“Passion” oftentimes is very confusing. How to define it for yourself?
Not just the definition of passion
“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” George Hegel
Yes. Exactly. You got to have some burning passion within yourself to achieve something in your life.
But a passion for what? And did someone tell you how that passion comes to be? How do you get passionate about something? Are you born with it? Do you develop it? Can someone please explain?
Okay, wait.
You open up any of your social media news feed and you’re sure to land your eyes upon at least one post that reads something “passion”.
And all of them sound so true. But the problem is, most of us understand the importance of passion and its usefulness — because everyone explains that very clearly — but what we do not get is how to uncover our passion and how to use it to our merit.
So, basically, it is like having the most luxurious car in the world but not knowing how to drive it around which makes it useless.
Here’s what Google says about passion
According to our beloved Google, passion is a strong and barely controllable emotion. It’s true that if we have strong emotions toward something, we’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish it.
So, why are so many people struggling with life? They all want to succeed, right? Do they not have a passion for anything?
Here’s where many people get stuck
Being a college student myself, I am surrounded with people who do not know what they really want to do in life.
They all say the same thing, “I do not know what we are passionate about. How can Iproceed in any direction.”
And that’s the reason why they’ve stayed stuck in one place. Not knowing what to do, where to go?
I don’t blame them. We ourselves have made passion such a thing that someone needs to feel extreme passion rushing in his bloodstreams before s/he gets going towards her/his goal.
This is the case for some people. But just some. Those “some” who are born with talents. And the truth is, most of us aren’t. We acquire it on the way. Most of us learn to be talented at something. And then get passionate about it.
I remember reading a post that said:
“You need not be good at something to start it. You just need to be good at starting.”
So, how do people really get passionate about something?
You know, getting passionate about something in life is just the same as getting passionate about someone in life.
At first, the two of you aren’t so much involved with each other and aren’t sure whether or not you both will be a good fit. You just know a tad-bit of details. That too from a friend who only knows to exaggerate things.
The next level comes when you personally get in touch and start getting to know about them. That’s is probably the best part.
The fear and the shyness start to fade away. You need more of the other person all the time. You spend hours with each other. Do whatever it takes to make the other person happy. And yet, it’s not enough. There’s always room for more.
That’s the part when you finally call yourself passionate about that person.
You’re high on Oxytocin all the time.
Some more time passes and both of you start finding flaws. And you’re passionate enough to talk about them, overcome them, cover them up for each other.
But soon, things start to escalate. More flaws, more shortcoming, fewer expectations met, fewer hours spent together and so on. Things get tough for the very first time.
You didn’t quite see that coming!
Now, when this stage arrives — and it does in every relationship — you could either choose to hold hands with your partner and set things right or choose to leave.
In the first case, you still love that person enough to agree to talk things off and understand that there are flaws with everyone. It’s a sign that you understand that when you got into a relationship, you didn’t just sign up for the good things, but the bad ones too.
That’s it. You continue for life.
On the other hand, when you decide to leave, there might be several different explanations. You might have found it difficult to cope, you found the relation to have turned abusive, and so on.
To me, in both cases, you are right. It’s just what you wanted to choose.
End of story. You move on and find someone else. That’s life.
The 4 stages you needed to notice:
- You need not be a master of something to start something. It’s a ‘hit and trial’ method. Pursue anything that even slightly interests you.
You never know how passionate you could get about it. - Once you know enough about it, you’ll yourself be very clear if you feel that passion towards it or not. If you do, well and good. You’re set to go ahead. If not, time to move to other things.
- Having invested so much of your energy and time to something, you will start building expectations. If they are met, you will be satisfied, if not, you’ll start to develop a disliking towards what you’re doing. You need to learn to cope with that.
- Situations will get worse. You’d want to continue as you had already put in so much of yourself into that one thing. At the same time, you’d also want to leave it all behind for it didn’t get you the results you expected.
When you reach the fourth stage, you either decide to stay or walk away, without regrets.
Many successful people we know today had failed in a lot of other things before they got successful at that one thing that we know them for.
That’s how it is.
Your passion can change
When I was a kid, I was passionate about Cricket. While it was tough for me to wake up at 6 a.m. for my school on weekdays, I would wake up at 5 a.m. during the weekends just to get to the field and play cricket with my friends.
Then I got passionate about pencil sketching. I used to spend hours with my drawing book. Then I got passionate about writing. Then stock trading. Then back to writing again. And I’ve planned to be a writer for the rest of my life.
You see, your passion is yours and you can change it if you want to.
While you must try hard not to lose your passion towards something — because it is hard to build it up in the first place — but if you do, do not lose your enthusiasm towards a successful life and a successful career.
Always have this in the back of your mind:
Passion is something you can build up on your own.
