Apart from the religious meaning of the word Passion, the dictionary defines passion as “strong and barely controllable emotion”. You can feel passion for a person, an idea, a place, even a thing. You can tell when someone is passionate about something, can’t you? It comes over in the way they speak, their body language, their energy.
I used to envy people who had an obvious passion for something and I don’t mean a few pints on a Friday night! I mean the people who seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing? It took me a long time and some great peers and mentors to rediscover mine, which is to take 10 million disheartened souls to stop asking, “Why me?” to start saying, “Why not me?”
As I speak around the world now, about finding your WHY, I come across 2 distinct groups of people.
The first are the people who have a ‘sneaky’ passion. What I mean by that is, that they DO have a passion, but they are not pursuing it for various reasons. And they tell you about it like it is something ‘silly’.
Maybe they feel that they can’t pursue it because they ‘have responsibilities’, perhaps they feel they have missed their time and it’s too late. Sometimes it’s because they don’t believe it could actually be real for them.
That’s a sad situation and almost never true. I would have to say if your passion was to be the first man on the moon and your name ISN’T Neil Armstrong, then you should probably let that thing go! But for most people, it is possible to live your passion, at any stage in your life. You just have to start.
The biggest regret people have at the end of their lives is never the things they have done but always something they have not done (that they really wanted to do).
There are many examples of people pursuing their dreams at an age where others might think they couldn’t do it. Christian Dior launched his famous shoe brand at 41, Morgan Freeman got his first Hollywood role at 52, Colonel Sanders launched KFC at 65, and Fauja Singh started running marathons at 90 years old! Amazing!
As I said, it’s never too late, you just have to start.
Now, I’m not suggesting you give up everything you are doing now and start on your passion project tomorrow, I’m just suggesting you start. Put aside an hour a day or a week even, and start brainstorming, start writing blogs, start reading books about how to get your project off the ground. Once you start to take action and you have pressed the “Go” button, and you’ll be amazed at where that ends up.
You see if you’re the sort of person who isn’t feeling fulfilled then may I suggest something needs to change because as the saying goes…if nothing changes, well nothing changes, right?
I said there were 2 types of people. The others are those who don’t know what their passion is. They are too busy in their lives to even think about it. They have the misapprehension that they need to be amazingly good at something for it to be a passion, or that if they haven’t found “it” by the time they left school, then they never will. Or that they are ‘not the sort of person’ that follows a passion.
What a lot of shit. Some people know their passion from being young, but many don’t. And most people’s passion is a fusion of stuff not one BIG thing. Steve Jobs was not the best leader, programmer, inventor, salesman of all times, but within the fusion of all those things he found his passion.
If you fall into this category think about what you love to do, what would you do if you were rich and didn’t need to get paid for doing it?
It might not be the thing that you end up doing as your job or creating a business around (although very often it can and should be), but your passion should absolutely be a part of your life.
5 years ago, I was sitting in a container, doing a job that was ok, the guy I worked for knew his passion, knew his why…. and guess what…..it wasn’t mine! You see I didn’t have a passion (well except drinking and that was merely a distraction from a life I didn’t enjoy).
Now as I sit here typing these thoughts, I’ve just spent an incredible 2 days with the Whys Women Counsel, women who are in action, following their passion. Tonight I head for London to fly to Qatar, back to London in 3 weeks to help others identify their passion, out to Spain to share time with passion seekers, then to Marrakech for the Find Your WHY Retreat and then as the year draws to a close a potential trip to Australia, Cambodia and Vietnam.
I share this because none of this would have been possible if I hadn’t taken one step to move away from helping create someone else’s dream and start creating my own.
My passion is to help other people find their passion and purpose. I believe you are born with your passion, your why, your purpose and so the question is are you ready to find your why?
If you’d like to take that first step to start making a change… go here – and get a free copy of my co-authored book – Find Your Why. As I said the first step to finding your passion is just to start! This might be the start you need!