How To Live With Passion And Enthusiasm
Passion and enthusiasm for life are the natural byproducts of a life that is lived with a sense of purpose. Everything changes once your life is given this added dimension of meaning that does something to ignite your motivation. This should make sense. Once you make the shift from not knowing the point of your activities to understanding that each activity that supports your overall purpose is bound to get you excited to work on it.
Transcript
Passion and enthusiasm for life are the natural byproducts of a life that is lived with a sense of purpose.
Everything changes once your life is given this added dimension of meaning that does something to ignite your motivation.
This should make sense.
Once you make the shift from not knowing the point of your activities to understanding that each activity supports your overall purpose,
It's bound to get you excited to work on it.
As a career coach,
I've been able to observe this up close with each one of my clients.
It was like a switch got turned on because they became clear of why they were doing what they were doing.
They started out feeling unfulfilled with their jobs and their careers just going through the motions.
Then once they set their sights on what it was that they really wanted,
Landing their dream job or starting their own business,
They just lit up like Christmas trees.
From that point forward,
Their life was filled with passion and enthusiasm.
This is how it works.
That's the secret.
If your life is lacking this level of energy,
This passion,
This enthusiasm and zest for life,
Take a step back and ask yourself whether or not you understand what your purpose is or if you have purpose in your life.
It's not about having your dream job or starting a business.
It's about knowing why you're doing what you're doing.
It's about understanding who you are and what's important to you.
Because once you understand who you are,
Your talents,
Your interests,
Your goals,
Your values,
Your passions,
And what matters to you and the life that you want for yourself,
Then you can figure out where you want to go in life.
It's understanding where you want to go in life that gives you this sense of purpose because that is what allows you to understand why you're doing what you're doing because you know that you're doing it because there is a destination that is really exciting.
Wow,
My dream job working with these amazing,
Brilliant people,
Solving all these interesting problems,
Using my God given talents and genius,
Where I'll be appreciated and welcomed and have a sense of belonging is one example.
Or the destination of,
Wow,
Starting my own business and becoming an entrepreneur and and having all this freedom and flexibility and the opportunity to create a product or a service that that I am perfectly designed to offer to make the world a better place.
This is another example,
But it could also be becoming a mother.
Wow,
I get to be a mother and have a have a baby and raise this beautiful little child and take care of it and so on and so forth.
Could be building a car from scratch,
You know,
Wow,
I get to,
You know,
Build a car using using my hands,
My tools and all my mechanical genius and I got to race this thing around a track and how amazing that's going to be.
You know,
It could be getting a really nice new wardrobe.
Wow,
I get to look amazing in these beautiful clothes.
I really value my image and it's going to feel so nice to go out and walk on the street in my nice new clothes.
I mean,
That one might sound a little silly,
But I offer these different examples to show you that purpose comes in a lot of different forms.
Okay,
So if you're not looking to change your career or start a business,
It doesn't mean you can't live with passion or enthusiasm.
What it means is that you have to understand what matters to you,
What you care about,
What you're passionate about,
Whether it's clothes or music or people or current events or traveling or food.
Set yourself some some goals and and give yourself some destinations.
Go to Italy to eat all the pasta in the world if you love pasta and watch all this passion and enthusiasm come into your life for preparing for this trip and and figuring out all the different restaurants you're going to go to to to find your favorite meals.
All of a sudden,
Life becomes exciting because you understand the why behind your activities.
You you can answer the question,
What's the point?
People that are depressed,
That wake up in the morning feeling blah with no motivation to get out of bed in the morning,
In many cases,
Can't answer this question.
The alarm goes off.
They contemplate getting out of bed or staying in bed.
And they think,
What's the point?
Why bother to get out of bed?
I'm working this job that I hate.
I've got nothing to look forward to.
Don't love the friends that I'm hanging out with.
My wardrobe is a nightmare or whatever.
They can't understand the point of life.
They lack the joy and the fulfillment and the enthusiasm because many have lost sight of who they are,
What they care about,
What's important to them.
