There had indeed been calls around that people should live beyond their average. Empower yourself! Don’t settle for less! However, we tend to have left out the place of passion. No wonder so many people do get jobs and live to regret it while some in fact did get out of the job, dejected, simply for one reason, ‘I don’t feel it!’ In many things people do these days, most especially here in Nigeria, there is no passion.
Passion is like the ‘feel’ or ‘feeling’ you have for what you do or are involved in. when there is no passion, depression simply and quickly sets in. In fact, it is the fuel that makes us achieve our dreams. Ready examples are pervasive in our environment. You must have taught about it. I once asked Jude, a friend of mine who was finding law so hard, why? “I don’t feel the course. I never felt it” he replied. “Then what would you be studying if not law?” I asked this time, worried. He replied simply; “Theatre Art”.
Kunle was doing quite well in MTN, one of Nigeria’s biggest telecommunications company. He was an administrator there and earning big. Anyone could have prayed for such and I must confess to you, so many people would have loved to get Kunle’s job. Surprisingly, one fateful morning without any job on the line, Kunle quit! “Are you crazy!?”, “Are you out of your mind!?”, “How do you expect to get another job as good as this!?” Friends, family, and colleagues lashed out at him. “But I haven’t gotten much time for myself folks! I simply don’t feel it!”
It is the truth that most times when it seems like we are just stagnant at a project or whatever we are doing just looks so bleak to us, it is because we don’t have passion for it. “Pete Rose, the legendary baseball player of the Cincinnati Reds, has experienced his share of problems”, wrote John C. Maxwell in his book, 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, “but he was certainly one of the great catalysts of his sport in the twentieth century.” He was once asked which goes first on a baseball player: his eyes, his legs, or his arm. Rose’s response was telling. He said, “None of these things. It’s when enthusiasm goes that he’s through as a player.” He is not only true of a baseball player, I believe so he is of any person. Enthusiasm is passion!
Ask me about an establishment that blossoms, employs thousands, and makes millions in turnover and I’ll show you people who have passion for what they are doing sitting on its board. Show me a musician who sells a million records a year and I’ll show you a passionate person with a passionate manager who believes in her. This also applies to a relationship. A passionate person makes a better partner and brings out the best in the relationship! As this is also true of teams, I consider some team players.
Michael Jordan as everyone knows him to be a great basketballer and a man of statistics is just so passionate about his game. Ronaldinho once said on Pepsi Football Academy Show that, the only way a footballer can become big is to have passion for the ball. John H. Johnson, founder of the No.1 Black/African American magazine in the world, in his book, “Succeeding Against All Odds”, and wherever he goes extols in great depth ‘passion’. He had a passion for the emancipation of African Americans and founded it in the Ebony magazine. Deola Sagoe saw her passion in fashion and runways and she carved a niche for herself in fashion and took it to a landslide when she, in conjunction with United Nations, organized and held a world fashion parade for charity.
Having no passion for what you are doing is just like being dead at it. Think about it. All over the world, all products are as a result of someone’s passion. Going big names may sound somehow abstract. If twenty – eight year old Ngozi Adichie could write “Purple Hibiscus”, [her first novel] a wonderful piece that sold and got an award to its credit, after studying ‘writing’, then it must be her passion. If Davida could design and make shirts of international standards that compete with the likes of TM Lewin et al and make exquisite lawyers’ gowns and robes, and she is only a Nigerian law graduate, then you must know that it’s her passion.
If you don’t feel what you are doing presently or you find yourself deadlock, then you had better thought it through. It might be because you don’t have the passion for it. Passion energizes you. It makes you forge ahead. It creates a rebirth! Then if you really need go places, I charge you to leave it if you don’t feel it. It is simple. If you need to drop it because you don’t feel it, you had better follow it because in there lies your passion!
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