As Dr. Valerie S. Averill, who taught at Eastern, once said “Live with passion.” And I agree with Dr. Averill one hundred percent. Passion is a strong word that stands for a lot of different things to each individual. For me it means to put all of yourself into something whether it be work, your major, your love life, a project you are working on, etc. The dictionary describes it as a powerful or uncontrollable force, such as love or hate. It is a strong feeling about a subject or person.
Passion catches your attention and causes a person to act. It causes a person to get out of bed in the morning and do what they need to do. To work hard on something. It causes a person to do well on what they need to do. But unfortunately in a survey that has recently been completed about seventy percent of people don’t enjoy the work that they do. We see it daily, from the people working a grocery store to even the people who you might work with every day. Unfortunately I even see it in the training room. Not having a passion for what you are doing causes you to stop doing a good job and start slacking. We weren’t born for the mundane world that a lot of us go through each and every day. We were born with spirit and fire in our souls to find what we love and go for it.
Think for a second about what you love, it could be football or teaching or drawing, but think about in the moment that you are doing that how you feel. The happiness you feel when you step onto the field to warm-up for a game or the feeling you get when you finally get down the right type of shading that you were trying to get for a piece of work or when you put on your business casual outfits and step into your own classroom for the first time, that’s the feeling of passion. Doing what you love and what excites you.
Remind yourself each and every day that you were not born for an ordinary life, none of us were. We were all born for greatness. Remind yourself that you possess a powerful subconscious that will guide you and when you’re on the wrong track will eventually guide you back to where you need to be. We were born into a society that has put this box around us and labels each and every one of us into a certain category and leads us to think that we have this boundary that we need to stop at, but there are no boundaries, not for passions.
A lot of us have been told that we need to do whatever money brings. When we choose a major, we are asked "will that bring money?" "what can you even do with that, that will bring in some type of money?" But does that even matter? Is that all that matters in this society is money? Yes, we need money to buy the things we need, to have food in our mouths and to have a roof over our heads. But those who continually search for money and only seek out work for money usually don't find it.
Do what you love and what brings fire to your soul and money will follow.
