I’m really passionate about politics and religion but does that mean that I should be involved with politics and religion?
I Want to Do Something I’m Passionate About
I have people say to me all the time, Christopher, I wanna do something I’m passionate about. Hello, my name is Christopher Lawrence. I’m with changemylifecoaching.ca and I am a life and career coach I love passion and I bet you love passion too. Passion can be really addictive but here are some of the challenges that come with passion. It can be a little bit misleading and it can send us in all sorts of different directions. I’m really passionate about politics and religion but does that mean that I should be involved with politics and religion? Not necessarily and in fact, God helps us all if I get involved with religion. Is that a bad joke? If you think that’s a bad joke, please comment below and tell me what you would have replaced it with.
Passion Is The Icing Without The Cake
So here’s how I look at passion. Passion is like icing without a cake and it can run in all sorts of different directions without any substance to it and you can only eat so much of it before you start to get sick. Passion burns out really fast. It’s not there every day. I’m an incredibly passionate person but do you think I’ve been running this business for eight years now, almost eight years, and do you think for eight years that I’ve woken every day saying I’m passionate about what I do? No, I have Monday mornings too where I don’t wanna get up. So adjust your expectations even as an entrepreneur. There are just some days that aren’t good days. So I think passion’s important but it’s the icing on the cake. It just doesn’t have enough substance.
Focus On Purpose
So passion’s important and actually, I know a couple of people who don’t really experience the emotion of passion. I had someone say to me, somebody who’s very close to me says I don’t really think I experience the passion and I thought, this is a really smart, beautiful, intelligent person who doesn’t struggle with emotional, their emotions, they’re very stable and so I thought, well, that’s interesting. So does that mean that that person is broken of course it doesn’t? Some people experience more anger, some experience more happiness and some people just don’t experience the passion and so what do you do instead of focusing on passion? So passion’s nice, it’s the icing but it’s not there every day and it can be misleading, it’ll send you down all sorts of different paths. What do you do instead? Actually, you focus on purpose. I say purpose over passion any day. Purpose to me is like the cake. It’s the thing that passion sits on top of. So when passion’s there, the icing, it’s got a place to rest itself. It gives you direction and purpose. It’s got substance. The purpose is there every single day. If my purpose is to help people discover the kind of work that they’re supposed to do for a living, that purpose has staying power and my passion may come or go but my purpose is there. It’s my reason to get up on those Monday mornings that I don’t feel like getting up and I come into work and I do my job and I love every second of it because I have a purpose.
Purpose Over Passion
So purpose over passion any day. Passion’s really important but have some substance. Have a reason why you wanna wake up in the morning. So if you wanna learn more about that, you can check out my book, Go Beyond Passion. It’s on my website, changemylifecoaching.ca and you can learn more about me there too, Christopher Lawrence, certified life and career coach and I’m looking forward to connecting with you. Oh, yeah and you know what? If you’re still watching this, if you’ve made it three minutes and 42 seconds into this video, you might also post below. Tell me what you are passionate about and tell me what you have a purpose for sometimes they’re the same thing but lots of times purpose has a little bit more substance. So I’m really curious to see what your responses are. Okay, talk to you soon, bye.
