How many times have you heard, “Do something you love! Do something you’re passionate about!”?
It’s great advice because when you DO find that passion, ALL of your power comes out and NOTHING can stop you.
But… (There’s always but right? 😉
Many people I come across in life have never truly experienced passion for what they do. They understand it intellectually but passion is expressed and driven by emotional energy more so than intellect. So much so that often times it appears irrational to the outsider looking in.
Passionate people through the ages have been ridiculed, labeled as looney toons, and ostracized by society and tried to be contained.
Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything”. He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive”.
Jack London received six hundred rejection slips before he sold his first story. (After about 20 rejections slips, most people would consider it irrational to think it was destined to do anything other than fail)
Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was “sub-normal,” and one of his teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams”. He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math 😉
Colonel Sanders got 1009 rejections before he got his first yes!
But these people are all famous and well known so what about the rest of us? Is a life driven by passion in the cards or even possible for us?
That’s what I want you to decide today in this edition of Motivational Monday. And before you can decide if it’s possible for the “average” Jane/Joe to live a life full of passion, you have to have an idea what TRUE passion looks like if you haven’t yet experienced it.
So today, I want to do my best to display what it looks like to do something your passionate about by finding someone who isn’t famous and doesn’t have a well known story. Because having fame or fortune behind you sort of creates this “false illusion” that those people MUST be different or better than the average person somehow because they are well known and famous. (HINT: How and why do you think they are well known and famous? It’s because of their passion that drove them to do extraordinary things that have inspired us for years)
You don’t necessarily have to make your living doing something your passionate about. Ideally that is the goal and 9 times out of 10 there IS a way to earn a living doing what you love but here’s the kicker.
When you find something you’re passionate about, something that authentically feeds your soul and drives to you get up and obtain it each and every day, what you do for a living becomes a means to fulfilling that passion and that’s perfectly fine because at that point, what you do to earn money, simply becomes part of the process in fulfilling that passion and therefore, drives you to excel at your work making you more successful at what you do anyway.
That’s overlooked sometimes and I think it’s important to understand that aspect because many people give up on the things they are passionate about simply because they have not found a way to make money from them yet.
So what does passion look like?
Passion creates insane, almost inhuman endurance and resistance to limitations and drives success… PERIOD!
Passion has no bounds, no limitations, and no obstacles that cannot be overcome to reach it. Passion doesn’t know excuses and isn’t afraid of failure, in fact, passion EMBRACES failures as part of the process.
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly.” ~ Robert F. Kennedy
As an inventor, Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
When you are driven by passion, NOTHING else matters except doing what fills your heart and soul with fulfillment and fills your mind with wonder and intrigue.
It’s almost an obsession with what you love.
And I’ll tell you something else, when I saw this 86 year old woman doing what she’s doing in this video, it screamed PASSION (and no it’s not anything inappropriate 😉
So I thought this video was a GREAT display of an ordinary, regular person who is not famous or even very well known exercising passion.. When an 86 year old lady is knocking out gymnastics moves like this, it displays a life long passion where nothing, not even the common excuse of “I’m too old” will stop her from doing what she loves! She’s not doing it for accolades, for fame, for fortune, and not for recognition…
Simply because she’s passionate about it!
It’s inspiring 🙂
