How to Become a Passion Master

Jerry Stocking offers a simple but effective technique for building passion in your life.

If you want more passion in your life, and I hope you do, it begins with learning to move your attention around. Once you can do so, you will have all the passion you want. You will be able to bring passion to relationship instead of trying to get it from them.

You will move up the passion food chain and become a supplier instead of a consumer of passion. People will gravitate to you—how can they help it? You are able to give more attention in a single moment than Superman can.

To illustrate how passion is an inside job, and how it connects to our attention, here’s a story about a man who thinks he has slept with too many lovers and a woman who believes she hasn’t, and how this difference created an opening for passion:

We were sitting on the back porch in a couples coaching session. I asked him “You aren’t as good a lover as you pretend to be are you?”

Indignant, he replied, “I have had a lot of sex and slept with a lot of women. I am experienced.”

“How many is a lot?” I asked semi-innocently.

He paused, “twenty.”

His quiet girlfriend rose to her feet, visibly upset. She was on her way anywhere but there, and she was going alone. In their 1 1/2 year relationship they hadn’t discussed his past partners. He knew that she had 2 lovers and she had no idea, until that moment, that he had ten times that many.

The image I got, as she withdrew into herself, was of a small child left alone with sharp scissors. I could see that her inner child had been activated in this withdrawal from her partner.

She abandoned us and became a victim of her own insecurities and judgements. I have seen many people do this, and seldom seen them come back quickly.

She was punishing herself brutally while focusing her attention inside. In effect, punishing herself for looking inside of herself. We see people do this all the time.

I interrupted. I said, “Bring your attention out.”

“Bring it out right now.” I insisted.

She did so.

I explained that she usually has her attention out and that focusing inward needs to be rewarded not punished.

“Often” I continued, “you have to focus your attention out when you want to focus it in and vice versa. This interruption of your normal pattern will wake you up like a gentle alarm clock and you will be more present.”

Focusing her attention out did the trick. It helped her to sit up straighter, and be more present and attentive. She became resourceful, even curious. From terribly upset to curious is like leaping a tall building in a single bound. Simply changing her focus of attention allowed her to be upset for less than a minute rather than the days it would normally take for her to get over such a blow.

It also opened a brand new possibility for her. As we sat there, in the aftermath of her upset, she focused her attention inward without an upset and then focused outward again. I call this little attention dance “attention push-ups.” They strengthen your ability to focus attention and at the same time allow you to spend less time upset and more time having fun. As she did a few more push-ups she experienced a flood of new possibilities. She smiled, then laughed sweetly.

Her partner sat smiling. He was happy and loving, perceptive enough to know that a calamity had just been averted. She looked at him with passion, ready for action and he looked back obligingly.

♦◊♦

Attention and Passion

I have been studying how to have more passion for the past thirty years. In that time I have watched many people discover the relationship between passion and attention.

I have watched them give their partner attention when they shouldn’t: indulging immature behaviors like throwing a tantrum or the remote control. And I have seen them ignore their partner when all that was needed was a touch or a look to make a difficult moment easier.

In this case I invited her to intentionally focus her attention, and her gaze outward.

Doing so gave her the moment she needed, it set her free to feel. It resulted in her opening to her Sweetie. She wiggled out of the corner she had raced into and settled down happy and resourceful.

You do it

Where is your attention focused? Is it in or out? This is a simple question without an obvious answer. Becoming more familiar with your focus of attention will make it more obvious and pave the road to passion.

Chances are quite good that your attention is partially in and partially out. Continue to notice whether it is in or out. If it is focused outward focus a little bit more of it outward. If it is in focused inward focus a little more of it inward.

Focusing more fully in and then out generates passion. It does so by creating big swings which result in you throwing your emotional weight around.

Passion is your emotional weight on the move.

With practice you will be able to flood your partner with attention, so much attention that she will swoon. You can do the same to yourself, bringing yourself to your emotional knees and at the same time making certain that you receive and exceed the attention you need.

It’s your passion, you might as well learn to tap into it whenever you wish. You can take your car for a ride: its your car. With a little practice you will be able to tap into your passion as easily as you hop into your car and put it in drive.

Becoming a passion master is as easy as mastering attention. Everybody wants attention and you will have an unlimited supply. More attention means more acceptance, less rejection, more rewarding relationships and mind-blowing sex. Become attention able and everybody will want you.

Photo: Flickr/Jon Rawlinson