6 Most Important Reasons Why You Should Have Passion
Many of us have life passions, hobbies, or interests. Some appear already in the early years, the others we discover much later. Some of them last nearly throughout all our life, whereas others are as an intense flare-up — they appear as quickly as they extinguish. There are so many ways of passions realisation as many individuals there are. There are an infinite number of them and you can find them everywhere and in everything. You just have to care. It is often the case that our passions come to an end, when we enter into adult life. We concentrate on a job, house, family, children, we grow lazy. We forget about what gave us a power to act, what gave us a respite from everyday life, we forget the things we did before with joy, what gave us plenty of energy while doing those things. Our desires from the past slowly disappear, our dreams and plans just pass away…
Sometimes we remind ourselves about them, and sometimes we don’t even try to ask ourselves questions, which would help dust them off and help them to shine again, or help us find some new ones. We often tell our friends about how great we used to play the guitar once, how well we cooked someday, about our gaining medals and our beating the records long time ago, about our black belts in all kinds of martial arts, about our abilities of talking in foreign languages but years ago. We talk how we managed to do all kinds of twines and we had specified dance class, etc. And now? And you know . . . right now I’m too old, I don’t have time for anything, I concentrate on family life, children, husband, I do not want to hurt me leg, maybe in the spring, the coach made me pissed off, I’m too fat, I live too far away, there is nothing in the vicinity, it makes no sense to do it alone, the wife does not allow me, let’s give a chance to the young, it’s Monday, it’s Wednesday, there are elections in a month… Millions of usually totally silly reasons, while on the other hand you can see people, who have no hands or feet but at the same time they lead life full of passion and joy. Wheelchair athletes, older people who despite being derided, “clumsy” pursue their well-defined goals with twinkle in their eyes.
If something becomes a real passion for us, you can call it an obsession as well. In a positive sense of the word. Why so we need passions? Why do I help to find them? What is my aim of helping to find passions? Let me give you six of the most important reasons that are based on my own experience and observation of the people I work with during coaching process. Passions:
1. Motivate to action — if you have a passion, a desire to follow it involves a lot of work and sacrifice. Hobbies often cost, they require a lot of time, and the more we are getting involved the more we need to reach. So it forces us into action, which we make without hesitation but with energy and commitment.
2. Passion let us develop — if you have a passion, it is natural that we devote it a lot of time. We often want to become better at our passion. De facto only because of devoting our time to our passion, we still learn new things and gain ever greater skill and craftsmanship -regardless of whether it is a martial art, fishing or reading books. There is “10.000 rules” saying that even if we do not have abilities in a specific field but we take 10,000 hours on practicing of a particular activity, we are able to reach master level.
3. Give respite — a man devoted to his passion often rejects everything that upsets him and is not related to this activity. At this point, this is the most important. It’s my time, my weekend, my day, my evening.
4. Allow you to get to know other people — when someone is a freak, sooner or later will meet similar enthusiasts. Will seek to share it with someone who will understand it, compare it, support in activities. If we won’t find someone, someone surely will find us. People need to share their happiness with others and seek understanding, mindfulness and appreciation. The easiest way to find them is looking for them among people with similar interests.
5. Break off from everyday life — the most common passion is not related to our work or activities that we perform every day. Passion allow us to break away from everyday life and focus on something completely different, organize our thoughts. It can be said that performing a number of activities related to various passions can be thought of as a mantra or meditation. Happy campers are those who are devoted to their passions and combine them with their professional life. There is such a saying — “. . . Do what you love and the money will sooner or later appear”. Sometimes you have to fall into the idea and think about how to you are your passion in business but I’m throwing down the gauntlet to all of you who think that it is impossible to create a business idea with every possible passion.
6. It is never too late for passions — the passion it might be something to last a lifetime. Regardless of how long we will still live it is never too late for passion. No one have said that in order to start doing something, you need to watch for age and other people who have similar passion. An older person who decides to begin to run, does not have to beat the 20-year-old record. If we just have to compare, the only what makes sense, is to compare us only to ourselves, to realise how we acted a few months ago. Then we can see how we have developed, how much better we perform an action now, what progress we have made. In Kung-fu school which I attend — exercise 4-year-olds and people much after 60-years. Passion can also have different dimensions. You can be fascinated with horse and horseracing — you do not need to have 1. 5 meter height and 40 kg in weight as a Jockey. So if you hear either from others either in your head that you are too old to do something or it is too late for something — just today let the warning red light lit and remind you about limiting belief.
Dear reader! I invite you to begin the adventure that is having your own passion, dusting off old dreams or start something new. The only thing you should now have an interest in is the future, because that is where you will spend the rest of your life. You should have a passion. It’s good to have passion. Perhaps we will meet in order to find it in the course of coaching, and maybe we will meet each other in the same training room.
About Lukasz Wieczorek
With great commitment to spreading the idea of coaching in Poland beginning in 2008. In 2011, he was appointed to the board of the International Institute of Coaching, acting as a Director, Accreditation (President of Accreditation). He is also a member of the Polish Chamber of Coaching, being involved in the work of the Committee, Ethics and Standards. For many years Lukasz runs individual coaching (career coaching, life, executive), supervisions coaching and master classes for young coaches coaching and workshops for companies and organisations in Polish and English. He performed over 1000 hours of individual coaching and 500 hours of workshops and training of coaching. He is also the author of a blog about coaching for coaches and people who want to know more about coaching. And also co-authors the book “Professional coaching. The principles and ethical dilemmas in the work of the coach.
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