Finding and Strengthening your Passion

For this Motivation Monday, let's find our passion. People in general are passionate about the strangest things. With all the talk of hurricanes this past weekend, I would see hurricane experts give their opinions and analysis on the news. These guys live and breathe hurricanes. They obsess over patterns within a storm, historical trends, and guessing when they will form, where they will hit, and how much damage they will do. I'm sure glad they have this passion for hurricanes and weather in general because people like them give us advanced warning so we can get away from danger in time.

So, what's your passion?  What is that activity or topic that gets you all excited just thinking about it? That thing that turns you into "that guy who just won't shut up" when it comes up at a party? That thing that you could spend all day working on, so you have to set alarms to remember to eat and sleep?

If you can't think of it right away, give it some time. You may need to start with what you like, study it, learn more about it, and tell people about it. The key to really turning something you like into a passion is the ability to share it with others, and more specifically, help others with it. If you're a car guy, don't just read about cars. Help people work on their cars or teach them about cars. Then your enjoyment of all things automobile will turn into a passion that blesses your life along with the lives of others.

To emphasize the importance of passion in a productive life, here are some of my favorite quotes on the topic. Know of any more quotes you like? Please share them in the comments!

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
--Nelson Mandela

Without passion you don't have energy, without energy you have nothing.
--Donald Trump

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
--Blaise Pascal

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.
--Charles Dickens