Hola! and welcome to my blog. I’m hoping you’re having a lovely day and your day has given you a reason to smile. It’s time to continue the series tagged “Decisions you must get right in life”. Like I said in the previous post, if you’re just joining, you might want to read up on the previous posts of this series. You don’t start a meal with dessert, do you? Now that that’s out of the way, the next decision is ……

Passion

We are all familiar with this word, I’m almost sure you may have heard of it today but it’s importance cannot be overemphasised. What do I mean by your passion? I’m talking about your internally sourced interests. By internally sourced, I mean right from your core, your interest or love for that thing is part of the things that make you feel you. You may have interacted with it from external sources but your interest in it is strictly you, not influenced by anyone.

Let me give an instance, take our friend from the last post, mike with his car. Let’s say mike has a passion for cars. One thing for sure is that he didn’t start loving cars from the labour room, he didn’t just come out and start talking about cars, he needed to come in contact with a car to know he loved it. This is what I mean by external sources but the love for it is internal, driven by him. So, how you know your passion is that it’s internally driven, it feels like it’s part of the building block of who you are as an individual, part of what makes you feel unique.

Now time for the why following your passion is so important… Well it’s quite simple, because it’s your passion. Your passion defines you, it defines your life itself. Like I defined it before, it’s part of the building blocks of you, now if you don’t follow or portray your building block then how can you be considered you. Your passions are part of the things that make your life your life, so you really need to follow them because without them, it isn’t your life to start with.

It’s a very common phenomenon in the world we live in, for people to live lives that aren’t even theirs to start with. They are either forced to a profession because of parents, money, friends, schools and so on. And it leads them living lives where they have to wear a fake smile everyday but eventually this costume wears out, leaving them in regret. And this is the first and most important reason for following your passion, to be truly happy. Passions are born through personally driven desires that when satisfied no matter how small gives you true happiness. Even the journey of following your passion still feels good to you cause you know that this is the process to get what you want. What you want, this is so important. Dale Carnegie taught that you can’t make a man do something unless he wants to. And this is the very reason for the unhappiness we see when we come in contact with people in their places of work.

For example, have you ever come across angry bankers or bitter receptionists? We all have, the reason for their attitude is mainly because they don’t have passion for it. As a banker with a passion for it, you genuinely want to help people keep their money safe, so helping someone do that fills you with joy or as a receptionist with a passion for it, you love to meet new people and make them feel good about themselves, so coming in contact with a new person fills you with joy to do what you love. But reverse is the case when you do it for the money or any other reason, all you think about is the money at the end of the process and the people you meet are obstacles to it rather than sources to your joy, so you treat them like obstacles, you run over them.

Another reason for following your passion is to feel like you. I know this might sound funny but individuality is part of the greatest needs of man. Many people tend to get lost and depressed simply because they can’t seem to figure out who they are exactly. Well, Mr Passions is here to help us with that. He is your ID card through life so when you discover him, hold him with all your limbs.

So how do you find your passions, it’s quite simple you need to go on an adventure, try something new. You need to fail a little, yeah, many of us are scared of failing, you need to be ready to fail and keep searching. Like I said, that which you have passion for is externally sourced but the interest is internally driven…. How do you plan on finding something without searching? and without a compass, how do you plan on searching without failing? One thing is for sure… The journey is worthwhile. The journey involves trying something new, could be going to somewhere you never thought you’d go or reading long articles or writing. Did I tell you that I thought poetry was so boring and English was the subject I never liked, well look at me now, it’s part of the things that make me feel like me. So try something new, sometimes it might not be new, it might be something old, you never can tell…. To find your passion, you need to try something!!

So that’s a wrap. I hope you liked this post and you were able to gain something from it. If you have any comments or questions you’d like to ask, the comment box is and will always be yours. To those of us new to this blog, Welcome to Thoughts of Cromwell, you could check the other posts, they’re here for you. Hitting that Follow button would let you know whenever I post, so you could make use of that too.

Have a wonderful passion filled life!