A gentle nudge

I was writing an email. I was trying to sound half-dramatic–half-serious and I got stuck when I typed ‘unleash the passion within’.

I paused to think—firstly, how cliched I sounded and secondly, ‘does that really work?’. Does the ‘unleash blah blah within’… really work? Or is it just an overused ad copy? Those ads never made a mark on me anyway.

I wondered what could replace it.

After some thinking, I came up with ‘gently nudge’. Often, that is exactly what is needed. Not a grand push or an overbearing declaration, but a gentle nudge.

Because even the verb we use—‘nudge’ as opposed to ‘unleash’—reveals how rooted in reality our ideas are; and how well we understand something beyond its dramatic effect.

It isn’t like our ‘passion’ is a fully formed thing, but only tethered to some fear inside. And all we need to do is saunter across, in a meditation session, and just ‘unleash’ it. Set it free. Done. You are now a runaway success. I doubt if such things happen. It takes years of internal and external work.

Moments of inspiration are great and get all the attention, deservedly so. But for all the other times we feel stuck, we need a quiet and reassuring—‘come on, you can do this.’