If you love going to strip clubs, then it will be difficult for you to also put your energy into your local church community. This isn’t a judgment about where and how you should spend your time; rather, this is a simple truth. You only have so much passion within you. Just as you can’t spend the same dollar in two different vending machines, you can’t spend the same passion in two different places. And the more those places conflict, the harder the split will be.
If you’re truly passionate about two different things, but those things have a lot of compatibility, the split is easier. Imagine that your two great passions are, for example, your spouse and your child. Those are very compatible passions! Energy spent on one will frequently spill over into the other. Any married couple with a young child will tell you that you still have to be conscious of the split, of course. Before having the child, you had 100% of your energy and passion to spend on your partner, and now some – probably the lion’s share, at least at first! – will go to the child. So even in the most compatible pairing, you have to portion out your energy.
When the pairing is very incompatible, like in the passion for both strip clubs and your church, a good bit of your energy is going to be lost simply in the cognitive dissonance. The rationalizing and self-justification necessary will consume lots of energy, not to mention what you spend on conversational misdirection, hiding, or outright lies.
The point is, if you really care about something, you have to be aware of what else is using your budget of energy and make some hard choices. When you want to have a baby, it’s time to have a vulnerable, honest conversation about what you and your spouse expect from each other after the fact. And it’s definitely time to stop going to the strip club.
The Opportunity Machine 