Discover & Follow Your Passion: Is It Really Worth It? – Part II of Chapter I of the upcoming book ”Find Your Passion”

Discover & Follow Your Passion: Is It Really Worth It? – Part II of Chapter I of the upcoming book ”Find Your Passion”

In the previous article, we examined the value of discovering your passion for your personal growth. Now we’ll go through the relation between your passion and the rest areas of your life, as well as the impact it has on them.

1) Personal Relationships

What about the impact that your passion has in your personal relationships? No matter how over-simplistic it might sound, following your passion makes you more passionate, not just in your career but in general. You see, you can’t be passionate at work and then simply force yourself to suppress your high energy and enthusiasm, turning off your ”passion switch”. Passion as a feeling is diffusive and contagious, and it’s hard to hide! Therefore, doing at work what you’re really passionate about will give you much more energy, positivity and passion in your personal life. You’ll start focusing more on your loved ones and the people that matter most to you, spending more quality time with them. Why? For two reasons. First, because by following your passion you’ll simply be happier than before, as passion is a significant factor for your happiness. Second, you operate from a ”passion state”, which derives from doing what you’re passionate about. And it’s exactly this state that passionately influences the rest of your life, including your personal relationships. Remember: You are not the sum of your life aspects. You are the unique whole identity that is greater than the sum of them.

2) Health  

Following your passion has also a tremendous impact on your health, both mental and physical one. Although there isn’t a panacea for all diseases, if there was one, passion would it be! *1 An 80-year study conducted by the University of California on the predictors of longevity and happiness found out that, among many groundbreaking conclusions, the advice  “Don’t work too hard, don’t stress,” doesn’t work as advice for good health and long life. The subjects who were the most involved and committed to their jobs did the best. Continually productive men and women lived much longer than their more laid-back comrades.” Additionally, ”The clearest health benefit of social relationships comes from being involved with and helping others”. And passion does include serving your purpose and serving others, as we saw already in the previous article. So, when you pursue and share your passion with others to serve them, you will live a longer and healthier life.

If you think about it a little bit more, you’ll realize that it makes absolute sense. Doing what you love gives you aliveness, fulfillment and drastically increases your levels of happiness. By operating in your daily life from a place of passion, excitement and enthusiasm you actually take care of yourself even more, both mentally and physically. Because the great benefits of passion are not limited to your mind but expand to your body too! Why? Because our mind affects our body.

So, when your mind is in a great state, your body will be positively affected. A typical example of this is how your posture reflects your mood, and vice versa. Have you ever noticed how upright is your posture when you feel confident, certain, determined or proud for something? How do your chest and shoulders expand? On the other hand, have you ever noticed how your chest and upper body contract and how you slouch when you are bored, stressed, worried or afraid of something?

But your passion state does not only affect your body’s posture, but it has a great positive impact on your biology as well. When you’re in your ”passion state”, you feel empowered, super confident and unapologetically brilliant, surrounded by a strong feeling of certainty, that, ”Whatever happens, I’ll handle it”. As a result, you’re not stressed or worried thanks to your passion state! On the other hand, *2 when you’re stressed, you shorten the lifespan of your telomeres. Telomeres are the cells (region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromosome) which protect the end of our chromosomes from deterioration or from fusion with neighbouring chromosomes. By shortening your telomeres you accelerate your aging process. Yes, you age earlier than your time.

But wait, there’s more. *3 Individuals with higher levels of “personal growth” and “purpose in life” registered lower and more stable levels of salivary Cortisol and urinary Adrenaline, which are stress hormones. Your passion not only is it a powerful means for your personal growth, but it also gives you purpose in life. Because, as we saw already, purpose is one of passion’s core components; and not just any purpose, but your life purpose.

Given this, your passion functions a powerful natural anti-stressor, leading to the maintenance of your telomeres, thus keeping you young, literally.

