Passion Creates The Drive To Work More
One discussion topic I like to speak on is passion and drive in relation to its impact it has on our working lives. We spend roughly one-third of our lives working, however I like to notch that up to around half of our lives when you consider everything we engage at.
I recently heard someone say that:
[quote] When you love your job, you’ll never work again.[/quote]This is something that I believe in, but am not as convinced as I use to be when it comes down to the pure mantra of above. To me, love is the absolute. We need adjectives such as passion, motivation, drive, dedication, etc. to truly comprehend the meaning behind explanations around getting the job done, however “love” in the above mantra ends up translating into the aforementioned adjectives.
Sitting here and looking at life including all the things I have done in my past,Id be considered to be living the dream. I have done so many things that have allowed me to really not consider what I was/am doing as work. I founded my first company at age 17, had the opportunity to travel very often, make good money, I have accomplished many of the things on my life’s ”to do” list with many more to go, I have soaked in the knowledge and understanding to create success for myself and my loved ones and this allows me to dive into other areas to again try and create more success – such as myKFIT.com. I enjoy doing all these things; creating awesome products, working with great people, having the flexibility to do what I want where I want. I’m not tied to my corporate job as a manager. At some point that will end as well and I will engage in more adventures adding that time spent to my box of experiences and insights to understanding even more. I’m not a multimillionaire yet, but it still is a privileged life.
Doing all these things doesn’t come from sitting around. It has been fueled by my passion for business, for risk taking, for entrepreneurship, for my passion to create, my passion for a challenge, my passion to start something incredible and see it grow.
When I first founded my business back at age 17, it was to get my hands dirty and create something from nothing – to understand and grow. Frankly I don’t come from a rich household and although divorced, my parents have sacrificed a lot to enable us kids to have the opportunities to go beyond our wildest dreams, always enabling us to have that passion to love what we do. After having founded my business it was only ever intended to be a nice side-project that generated a bit of passive income, that goes for most of my endeavors, however I have had things take off like a wild fire. Now 11 years later, I’ve built quite a few things – whether on stage, mentoring young ones, speaking to audiences, my passion for building a global business causes me to sacrifice things where others raise an eyebrow within the corporate world because comfort and living to them is a norm. The dream of going beyond is just a dream and the lack of willingness causes most individuals to simply not love what they do, because it isn’t their passion.
Looking back at the last years, I’ve seen myself working more and sacrificing so many other aspects of my life including many things such as friendships where others would simply resign to their monthly paycheck. Looking back and looking ahead there is one thing that I realized about success – it demands more success. So whilst being passionate about building my company, proving my abilities in the corporate environment, achieving in other areas, its becomes more of a job than a passion or hobby over the years. In and of itself, that isn’t a bad thing, but the simple demand of more success, has at times caused me to take a strong toll.
Adii Pienar once stated that “I’ve found that mixing my ambition & drive with my obvious passion for certain things, I will always work more. Beyond the sacrifices that I’ve made and those that I’ve forced down on the people closest to me, it’s also been a struggling maintaining that passion at all times.”
The simple matter of fact is that passion is a beast that needs to be fed. At times its going to feel like the life is being sucked out of you and other times you will feel like you are nurturing the growth of an amazing Bonsai.
Regardless, you’ll like be working quite a bit more as a result. Stay passionate!
