How Can You Increase Your Success With Passion?

“Light Yourself on Fire with Passion and People Will Come From Miles to Watch You Burn” (John Wesley)

Passion is an emotion often affiliated with romance, or sexuality, but it is only half the truth. It is also a tremendously important source of motivation and desire in hobbies, sports, and occupations. Referring to my previous post from last week, where I wrote about important success factors, including productivity – since passion increases motivation and desire, it is also an important factor of productivity, and enjoyment.

Think about extremely successful people throughout history, and at present. There are examples from all spectrums of life: art, entertainment, sports, business, and politics, including names such as Picasso, Lady Gaga, Diego Maradona, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Julia Roberts, and many, many others.

How have they become so successful? It is definitely not only a question of luck, or hard work, but the fact that these people have found their true passion, a desire so strong for what they do and achieve in life that makes them shine from within. 

There are a number of ways of increasing passion, including: 

– Overcoming fears, and working them through. Fear is a negative feeling, repressing passion and other positive emotions. 

– Stepping out of your comfort zone, setting goals, and increasing the amount of work you are willing to put in to reach your goals. There is a difference between working passionately, and being a workaholic. Passionate people work out of inspiration, and since they love (or enjoy) what they do. 

– Learning what makes you thrive, and tick. We are all different: some of us are excellent, outgoing sales people, while others love working in the back office. Some people love mountain climbing, while others prefer yoga or golf. Finding out what truly makes you happy will definitely increase your daily levels of passionate emotions. 

– Leading a balanced and healthy life. This definitely increases your energy levels. When eating and sleeping well, to begin with, positive emotions increase. 

– Increasing confidence, bravery, and focusing on positivity in life: the better you feel about yourself, the easier it gets to face less positive reactions. The more you focus on positivity, the more it increases in your life. Soon you will notice that you are surrounded by positivity, and your positivity will transform your surroundings too. 

If you feel you are surrounded by too little passion, start implementing small changes into your life which increase your personal level of passion. Start a new hobby, make new friends/get to know new people, open your heart and mind, network, stay active, be confident, and if you feel that your current job is not what you are passionate about – try to find out what it is that you truly have a passion for. I am not suggesting that you should quit your job (although some people do when they no longer feel happy about what they do for work), only that you can try increasing passion through other small changes in your life. If these changes do not increase your passion for your work, you probably should start working towards something that you know will make you feel passionate. 

Be brave, dare to seek until you find what truly nurtures your soul and lets you grow. Free your creativity, be even eccentric if it suits you, because very often the most creative spirits are those who in the end, enjoy the biggest of success, and fulfillment in their lives.

“When I began having a mad, passionate love affair with my own life, the rest fell perfectly into place”. (Katrina Mayer)