THE PASSION MYTH
Hi, Stunning Stars!
In my last article, “Plunge Deep into Your Soul”, I spoke about following your passion But, many of you must have thought, ‘Following my passion is ok! But what is my passion? How to find it? There are so many things I love doing! How to choose the right option out of that? Right? Well yes! Most of us stay confused in our lives, not because we can’t follow our passion, but rather because we don’t know what are we passionate about. But, before we find our passion, Let us try to understand what it actually means to us? Is it our hobby? Is it something we just enjoy doing? Or is it something else worth doing? Let’s find out…
Is passion synonymous with a hobby?
Passion and hobby are mostly used interchangeably.
But are they similar? If you think it is, then probably it is time to break
that notion. Although they might seem to be similar, they hold a completely
different meaning. A hobby is anything that we love doing as a part of recreation.
It refreshes our mind but it is not something we like to do always. We can’t
stick to it all the time, nor are we ready to make a lot of effort for it.
Conversely,
passion
is something that infuses us with inner satisfaction and delight. It is something
that defines us. It makes us feel complete from
within. Unlike a hobby, passion gives us the enthusiasm to do a particular work
and keeps us glued to that work despite success and failure.
Passion
helps us stick to a goal because we love the activity we are doing. When we
love the process more than the product (i.e. the result), it means we are
passionate about that activity. Anything in this universe (time, money, effort
pain, failure, criticism, demotivation, or difficulty) can’t stop us from
performing an activity in the long run, if we are passionate about it. Passion has in it the fuel that
keeps us going irrespective of any hurdle. And the fuel is nothing but our
curiosity, interest, love, and commitment for that activity. But no
matter how committed we are, we cannot keep on doing a job 24/7. So, when we
get tired and need some change, we may turn towards our hobby. A person might
have a thousand hobbies, but there must be one such thing that he is passionate
about, that gives him the satisfaction and happiness from within and the
motivation to keep going.
Is it something we enjoy doing?
We
mostly stay in the illusion that passion is something that we just enjoy doing.
But, in old English, the word passion refers to suffering. Just because we love
a certain activity doesn’t mean it will be all easygoing. One of the basic
human nature due to which we mostly fail is that we give up very easily, the
moment we experience hardship or failure. No matter what so ever we might do,
we will certainly come across difficulties. But a person who is passionate about
that activity will see the problem as a challenge, as an opportunity to learn
something really interesting out of that difficult task. So, we can only say that we have
passion for a certain activity, if we can stick to it despite failure or difficulty.
How to find passion
So,
now that you have understood what passion means in the true sense can you guess
how to discover your passion? Nothing much, just focus on these following
points-
- · Try different activities- Do everything that interests you. Do not pick and choose activities just based
on your assumption of good or bad.
- Make use of your opportunities- Many times we leave opportunities that come to us just because we are not
confident enough to perform that activity, or maybe because we haven’t tried it
before. But trust me, most of the time we don’t even realize how much we love
doing that.
- Gather more knowledge- We can only choose our passion if we are well informed about different subject matters. If we do not have proper knowledge about something then how can we be interested in it? If you like dancing, for example, then you have to gather proper knowledge on different dance forms, its historical background (it’s origin) and understand them. The more knowledge you will have, the better you will be able to understand that field and eventually your level of interest will increase. Think about it, when do you find a task interesting? Think about it. Is it when when you can't understand anything and struggle with the problem? Or, is it when you or when you understand something at once and can solve the problem in no time. So, you must have proper knowledge about any matter to develop passion towards it.
- Orient yourself with the right environment- Our environment affects our personality to a great extent. Hence, we need to orient ourselves in the right environment. And by the environment I mean everything starting from our family members, friends, the people we interact with, to books, YouTube videos, blogs, journals, everything. If you love writing and you aren’t reading any books, instead prefer to binge on some random music videos, then, your interest in writing will vanish in no time. But, if instead you read a lot of books, and try to analyze the writing style, understand the characters, the socio-economic background of the time that your reading provides, work on your vocabulary, and so on then, your chances of growing passionate for that activity will increase.