3) Environment

When you discover and pursue your passion, your environment changes, both the physical and social one. On the one hand, your social milieu changes, as you’ll start feeling the need to surround yourself with the right people. These are people who encourage and support you on your passion journey. On the other hand, your physical environment might change too. Because sometimes we have to change our physical surroundings and move into the right place for us to pursue our passion. It could be a specific city, region or country, along with the opportunities they offer for you to follow your passion.

In my case, it was moving to London, UK from Greece, because the coaching profession was much more common and popular there, as well as the professional coaching community was quite more active. Your physical and social environment can actually determine your success or failure for your passion journey.

Regarding your social milieu, it’s a crucial factor to your success at finding and pursuing your passion, goals and aspirations for one simple reason:

” You are the average of the 5 people you spend your time most with ”

– Jim Rohn –

Have your parents ever warned you to watch out the friends you hang out with? Well, in this case, they got it right. Remember the UCL study on longevity and happiness? The researchers also concluded that ”the groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become – healthy or unhealthy”. Whether you want to admit the impact of society on you or not, it’s true. As social species, we’ve managed to survive and thrive throughout our human existence by helping, communicating and connecting with one another. And this is why our civilization will continue to thrive and prosper in the future.

When you go for your passion, you realize sooner or later  – the sooner the better – that surrounding yourself with the right people is key for you to do what you love, and continue doing so. By right people, I mean people who encourage you to reach and go above and beyond what you consider as ”personal limits”. People who challenge and ”stretch” you to these limits. People who inspire you to not only be you, but be the best you can be, the best version of yourself. They ”push” and expect from you to constantly improve yourself. To be a better professional, parent, spouse, lover, friend, colleague, business partner, citizen etc. These people are your ”tribe”. They are people who are at least one level above you in terms of their success at what you want to achieve. In our case, people who currently pursue or have already succeeded at pursuing their passion. They are not necessarily your loved ones. In fact, not everyone is lucky enough to have their tribe and loved ones in the same people. This is the very definition of the exception. Last but not least, the people of your ”tribe” have most likely common interests and values with you, which is a great place to start looking for them. So, go and find them. They’ll rise you, and you’ll grow together.

4) Career

What if you make a living at your passion? What if your career is nothing but fun and fulfillment? What if at least the one-third of your life related to work (the rest are sleep and spare time) is meaningful and full of purpose?

Besides the great level satisfaction and meaning at work, by turning your passion into a new career or matching your passion with a role in the organisation you work for, you drastically improve your productivity. You end up being ultra-productive! Why? Because most of the time you won’t even consider it as work most but fun! Yes, you can both be and act like a professional who delivers outstanding value and enjoy yourself along the way.   

5) Money

What if you could make a fortune at your passion? ”Wait a minute! Following your passion means , at least most of the time, getting a low salary – if not being broke – having low lifestyle standards and basically ending up being poor, broke and miserable”, you might think. This is one of the strongest limiting beliefs that dominates someone’s life. Limiting beliefs are paradigms and specific opinions and points of view that shape they way you think, your mentality, and determine the way you act, your behavior. They could be a stereotype, an extreme opinion or anything that forms how you perceive reality in a way that stops you from your personal growth and reaching your true potential, personal and professional.

A typical example can be the belief that ”Money makes you a bad and greedy person”, whereas money actually makes you more of you are. In other words, if you’re stingy, you will be more of this. If you’re generous, you’ll give back more. Besides that, with more money you have more capital to help even more people, as well as the freedom to choose how you will help them. Proof of this are literally thousands of millionaires and hundreds of billionaires who give away a part of their fortune, small or big, to charities and social contribution in general (*4 e.g. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few).

Perhaps the limiting belief that passion = uncertainty + poverty holds you and your life back, impeding you from chasing your passion and creating a life around and based on it; a passionate life! Here’s the truth:

Passion = Spiritual + Emotional + Mental + Material Wealth.

