Follow Your Passion

Love What You Do

Do you hate your job? If so you are in the majority because 80% of people do, and survive the week in order to 'live' at the weekend. What a waste of  life. It's a bit like saving sex until old age!

Successful people follow their passion and love what they do. In fact many of them would still carry on doing the same job even if they weren't paid for it, because they enjoy it so much. So don't underestimate the power of this passion. Don't take your eye off the way these people perform because they will always outperform others who are just doing it for the money.

If you love what you are doing you will work twice as hard to make it succeed. You will bring new ideas to try out which will pop into your head at odd times while you are doing something else. You will lose yourself in doing what you love, and you will lose track of time and experience what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls 'flow' in his classic book on happiness. After all, as Confucius said, "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life". 

Passion Always Wins

Passion is good for you. Loving what you are doing reduces stress, and increases performance. It even helps you to live longer. Many people spend their health building their wealth, and then desperately try to spend their wealth hanging on to their health.

Passionate people usually win because they focus all their attention on what they are doing. They don't let their mind wander off to think about what they will be doing tonight, or what's for dinner. They work twice as hard because they are enjoying themselves.  Their mind carries on working even when their bodies have stopped, so new ideas pop into their head  triggered off by what they are doing or thinking about at other times. These extra thoughts are often the very things that are needed to solve the problems they are working on, or to give them new ideas. It is the subconscious brain working away in the background for them.

Passionate people are the first to be hired, and the last to be fired, because the passion shines through in the work and the results. You can survive without loving what you do, but you will always be second rate as you will always lose out to the other person who has passion. This happens in everything you do in life, whether it be work, or love, or sport. Passionate people are the ones who survive in a competitive marketplace. 

Do Something That Matters

Passion comes from doing something that matters in your life, otherwise your passions will be empty of meaning, and succeeding at them will leave you unfulfilled. Connect with your passions to build a life filled with meaning, and you will be on the true road to success. This will allow you to truly accept yourself for the person that you really are, and develop self confidence in your skill and abilities, and to practice positive thinking to motivate you towards your goals and dreams.

Combining your passions produces a synergy which is unique to you, and can make you uniquely successful. After all, passions do not normally come alone, and it is surprising how two or more passions and interests can be combined to produce a unique set of skills, which can make you uniquely successful. The more passions and skills you can develop, the more opportunities you have for success. 

Love The Journey, Not Just The Destination

We should all be aiming for something, and should keep our goals under constant review, however, we should never lose sight of the fact that we should enjoy our daily activities as well. These are the little goals that are the stepping stones on our way to achieving our long-term goals. They are the 'journey' on the way to the 'destination'. The Taoist's have a saying, "The journey is the reward" and we should not lose sight of this in our desire to achieve our larger goals in life. This applies to life as well as to business. 

Passion And Balance

Passion is more important than balance.  If you feel that your work-life balance is wrong this usually means that you need to evalutate how you are using your time, or it will lead to frustration.

If you think you need more balance ask yourself what you would be doing that you are not doing now, and look carefully at the answer. Don't just think that you 'have' to do things just to conform, look at your passions that are not being met, and how important these are to you. Balance your portfolio of passions, but realise that what you will actually experience as balance will change over time as your passions change, and it may never look like balance to anybody else.

You don't have to make a career out of everything that holds meaning and passion for you, but you do need to find a place for these in your life. This is your balance.