlation. This book helps explain why.

As the book points out, everyone has three, basic core needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. It is only by heeding our intrinsic motivations for our activities, interests and passions do we engage optimally with life and thus optimize our sense of fulfillment as well. This feeds our three core needs and makes us much happier.

This is a great book. Don’t be dissuaded by the abundance of personal stories or his heavy use of his experience with samba dancing as illustrative of his contentions. They all relate in a rather beautiful way as you read the book.

Highly recommended. If you read it, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

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