Passions

Let’s start out by looking at Passions. Everybody has a passion – it’s what you love. It might be your hobby, your favourite sports team, your favourite TV show, your career, your pets, or another person. Perhaps you are active and passionate for a certain cause such as the environment, human rights or politics. Maybe you are a deeply spiritual person and your passion is your spiritual connection or helping others find their spirituality.

Some of us will have no problem identifying passions. You may already be very aware of existing passions in your life. You may be chasing a lifelong dream. Perhaps you are already involved in developing and using your special talents. Excellent! You have already started to move toward your purpose! For some of us, it will take a little bit more digging to identify our passion, but I hope that you’ll bear with us for a couple minutes, even if you already know yours, because you may find it beneficial to see where we’re coming from; who knows – you might even find another hidden passion buried under this process!

For some, passion may tend to manifest in a negative polarity. I use the term negative here to indicate not quality, but rather a state of opposition; when something is defined in terms of being the opposite of something else, like how darkness is the absence of light, for instance. Let me give you an example of what I mean when applying this idea to passion. I have a passion for efficiency and correctness; doing things right without wasting resources. I came about the realization of this pattern only gradually, and initially the passion was of negative polarity. I used to get really annoyed when I saw inefficient processes which involved significant amounts of energy that did not contribute to the end value. My mind seems to have a built-in, automatic response which was causing me to react whenever I saw this type of situation. This is an example of what I call Reactive Triggers.

Another example of this comes from well-known speaker Bill Hybels. In his address to the 2009 Global Leadership Summit he spoke of what he calls “Holy Discontent”. To illustrate this principle, he reminded us of the classic cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor. Popeye would be going about his business until things started to go wrong as they are sure to do in cartoons. Popeye would always begin as a perfect gentlemen, and try to remain calm, but inevitably, the situation would escalate, and soon Popeye could be heard to quote, “It’s all I can stands; I can’t stands no more!”, at which point he would quickly swallow a can of spinach and use his miraculous strength to defeat the villain. In Popeye’s case, his Reactive Triggers were usually events such as some other sailor trying to steal his girl, Olive Oyle; or somehow hurting his dignity. These reactive triggers reveal that Popeye was passionate about Olive Oyle, and about protecting his dignity.

Reactive Triggers can be really instrumental in identifying passions. The process is extremely simple; since reactive trigger events are essentially the exact opposite of the underlying passion, just ask yourself what really bugs you, then take the opposite! Here are a few examples...

It’s fairly easy to see that often a natural reaction to certain types of events or situations is actually the result of an underlying passion. My challenge to you is to move away from a reactive lifestyle, to a lifestyle in which you positively identify, then intentionally and proactively embrace your passions. Why is this so important? This switch in behaviour is absolutely essential to an effective life of purpose, because when you react, the situation controls you; but when you “Proact”, you actively control your response to the situation and may even control the situation itself.

Now, if you are a results oriented person like me you may be ready to argue that reacting isn’t so bad – after all, reactions get results. Well, that’s true, often reactions do get results. However, results are only part of the picture; what we really want is to be purposeful and effective. This goes beyond simple results. Reactive behaviour may get results, but is not particularly effective because it is instantaneous rather than systematic. What I mean by this is that a reaction responds to an instance of an event rather than a broad class of events. The reactive response relies entirely on the fact that you happened to be aware of the event. So, what about all the times when you didn’t just happen to be there? Are you ready to dedicate your entire life to stand around waiting for the situation to happen again so you can do something about it? Of course not!

Let’s look at an example. When I was kid, I didn’t have very well developed social skills, so I got bullied a bit. I therefore have an empathy for victims of bullying and a passion to protect my own children from this type of abuse. Oddly enough, I also have a couple of haunting childhood memories of the situation being reversed – where I was the perpetrator, rather than the victim of bullying. I have to admit that I deeply regret my behaviour and I still feel remorse and pain because of these few bad decisions. Because of this I really want to make sure that my children do not fall into this trap of becoming the bully. So I guess I’m doubly motivated to fight bullying. Now, how do I do this? I certainly will not be satisfied by waiting to see if my children become impacted by bullying and then try to figure out a solution. No. Instead, my wife and I proactively designed and implemented a number of measures to instil certain values and build valuable skills into our children, which we hoped would mold them into caring yet tough individuals with the ability to stand up for themselves if necessary, and big hearts to enable them to stand up for others as well. OK, maybe “designed and implemented” is a bit misleading. We didn’t consciously sit down with a whiteboard and design a solution specifically to avoid bullying. We did however have many conversations and take many actions over the course of many years to ensure that our unified parenting approach was one that we felt would achieve the kinds of value-based results we want to see in our children, not just specifically with this one issue, but as an integrated approach. The point is: we proactively did something to affect long-term, sustained, and systematic results. Obviously, every parent wants their kids to succeed and there’s never any guarantees, but so far, our proactive approach has been very effective and I may be a bit biased but I honestly could not ask for a more well-adjusted, talented, caring and just plain fun group of people than our kids.

I think one more example might be a good idea, but this time I’ll keep it quick and simple. I’m sure you have heard this old proverb: “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime”. Giving a fish is reactive. Teaching the art of fishing is Proactive. One additional point I’d like to make here is that the proactive approach may take more work. As any sportfisherman will tell you, fishing is an art, and the teacher may have to revisit the student occasionally to teach more advanced techniques. A proactive solution may require sustained resourcing or periodic maintenance. So to sum up: Reacting may achieve the desired results, but a Proactive, sustained and maintained approach yields a far higher return on your investment.

This brings us back to my challenge to you. Be proactive rather than reactive in your passions.

There is one final idea we need to look at with regard to passions, and it’s one that was presented by Stephen Covey, in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Seriously, if you have not read this book, stop right now and go buy it! I’m dead serious! Here, I’ll even give you a link to order it online through my resources page!

Got it? OK, so Stephen does a fine job of explaining this concept so I’ll let you read it from him. It’s his idea of the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence which he explains within the chapter on Habit #1 – Be Proactive. I just want to point out that where passion is concerned, it is absolutely critical that you apply this concept. Failure to do so will result in endless frustration and probable burnout.

Blessings, Kenneth Goudsward

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