And they haven't taken steps to have these destinations,
Have these goals,
Have these ambitions and these ideas that they would like to fulfill.
Okay,
Fulfillment comes from fulfilling these aspirations.
A fulfilling life comes from somebody who is fulfilling their desires.
So understand what do you want out of life?
Who do you want to become?
I had a client who really wanted to become an entrepreneur.
He wanted to start a business.
He wanted to become a coach,
A career coach.
He couldn't do it anymore selling software.
Amazon offered him $250,
000 a year to sell their software and he couldn't be bothered.
What was the point?
He'd been doing that long enough.
That wasn't what he cared about.
He wanted to help people.
He wanted to empower people.
He wanted to be free.
So he started this coaching business and then overnight the guy was just full of energy,
Just brimming.
I mean it was incredible to witness this transformation.
It was just like zero to sixty and then all of a sudden his whole life was imbued with this energy and enthusiasm because all the smaller things started to add up and he could see how going for a run in the morning even though it was winter in Minnesota and it was freezing cold was supporting his mission,
His purpose to start this business because he had to be in shape.
He had to be sharp.
He had to be mentally clear.
He would go out and play hockey with his friends and score a lot of goals because he understood the value of competition and exercise and camaraderie and connecting with friends.
All this stuff was furthering his goal and being a good partner to his girlfriend and being a good father to his kids.
All of a sudden all of his activities made sense to him why he should put energy into them because the more energy he puts in the more he's going to get back and the more energy he gets back the more he can put into his business and the more he can put into his business the more his dreams can come true.
So it's an equation guys.
It's simple math.
You know what goes in and what comes out.
On a subconscious level our brains do this math all the time.
We make these mental calculations.
Someone who doesn't like their job.
Well the mental calculation is why get out of bed at 6 a.
M.
To show up early.
What's the point?
My boss is a jerk.
He's not going to appreciate me getting in early.
It's not going to make a difference if I work any harder and I'm not going to get a raise anyways.
So what is the point of getting out of bed early?
So that's the calculation versus someone who just lands their dream job with a really beautiful progressive company and they realize oh my God I'm going to wake up at 5 a.
M.
I'm going to go to the gym first.
I want to be refreshed because I know it's going to make a difference.
Now I know what the point is to be on my game to show my peers what I can do to show my manager what I can do and be rewarded for that because this is a place that honors that that does that.
So that's the idea guys.
To live a life of passion and enthusiasm because you know that it makes mathematical sense or in other words it's also a natural byproduct of having a sense of purpose to your life.
Once you know why you're doing what you're doing you're going to get excited.
You're going to naturally have this energy.
Your body knows how this works.
Your brain knows how this works.
When there's this big beautiful carrot being dangled in front of you you want it so badly right.
We usually don't have this carrot and this carrot is important because we really want it and that's very motivating and it's not about getting the carrot.
That's not it.
We know this.
But the fact that there's there's a goal there's a direction there's a purpose that we're pursuing that we know takes us in a really good direction.
Whether we get it or not we're advancing ourselves.
We're growing.
We're becoming.
We're excelling.
It's making us a better person.
We intuitively get this so we pursue this carrot with vigor.
And yes hopefully we get this carrot that would be nice.
But in the pursuit of the carrot that doesn't matter.
It's the direction that feeling that we get when we're moving steadily towards fulfilling our purpose in this life our destiny to express our natural talents and abilities to do things that light us up because they're in line with who we are.
If we're a car guru and we're not doing anything fun with cars in our life.
Well that's going to show our passion and enthusiasm is going to be lower than it could be.
So guys find what find out what matters to you.
Take some time to do a self discovery process.
This is what I do with all my clients.
I walk them through exercises and questionnaires to help them understand who they are and what they're all about.
And then create your life accordingly.
Start moving your life into alignment with who you are and what you're about.
And as you do this notice the shift in energy that is inevitable.
Notice how your life now becomes imbued with so much more passion and enthusiasm.
