I’ve been reading some really inspiring articles published in LinkedIn recently. I am uplifted by the fact that so many people out there are thinking deeply about life and most importantly about how to keep improving human relationships. I think there are a whole lot of us who instinctively know that society overall could be enjoying greater prosperity and well-being through each and every person being willing – and learning and/ or guiding how – to develop stronger and more positive connections with one another.
During a ‘Branding’ lecture I was delivering at the Eastern Institute of Technology last year a guest speaker from the tourism industry was asked the question by a student, “how did you know what career path to go down in life ?”. In response this guest speaker gave these phenomenal words of wisdom…
“If you choose a work role that you’re passionate about you’ll never work a day in your life.“
When I reflected further on this wonderful piece of wisdom I started to also see the interrelationship between “passion” and “purpose”. During my lifetime I’ve felt my passion for what I’ve been working on at the time grow steadily as my sense of purpose in relation to that activity has increased. And thereafter one fuels the other; and as this happens my performance becomes stronger and stronger and my achievements become steadily greater.
Consequently, my growing sense of purpose and passion, through the outcomes that I produce/ achieve, meet the needs of the people who I am helping/ producing work for at the time.
I believe that the path of “following your passion” is a sensible one to take, for it can stimulate/ initiate – and then grow – a sense of purpose. And from there purpose and passion drive performance and achievement. Along the way, as achievements are realised, confidence rises – further fueling passion and purpose. It is a wonderful cause and effect cycle.
This passion-purpose inter-relationship also correlates well with the age old expression of “life is short so do what you enjoy” or “life is short so follow your heart”. Quite often when I find myself pushing myself to do something that is not my passion I trick myself into seeing the task through by promising myself a reward of doing something that “is” my passion afterwards. Whilst I don’t think it is realistic to always be doing something that makes our heart leap for joy, I do believe that the more we involve ourselves in pursuits that are driven by passion the greater the sense of enjoyment and satisfaction we experience.
I’m at a stage in life where our 11 year old daughter’s development is concerned, where I can see her growing capability for making good choices and following her passion in the process. As a consequence she is developing into a highly confident and capable young women – someone who is prepared to speak her mind openly and honestly and who isn’t afraid to push boundaries in order to keep achieving at successively higher levels.
I believe that there is a lot to be said for guiding the development of people by asking them to firstly identify what they’re passionate about, and from there enlarge the discussion to include exploration of what they consider their strengths are and what tasks/ activities/ job they believe they could apply their passion and strengths to in order to realise an amount of success and enjoyment/ satisfaction.