Striving For Authentic Happiness and Personal Satisfaction

Passion Will Help You Through the Good Times and Bad

A Project You Life is a self-driven journey for the creation of Living A Determined Life.

One of the vital ingredients of Living A Determined Life is satisfaction determined by the self, with authentic personal satisfaction resulting from living up to your personal values and being involved with something bigger and larger than yourself.

The Project You Life Journey focuses on developing a deep-seated comprehension of your principles, passions and life's purpose. Those who fully understand and acknowledge their principles and passions are more likely to determine their life's purpose. When your principles and life's purpose are aligned, passion becomes the multiplier effect that increases the probability of desired outcomes and leads to the living of Living A Determined Life.

Passion

I've always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don't do things half-heartedly because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.

Michael Jordan

This is what passion is all about ── putting your heart and soul into something.

With passion you will get as much pleasure ─ sometimes more ─ from doing something as you will get in achieving it. For example, a passionate artist can get as much pleasure while painting as he does from seeing his completed work.

When you put passion into your efforts to strive forward, in anything you do, you have a much greater chance of attaining authentic satisfaction and happiness, both from your actual endeavors and from whatever results occur.

Richard J. Leider, a Life Coach tells his clients, "Our world is incomplete until each one of us discovers what moves us ── our passions. No other person can hear our calling. We must listen and act on it for ourselves."

Passion and enthusiasm are nearly interchangeable words. Nearly, but not completely. Inherent within passion, though not within enthusiasm, is a deeply burning fire inside a person that provides greater self motivation and commitment. One will not easily give up that for which he or she has a passion.

When you can bring passion into a symbiotic relationship with your desires, you are well on your way to achieving your desires and dreams (assuming you put in the hard work, remain committed and do not allow setbacks to deter you).

Here's what two of the early founders of the self-development industry had to say about passion and enthusiasm:

The starting point for all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. Napoleon Hill

The key that unlocks energy is desire. It's also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited.  Earl Nightingale

Passion will help you through good times and bad. When there is no passion the deep-down desire to do a thing is lacking. When there is passion, the desire to do something often becomes the power to do it.

We'll have more thoughts on passion in the next Project You Life Blog post. 

In the meantime, take 15 minutes with pen and paper and start a list of the things you are passionate about. Then, later today, spend another 30 minutes adding to this list and thinking of ways you can spend more time on these things.

This article is partially excerpted from our top-selling personal and professional development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback ($7.89) and Kindle ($6.88) formats.