I was lying on the bed last evening surfing the channels while Karin was making dinner in the kitchen. I don’t typically watch a lot of news, but as I was passing the news with Brian Williams, he was interviewing someone and I stopped on the channel. The reason I stopped was because the person he was interviewing was exuding passion. And not the trumped up kind. This guy was sincere.
His name is Geoffrey Canada and he is the CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone. This guy is passionate about helping kids. It is oozing out of him. I like that. You can tell that this guy walks his talk and you don’t see that every day. It was interesting to observe his style and Brian Williams’ style. Brian is cool and reserved as you would expect of a newscaster. Geoffrey was wearing his heart on his sleeve and he didn’t hold back. When the interview was over, I was wishing that this guy had another five minutes. Here’s the link to the 3:30 interview http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#39388985
Here are five things we can learn from passion:
1. Being passionate charges our batteries and other people’s batteries. Passion = Energy
2. An eagerness to learn and experiment is the natural byproduct of passion.
3. Enthusiasm is contagious. People follow people who know where they’re going.
4. A passionate attitude opens doors of opportunity. It actually creates opportunities.
5. Being passionate is never about the status quo. We can always do better.
Being passionate is a key to success in any endeavor. If we’re not passionate about what we’re doing we can only fake passion for so long. Sooner or later we’ll burn out. But with real passion about what we’re doing we tend to get even more passionate as we do what we know we should be doing. The key is to be doing something that you really want to be doing. That’s very important.
We all have things in life that we have to do that we aren’t passionate about. Do those things as you need to. But don’t forget to spend some time doing the things that you are excited about doing. Life is short. As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” The same goes for passion. We can get so busy doing the urgent things that we forget or neglect the important things. I think pursuing things that you’re passionate about falls into the very important category.