mitrobeThe English Oxford dictionary, while giving words like fervor and determination as synonyms for the term, defines passion as any great, strong or powerful emotion. Notice the three descriptive words there all border on strength?
It can only mean that passion as a driving force for business people cannot be underestimated.
A lot of time we hear the phrase, “follow your passion.” Quite candidly, while that phrase has transcended the barriers of inspiration, becoming more of a hackneyed cliche, it bears a colossal amount of meanings. Passion fuels our mental and physical limits; it refills drained confidence and reassures lost minds.
While the thought that the term has become redundant should at best be a relative concept, there must be a general concession about the role passion plays as a driving force for business people; as a lubricant for the wheels of success.
While passion is definitely not enough to create success, heck success is basically built on action and hard work, still, it decides to a large extent the heights business people and entrepreneurs will attain in their quest for financial independence and self-fulfillment.
This is why it is generally advisable you follow your passion when opting for a line of business to delve into.
Thing is, handling a business is no average feat, especially when it is a startup or a business in its latent stages. There are numerous challenges and snags that will attempt to sap you of every mental strength you had at the beginning of the venture. You will encounter a plethora of doubts and question marks about the progress of the business you are handling and your capabilities to move it forward.
You will have sleepless nights about your business’ financial strings, beating a competitive market, climbing the ladder or adopting a perfect marketing strategy. You might end up becoming your biggest naysayer and disparager, disputing your wherewithal to hire the proper staff, find clients for the business or even achieve something as minuscule as scouring for the perfect location.
In all these, the place of passion as a driving force will come into relevance.
What’s the truth about passion? Is it important to your success as an entrepreneur, or is it icing on the cake if you happen to arrive at something that ignites your fire and earns you a living? Is it something you love to do, or a feeling, either of satisfaction or of disgust you get from doing something? And how can you discover what your passion really is?
This analogy should properly answer these questions. Imagine it is a Friday. The last day of a long work week. You have an unrivaled feeling of exhaustion so much so that you can not even celebrate the big deal you closed for your boss earlier that day.
You are only stuck in a dingy room, all by yourself, imagining how you will spend the next two days of Saturday and Sunday. These days have become your solace, your opportunity to escape from an unfriendly world and sapping environment that is your workplace.
You are already dreading the ever malevolent Monday, as it means you have to return once more, return to a place that has become a harbinger of terror. You finally decide to console yourself with the knowledge that your salary comes in by the next week. You will survive the torment, at least for another few weeks, you reason while sighing sadly.
Now compare that to how you feel when you’ve performed the same tasks and activities, and secured the same income, but this time your week has been characterized by actions and results that make you proud end confident while bringing you joy and a realization that you help to impact the lives of people you care about, whether you know who they are personally or not. That’s the energy of passion; that is the fervor mentioned at the onset of this piece.
That energy will keep you going when the skies are dark and the wind blustery. Your passion as a driving force will spur you on and lessen the tautness when the tasks, which while previously enjoyable, now appear unpleasant, when the money seems to be stuck somewhere and you’re enervated physically and mentally.
Your passion as a driving force might be that one thing that increases your staff resoluteness and convinces your customers. It will be the defining factor when you approach sensitive periods where you have to take or make crucial decisions about risks. It might just be that one thing that leaves investors and financial backers in awe when you speak of your goals, vision, and ambitions for a project. Without passion, you will only be threading a prepared route to disaster.
Passion equates zeal. Do you know a marathon winner’s greatest asset?
I mean the one that continually pushes him forward and over the finish line even when he is bereft of physical strength. I think you do now.
Passion is a refueling force that ensures you do not straggle from the right path; that you do not lose the love you had at first, and if you lack this emotion, you will run out of energy long before your actions produce the desired result.
Okay, let’s forget passion as a driving force. Now, think of it as an inner fire, the one that keeps your hopes ever burning.
Not every entrepreneur is driven by material and financial factors, most times, it is an innate urge to do something different, something that would impact the world and redefine human living.
This feeling to do something that you love and that improves others’ lives should be your driving force, your shining light.
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James steller
mitrobe
Mitrobe Staff