Does emotional intensity make your blood boil? This fiery energy comes in multiple ways.
Ever get super excited about something new? Ready to put all your heart and soul into a new endeavor. This deep passion brings forward excitement, exhilaration, and even enjoyment.
Simultaneously, this same fierce tone can also make you lash out directly and project anger onto anyone who crosses your path. This can be destructive and leave behind collateral damage, ruining a relationship for words that came out too quickly.
Both convictions are deeply held passions in your bones, seeking an outlet for expression.
Nature reveals how this fire, our deeply rooted passions, works.
Fire in itself is neutral. Yet, the difference between a wildfire and a controlled burn acts very differently, with vastly different outcomes and consequences.
Wildfires rage with dry debris, unmanaged build-up, and excess fuel - dry parched timber. This creates excess fuel for a fire to burn. Eventually, the fire will destroy anything in its path. Jane lived a simple, project management job, yet her volunteer interests turned into free time divided into seven different non-profits. The consequence is that her health suffered, and left little time for her marriage. Jane was shocked when her husband asked to go to counseling.
In a controlled burn, only specific areas are focused on. Jill absolutely loved sewing, a stark contrast to her intense position as legal counsel for a start-up company. Jill always left work on time for her weekly sewing gathering. This brought in a relaxing social circle and created a hard boundary to leave work on time with no questions asked.
With a controlled burn, the passion is directed at a particular area with consistent intention. The edges are very clear for her creative expression of sewing.
Fire is not the problem. Undirected fire is. Unchecked fire and passion becomes reactive, critical, and uncontained, causing either self-isolation, spread to thin or destructive to all in our path.
Our presence is the intersection of conviction, compassion, and consistency. When we direct our passion and regulate our intensity, our fire within sustains us instead of consuming us or others.
This is the steady flame of passion.
© 2026. Lora Lapiz. All Rights Reserved.