How’s that possible? Well, it’s simpler than you might think. When you think, feel, act and behave from a place of passion, by following what you love in your career or out of it, you radiate excitement and enthusiasm as well as you communicate a 100% commitment to what you love to do. And it is your very excitement, enthusiasm and commitment that make the difference for you and your services, in comparison to other people or roles and careers that don’t resonate with you. You make an outstanding difference in two ways:

1. By being ultra-productive, adding inconceivable value to others.
2. By communicating effectively your excitement and enthusiasm.
3. As we’ve already underlined, doing work you’re really passionate about does not feel like work at all. It’s primarily fun! As a result, you dramatically boost your productivity. And the more productive you are the more value and better quality you provide to others, whether it’s your employer, supervisor, colleague, business partner, investor or customer and client. Remember: It’s all about the value you can give to others and the world. Your passion is your ultra-productivity fuel that allows you to deliver not just good neither great nor excellent, but inconceivable value. And when you deliver inconceivable value, not only do you become more profitable, but you are quite likely to make a fortune at your passion.
4. But why is important for you to be able to transmit your passion to others, in terms of your profitability? Because people ”buy” people. They buy neither your products nor your services per se. They ”buy” the experience and feelings you pass to them through yourself and your services. People buy your excitement, enthusiasm, confidence, credibility and integrity. They buy your ”why”, your personal story, your deepest and biggest inner drive for doing what you do; not the ”what” (your products/services) nor the ”how” (their cool features or/and your professional experience and qualifications).

This applies everywhere, regardless if you are an employer, a freelancer or an employee. Be aware that people ”buy” people all the time, not just in a typical transactional context. A job interview, a coffee with an acquaintance of yours, a small talk with a stranger, a first flirt moment, a meeting with your colleagues, a discussion with your family. Everywhere. To paraphrase the above phrase:

”People buy your passion”

So, it’s much more likely for you to reach financial independence and freedom through your passion than a high-paying job or a business you started just in order to make more money. But remember:

”People love to buy but hate to be sold”

– Old business saying –

Meaning that if your pure drive is money, people won’t buy from you, and most importantly, they won’t buy you. Don’t try to pretend. We can feel this lack of genuine interest and purpose. You most likely have felt it as well when someone just tried to sell you without giving a damn about you and your true needs. At the core of every human interaction and transaction is compassion, appreciation empathy, and love. And you pass all these feelings to others when you’re passionate about what you do.

Let’s have a few examples of highly successful people who followed their passion, shall we?

• Thomas Edison: The well-known inventor of phonograph and motion picture camera (the light bulb was bought, and not created, as patent by Edison) was a salesman before finding his way to create his famous inventions.
• Andrew Carnegie: A Scottish-American industrialist, one of the richest people ever lived and a philanthropist. He dropped out of school early to work, and made his way up to the railroad industry.
• Walt Elias Disney: The great animator and film producer had just an interest in art and animation, but no formal education or experience. Needless to say that his interest was transformed into his passion.
• Colonel Harland Sanders: CEO and co-founder of KFC, the famous chicken chain. He learned to cook just for his family but it was his chicken recipe that drew attention.
• Sir Richard Branson: An English business magnate, founder of the Virgin Group, investor and philanthropist. He simply started out by selling records, and grew his business from there. Today he runs over 60 companies in 8 different sectors with an estimated turnover of 12 billion dollars. Estimated net worth: 4 billion dollars.
• Henry Ford: The great American industrialist had a net worth of 199 billion dollars – in today’s money – revolutionized manufacturing and car transportation with his car company’s innovation, the assembly line. He left his family farm at the age of 16 and moved to Detroit to become an apprentice in a machine shop. He went on to build his first car in 1896.
• Steve Jobs: Co-founder and former CEO of Apple. He’s the very definition of passion as key element to success. He saw an early interest in computing and dropped out of college after one semester. He pursued eastern spiritualism in India before returning to the U.S. and convincing his friend, Steve Wosniak, to start a business with him.
• Bill Gates: CEO and co-founder of Microsoft. His parents wanted him to pursue a Law career. He entered Harvard University in the fall of 1973, only to drop out two years later to found Microsoft with his childhood friend, Paul Allen.

