What drives you? What is it that sets your soul on fire each and every day? I began asking myself this lately. During my short time working and growing this blog I have met and spoke with so many people who do great things in the running world and it made me think, like many other areas in life this community exists because people love to run, they love to be involved with the culture of running, and it fills their life with happiness and purpose. All of the people I speak with have something, it’s a spark about them when I bring up topics and search for answers to how and why they do what they do, it’s intangible.. you can’t see it, but you can feel it in the way they talk. They are passionate. I wanted to understand passion deeper than just feeling it, I wanted to know what it stems from, what it is, and why it is so important that you listen to that voice inside that tells you to follow your passion in life.
How does one describe passion?
The dictionary definition for passion is: A strong and barely controllable emotion.
As I prepared to begin laying out my research and thoughts on what passion actually is, I noticed my fingers halt as I prepared to type. I truly didn’t know how to describe passion even after feeling it throughout my life, speaking with others about theirs, and researching the psychology of passion. It took me stepping back and thinking about passion on a surface level to realize I don’t think there is one universal way to describe it. The more interviews I do and the more people I speak with about their lives the more it shows me that passion is different for everyone. What I have come to love about this concept is that when I ask people what passion is, while the answers may be similar in nature, they are never the same.
The importance of finding your passion
While describing passion may be tricky, discussing its importance is not. Passion has been described to me before as the reason for waking up, I agree with this. Passion is the key to leading better lives; it is what fills us with energy and motivation to progress. One good example of someone who followed his passion is Karl Meltzer, during my interview blog post with Karl he said this to me, “I think a core value I have is to live your own life. Doing your own thing and not following the trend if you don’t want to. You know I can’t take any money to my grave, so I don’t chase that. I want to be able to have fun and do the things that matter to me. So yeah, live your own life is a strong core value of mine.” What stuck out to me during my time speaking with him is that he realized what he loved early on, let it consume him and is living his life to the absolute fullest while not concerning himself with the one thing that can get in the way of passion, and that is money. The value in finding your passion is the perspective it gives you on life, it teaches you enthusiasm, it drives you to set goals, it creates a work ethic and I believe these traits can spill over into other areas of life.
So how do we find what we’re passionate about?
After thinking about passion for quite some time, I can tell you how not to find it first, then I can explain the steps to finding it. Your mind is very powerful, and can figure out many things that take us through life in a positive direction. One thing it cannot rationalize by thought is what we are passionate about. You must engage in things and wait for the feelings that come from doing. CEO and founder of UltrAspire Bryce Thatcher helped me to notice something in my own life regarding my passion and that is to make time for things, things that I know I love and enjoy spending my time doing even if I can only give a short amount of time a day to it. So remember to get out in the world and try things, get out of your comfort zone and do the thing you’ve always wanted to do, been scared of, or have been waiting for the right time to do. Life doesn’t wait for anyone, everyone has passions waiting for them to discover and I think that is the most valuable thing we have in this life.
What can we learn from our passion?
I mentioned above that passion can trickle into other areas of our lives. I think an amazing side effect of passion is learning what it feels like and actively creating the feelings associated with it in other areas of our lives. This thought I personally believe is the key to creating a happy life, being passionate about being passionate. When you learn what that feels like, you can practice recreating those feelings in other scenarios. By doing this practice, it can change the way your entire life feels in situations that might have felt bland, or not exciting in the past. So while your mind can’t help “think” your way to finding passion, it can help you recreate those feelings once you know what it feels like.
Try to approach situations with optimism. For instance, you WANT to go to work, you LOVE what you do, what you do MATTERS. Affirmation is critical to self-esteem and a higher quality of life. I have to say it again, but if you take anything away from this blog post, take this. Learn to become passionate about being passionate and it will change your entire life.
What is the takeaway?
I hope that what you grab from this is there is no secret to discovering passion. The beauty in this is the necessity to get out and do things. Practice loving what you do with all your heart everyday and that can turn it into a career. Reaffirm yourself daily and truly let yourself believe it, the mind is very powerful and can change the entire scenario based on how you think about it. The industry I work in is built on passion and love for what they do, it has taught me so much in such a short amount of time about my own life goals and things that I love. So get out there and live life to the fullest, find what you love and let it consume you, you never know what great things may come from it.
How do you describe passion? Early in writing this I found it difficult to truly explain the idea as there are so many ways passion presents itself. Leave a comment on how you think is the best way to describe it?