If you’re like me, you’ve done some daydreaming about your passion. Maybe you have a vision board, or keep a journal or scrapbook. (Maybe you rehearse your acceptance speech before you fall asleep each night. *wink*)

Maybe your passion is only a snapshot in your mind. In it, you’re doing your thing and it’s a “success.” People love it. They buy it or use it or applaud for it. (Or, maybe you just get to do something you love a lot more often. *smile*)

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Having a vision is important. But, if we spend too much time imagining our passion (rather than taking steps to achieve it), we can create a skewed or even unattainable picture of what success at our thing looks like. Or we let others tell us what success at our thing should look like.

This perfect picture can stop us from moving forward and can keep us from recognizing the progress we’re making.

We only see our dreams all dressed up for a night on the town (not in their bathrobes washing the dishes.)

Don’t get discouraged when success doesn’t show up dressed the way you expect, learn to be flexible.

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Being flexible doesn’t mean being fuzzy or wishy-washy about what you want to accomplish. It’s not about compromising your passion’s integrity, it’s about looking for ways to pursue your passion that you can control.

Being flexible allows you to adjust — instead of abandon — your plans when circumstances change. It allows you to set small cumulative goals you can achieve and to acknowledge (heck, maybe even celebrate!) your progress.

Being flexible about your definition of success allows you to pursue your passion more fully. It makes it easier to succeed.

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I recall watching Whoopi Goldberg respond to a question from an audience member on the show the Actor’s Studio many years ago. This person asked her what he needed to do to be an actor. Goldberg replied, “Act.”

She went on to say that finding places to act and ways to work on becoming a better actor were easy. Trying to get famous for acting was a completely different story and involved a lot of luck.

So work to separate doing your passion from getting recognition for doing your passion.

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Spontaneous singing is all about being flexible. When something isn’t working, you explore it and find a way around it. Or you stop and wait for what’s happening around you to change. (But that’s kind of like getting locked out of your house and not looking to see if you have a spare key. If you know somebody else will be home soon, it might make sense to wait. If you live by yourself, you might want to move on to Plan B.)

Usually, you try something else. If that doesn’t work, you try another something else.

You have your vision. Keep adapting and refining the way you do your thing. Keep walking toward success.

(Just make sure you’ll recognize it if it shows up wearing its bathrobe.)

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Remember, Songtaneous is this SATURDAY, November 7 at 2pm. And for those of you in or near the Twin Cities, I’ll be performing at the Artists’ Quarter Friday and Saturday night.

You’ve decided, you’ve committed, now it’s time to start talking.

Yup. Out loud. Where people can hear you.

(Believe me, I understand that this can seem like a very good reason NOT to tell people what you’re working on. *smile*)

Talking about our passions is scary.

It’s scary because we’re vulnerable, exposed. Because it really, really matters. And we don’t want to mess it up.

When your passion or idea lives only in your head, it’s safe. Safe from criticism, safe from questions. Safe from … reality.

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Talking about your passion helps remove the scary. It normalizes it. It’s not that your thing becomes ordinary or less special, it just gets less terrifying to tell people about it. And, you get better at talking about it. Clearer and more concise.

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It’s like  soloing in an improv.

I’ll get an idea (or just the seed of an idea) and I don’t know if it will work. In my perfect world, I could have my ideas all figured out before I shared them with anyone. That’s not all bad. There’s a time for letting thoughts ripen or percolate.

BUT … Keeping quiet makes working out the idea harder because other people can’t respond to what I’m doing. More important, they can’t support what I’m doing.

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There’s another problem with working it all out ahead of time.

A lot of the time you can’t.

Sure, I can have a brilliant idea for a solo, but if I never give voice to the idea, I can’t really figure out how it goes. You have to sing it  to hear it. You have to tell a story to find out how it ends.

Talking your idea through with someone else helps sort it out. Comments and questions from other people help you organize your thoughts or find solutions you couldn’t have come up with on your own.

Remember, you get decide how you want to talk about your thing. You can ask for feedback. You can tell people you’re not ready for feedback. You can meet one on one or organize a think tank. Start with safe people — family, friends — and then widen your talking circle to include peers, mentors and experts.

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When people know what you’re doing, they can help you. They’ll send you ideas, contacts, and links to web sites. They’ll do some of the work for you. They’ll tell their friends about you.

And when the subject of your passion comes up, so will your name.

“Looking back, all the time and steps I took to make that decision were really about getting ready to make and keep a commitment.”

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As I wrote this last week, I realized that the line between deciding and committing is very, very fine. Once you’ve decided, you have to commit to act upon the decision. Because a decision without a commitment is pretty pointless.

Committing takes away excuses and escape routes and simultaneously frees up energy to go after what you want. It also brings energy toward you. You’re no longer a moving target. The universe knows your address and it can find and send things your way. Mentors, classes, fans, resources and opportunities (yes, sometimes even money *smile*).

And, committing makes future decisions easier. With each subsequent decision, you need only ask, “Does this align with what I’ve already decided?”

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Of course, committing takes courage. And discipline.

Over 100 posts ago, I decided to write this blog about spontaneous singing. I freely admit I had no idea how to do it. I barely had my web site online and I don’t think I’d even heard of WordPress.

I wasn’t even really sure why I was doing it. I just knew I wanted to explore the life lessons I was learning from improv. And I decided that I wanted to share what I found out with others.

Six months ago, I decided (and committed) to add another weekly post — the Friday Food for Thought posts — to my posting schedule. Without commitment (and discipline), many of the posts on this blog would not have been written. (This 2am post certainly would not have been written! *smile*)

That’s the beauty of committing. Commitments make us figure it out. Commitments make us follow through. Commitments make us undertake new challenges and work through old ones. Commitments help us stay on course.

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Sometimes we confuse failing to commit with making bad decisions. If something doesn’t come together (or worse — falls apart), we might say “I never should have tried do that in the first place.” This might be true, but before we fault our decisions, we might want to look at how well we commit.