All these worldwide recognized and successful people followed their own passion and purpose, passing on their legacy to the world.

6) Fun/Spare Time

When you’re passionate about what you do at work you duplicate your passion state by bringing your passion to your personal life, which does include your spare time and fun. And vice versa: When you follow your passion even outside of work, as part of your spare time, you duplicate your passion state by bringing the excitement and energy driven by your passion into your work.

Besides that, you start having more energy and appetite to do more things that you love to do. From spending time with your loved ones and chilling to exploring new hobbies and interests and giving yourself the time and space you need to relax, recharge and reflect, your passion is your powerful natural fuel to enjoy and make the most of your life!

7) Legacy/Social Contribution

Your passion is your ultimate drive and talent to make a positive impact on the world and change it for the better. When you follow your passion, you go closer to your true potential. You become a better version of yourself. And changing yourself is the first step to take to change the world. So, the real question here is ”Why?”. Why should you try to make an impact, big or small? Not just to be remembered in humanity, reaching what ancient Greeks used to call ”hysterophimia” (the prefix ”hyster-” means ”post- and the suffix ”-phimia” comes from the word ”phimi”, which means reputation). So, it means literally post-reputation. In other words, reputation after death, or immortality. Although immortality in this context can be considered as one of the biggest human blessings in someone’s life, it is not the only and most important drive for contribution.

So, what is it? It’s our intrinsic human need for serving a purpose: transcendence. When we pursue our calling, something that is larger and greater than ourselves, we find meaning in our life; we transcend. This give us a sense of ultimate happiness. I said a ”sense” of happiness because happiness is not a stable and fixed state. It fluctuates all the time. That’s why the right word here is ”fulfillment”. Fulfillment is the true and ultimate happiness. And serving your purpose, mission, calling, destiny – you name it – it’s the most profound source of fulfillment.

Your passion does include your purpose/your mission/the legacy you want to pass on this world. Because keeping it for yourself does not feed your true potential but your ego. Because you reach your true potential when you reach ”transcendence”. The last one as we saw can be achieved only through social contribution. Of course, our passion always starts with ourselves. But at the same time it is our duty to use our talents, strengths and passion to serve the world; your duty. Your passion is your gift to this world because you can help through it much better and possibly many more people than you would otherwise. Your purpose is your ”why” and your passion is your ”what”, the answer to the question ”What do you do to serve your purpose?”.

Your social contribution comes from both your passion and your intrinsic pure love for people. That’s right. A great part of our nature is based on love. You can easily realize this if you notice how kids at a very young age behave. They spread love all over the place and to everyone! Their parents, friends, teachers and strangers! We are designed to love unconditionally. Unfortunately, as we grow older, social stereotypes and limiting beliefs in general train us to suppress our need to give unconditional love. Good news are that it’s still there, and that your passion does unleash your pure love. At the end of the day, passion is love for what you do and love for people. Given this, we could say that the relation between passion and legacy is a relation of cause and effect. There’s much more to say on this of course, but passion is indeed one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sources of a global legacy.

Feel free to connect with me on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as check my upcoming book ”Find Your Passion”, by visiting my personal site JimPanos360.com

* 1  “The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study” (Hudson Street Press, March 2011). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110311153541.htm

* 2 see TEDTalk ”The science of cells that never get old”, Elizabeth Blackburn, biologist and Nobel Prize winner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wseM6wWd74

* 3 See Iranian Journal of Public Health’s review article on ” Happiness & Health – The Biological Factors – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449495/

* 4 America’s Top 50 Givers – Forbes magazine https://www.forbes.com/top-givers/#55cc391a66ff