Passionate detachment
Attached to a business
She was an entrepreneur, passionate about building her business. She believed fervently in the purpose of the business, whose underpinning concept was unique, and in its potential to succeed. After a tough beginning, it was beginning to thrive. It was also gaining recognition in its field, and in fact had won an industry award.
But she was seriously run down and exhausted, and her health and wellbeing were suffering significantly. She felt like the business was running her rather than vice versa. She had trouble thinking about anything else than the demands of the company, she wasn’t sleeping, and she was far from fit. Her horizons were limited by the parameters of the work, and despite her passion, she felt trapped by it. She had a belief that it required all of her if it was going to succeed – but giving all of herself was destroying her. She was attached to it in every sense of the word.
She knew, in her more honest and brave moments, that something had to change if she – let alone the business – was going to sustain.
Passionate detachment
By chance, she came across the concept of passionate detachment, an idea which suggested an alternative possibility: that it might turn out OK if she didn’t pour the whole of herself into her work.
Rajiv Vij puts it beautifully: being able to be passionately detached is about ‘creating an equilibrium where we are passionately engaged in what we love, but are reasonably detached from the day-to-day outcomes of our actions ….we passionately take charge of living our dharma, our life’s purpose, while letting go of being invested in the external measures of our progress’ i.e. the outcomes we achieve.
Passionate detachment is also intrinsic to the concept of Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan’s Subject-Object shift: the capacity to move away from Subject (believing that our thoughts, assumptions, beliefs, needs and emotions are us) towards Object (detaching from them, so that we can step back, observe them, explore them, question them, and experiment with options for changing them – realising that we ‘have’, i.e. we’re in charge of – them and they don’t have us).
Standing back to see the whole
Adopting a measure of detachment means standing back to look at the bigger picture, to see the whole rather than only the parts, to engage with some of the interconnections and interdependencies, to contemplate changing one’s perspectives, to have the space to perceive new angles and new elements rather than getting sucked in to the detail – and maintaining the passion while switching off some of the emotional investment. Being absorbed in the detail can offer the satisfaction (and seduction) of immediacy and of apparent clarity, but – just as when you see things close up, you risk missing the context and the bigger picture – while you’re subject to the magnetic attraction of your passion (a situation which suggests that passionate attachment is at play) it’s hard to see anything other than the detail of the object of your passion.
Contemplating other possibilities
Detaching and detachment become easier once you contemplate other possibilities, other angles, other perspectives, other people’s opinions. To start with, it will likely take some conscious effort, and it might also need support in the shape of a mentor or coach. However, with an open mind (as Otto Scharmer frames it, suspending judgment to be open to possibilities, seeing with fresh eyes and being open to possibility and being curious) and an open heart (again, as Otto Scharmer says, seeing a situation in its entirety) the journey is definitely possible.
A quest to be recognised
The entrepreneur highlighted at the start of this piece realised that her mission to create a successful business was tied up with her quest to be recognised and seen by the rest of the world as a worthwhile person who had intrinsic value, and that in that quest, and those harshest of standards, no price had been too high – even the price of running herself into the ground. Her passion had become a cruel persecutor.
Small experiments
Courageously – for this was a totally new experience which entailed high stakes, and in her fearful perception, also entailed the possible failure of the business – she began to experiment on a very small scale with self-compassion, and with doing things she enjoyed – a short walk in the park in the spring sunshine, turning her phone off briefly at the weekend, stopping work in the evening two hours earlier than she was used to. And then she built on those experiments with more experiments.
A flourishing business
She noticed that her passion for the business was calmer and quieter, but no less vibrant, and that she was experiencing a new sense of having choice. She noticed that she was standing back and letting go of fixed expectations of people, events and situations, and that, in that process, she was able to see things about the business and in a different perspective, with a new clarity, that she hadn’t seen before. Perhaps most remarkably, she saw the business flourishing in a way that it hadn’t done previously. It felt to her for the first time that it had the prospect of longevity, a steadiness she hadn’t seen in it before – and figures showed that it was gradually thriving more and more. Meanwhile, she had a new sense of balance.
Almost without noticing, she had detached herself from being possessed by the business she loved. As the business was beginning to flourish, so was she: she and the business were both getting a life.
Photo by David Rotimi on Unsplash
