Spark-Sparkle-Spectacle: Do What You Love.
Your love comes alive...
Welcome to Spark-Sparkle-Spectacle, today’s metaphorical exploration of facets of our human experience.
In case you’ve forgotten, this newsletter is about the:
Spark – Sparks are those little catalysts, beautiful ideas, inspiring posts, flashes of truth that ignite the imagination.
Sparkle – Sparkles are ways the Sparks multiply in a still-relatively-small context. Think: beautiful ideas, inspiring posts or sparks of truth revealed in individual hearts, families, and communities.
And Spectacle – Spectacles are saturated with grandeur and largesse. They are Sparkles transforming into wholesale change in the world. Think: ideas that bloom in individual hearts, families, and communities inspiring global movements.
The Spark: Do what you love.
I recently read an article entitled “Apple CEO Tim Cook Says What Separates Successful People From Everyone Else Really Comes Down to 4 Words”. I hate this title. I started reading it with my back up, prepared to find wrong with the concept of identifying people as successful when you run a zillion-dollar company.
But I couldn’t find fault with his four words: Do what you love. He followed that up with “put your whole heart into it, and then just have fun.”
It’s a great concept that can confer success on anyone. It’s the epitome of abundance thinking, where there is space for everyone and there’s enough success to go around for everyone.
Spark ignited.
The Sparkle: Doing what you love can manifest a whole lot of joy. In your own heart. In your family. In your community. In your province (or state! or region!). Here’s a tiny list to consider:
Do you love spending time with children? Sit and read with a child for a few minutes and watch their eyes light up with wonder and delight. It’s especially poignant when they read to you and your eyes do the same. Success.
Do you love playing team sports? Lace up your shoes and join your mates on the pitch, feeling the thrill of competition and belonging to a group with a clear objective. Success.
Do you love making people laugh? Tell your friends a joke and watch the joy that a big belly laugh and tears escaping their eyes brings to them. Success.
Do you love helping people through hard times? Give someone a fiver or a gift card without strings and trust them to use it to meet their greatest need at that moment. Receive their gratitude with grace and say a little prayer that the little might be multiplied in their life. Success.
Do you love mutual sharing with your loved ones? Tell them about a struggle and watch them come around you with support. Better yet, listen to theirs and feel the weight lift off their shoulders when you come around them with support. Success.
Do you love figuring out the solution to complex problems? Mobilize your big brain to tackle homelessness or the opioid epidemic or any number of vexing issues in your city and watch the people in the midst of those crises welcome your ideas with appreciation. Success.
Do you love creating or fixing things? Knit an exquisite pair of socks and gift them to your mother-in-law for Christmas. Watch her eyes well up with appreciative tears for your hard work and the beauty that you added to her life. Success.
That’s a big list of successes. And a very small list of things that you might love to do. What is yours and what does success look like when you do it?
Sparkle revealed.
The Spectacle: Invincible success is found at the intersection of passion and service.
You have to find the intersection of doing something you're passionate about and at the same time something that is in the service of other people. I would argue that, if you don't find that intersection, you're not going to be very happy in life.
Tim Cook
Imagine with me, for a second, how the world might look if we define success by our passion merging with our ability and willingness to serve. What if the thing we love doing automatically benefits others, because that’s part of how we were designed to work together? What if what we love doing honours the world in such a way that it invites others to do the same?
As I mentioned before, I enjoyed Tim’s perspective because it challenged me to strengthen my own abundance mentality, rather than perpetuating the notion that my success is only realized if I climb an ill-defined ladder, or have the most retirement savings among my contemporaries.
Fresh definitions of success are up for grabs, and I plan to claim mine. Doing what I love will bring people joy, re-introduce them to kindness, and inspire them to grow.
What will happen when you do what you love?
Spectacle inspiring.
A spark can become a sparkle. A sparkle can become a spectacle. Let’s create a spectacle together.
