Passion has a dark side too.

For most of my life, people would often comment on how passionate I was. I never really understood what that meant. In fact, growing up I actually thought it was just something people would say — sort of like those trophies you’d get in sports when you kind of sucked but your coach didn’t want you to feel left out. What were those things called again? It’s going to bug me…

AHA!

“Most Enthusiastic”

Boy oh boy, if I had a dollar for all the “Most Enthusiastic” trophy’s I received as a kid…(I’d have three dollars!)

I always did this weird thing (and truthfully I think I still do this) but when I found something I enjoyed — whether it was my work, a new sport or a new hobby…it wasn’t just enough to be okay, I had to be amazing. Heck, I had to be phenomenal.

Take gymnastics for example; I can’t really remember what it was — but something reignited my love for the sport. So I decided to get back into it as an adult.

But do you think joining an adult class and having fun was enough for me? Of course not, or I wouldn’t be here writing a story about it!

Instead of being content just having fun (you know, like “normal” people), I decided it would be the greatest idea in the world to start training to compete in the Australian Masters Games.

[Oh, hey! I just remembered what it was! It was the movie Stick It.]

I hadn’t been a Gymnast for at least 7 years nor had I been physically active — what could possibly go wrong??

All I wanted to talk about was gymnastics. All I watched at home were videos of my favourite gymnasts (Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson…sorry Australia…but the US rock my world when it comes to Gymnastics!)

I could see people roll their eyes as I talked to anyone and everyone about how awesome gymnastics is, but I didn’t care — I couldn’t/wouldn’t shut up. I mean, I love gymnastics so everyone has to like it as well, right? That’s how it works, yeah? (I’m so sorry to those who had to deal with this!!)

Eventually I started to get frustrated. I couldn’t understand why no one cared as much as I did, why their eyes didn’t light up like mine did whenever I spoke about how AWESOME GYMNASTIC WAS!

Then it (finally) hit me. It was because I was passionate about gymnastics and they weren’t. It wasn’t personal, it wasn’t rude — they just didn’t share the same burning passion for the sport that I had.

Passion is pretty neat. But, like Anakin Skywalker, it also has a dark side.

The thing is. When you’re super passionate about something and you’re trying engage with people who don’t share the same — or really even a similar — level of passion as you, not only can it be quite frustrating, but it can also be quite lonely.

I’ve spent the better part of 12 years either being frustrated or lonely (sometimes both) because I just couldn’t seem to find people who “understood me”. I was stuck in an unrealistic mind set where I thought I needed to be around people who shared ALL of my passions.

It’s hard to admit, but it’s actually the reason I never really had friends both as a teen and as a young adult (and was also the reason I was never genuinely happy in any of my previous roles).

But as I got older, I started to understand more about life, about myself and about other people in general. Somewhere along the way (I really don’t know if it was anything specific that caused it, or if it was just the result of getting older) but I realised that I didn’t need people in my life who shared all of my passions collectively, but rather I just needed to meet different people who shared ONE of those passions.

So I changed my mindset — instead of bombarding my partner and friends with gymnastics talk and videos, I’d briefly touch on some of the things I was currently working on and started to talk more with my team mates.

After figuring out that balance (not only with gymnastics but with all of the things I loved) life became so much more enjoyable.

That being said, finding new friends with common interests and a new job that I genuinely loved hasn’t exactly been easy — but let’s talk about that some other time, hey?

Here’s some of the things that I’m most passionate about:

1. My work (Head of CX for RateIt)
2. Horses/Horse Riding
3. Community Management
4. Video Games

Your turn! Tell me what you’re most passionate about in the comments :)

As for the Gymnastics stuff? Let’s just say the aftermath wasn’t exactly graceful.

The big day arrives. The crowd was awesome and I had my friends, family and team mates cheering me on. What a high!

So I step up to the floor — my heart is beating like a million miles an hour…can I land my punch front salto? The music starts to play (Headstrong by Ashley Tisdale). This is it. I take a deep breath and off I go.

NAILED IT! Everyone cheers! The rest of the routine is a piece of cake. That medal is MINE!

WRONG! I didn’t realise at first (probably because of the adrenaline) but my body was starting to give out. As I leaned backwards to finish the routine with a basic backwards walk over (seriously, 3 year old can do this) my arms collapsed and down I went, in front of everyone.

It totally sucked! And guess what — I was 0.01 of a point off of taking 3rd place even with the fall. If only I’d slowed down like I was told to ;)