What do you enjoy doing? What do you do that when you are not paid you really don’t care much because you have received your reward already; the ability to do what you enjoy doing? When what you enjoy doing is compared to the task of playing a game; a game you know is fun but it requires the same attributes of work to complete any task. Have you heard the adage that if you do what you enjoy, you will never do work in your life; is this really true? Then why is it that what we enjoy doing differ from other work we encounter? Why do some people enjoy sitting on their laptop from morning to night while some cringe at the thought of doing that? Why are we so different with what we enjoy participating in? Is this psychological, biological or spiritual? Before I attempt to answer these questions, let’s look at the concept of passion.
Life without passion is meaningless; we simply exist and feel a sense of worthlessness. Passion is mostly a misconstrued concept because we have this vague imagination that passion is associated with something we enjoy doing. There are so many people that are passionate about what they do but do not enjoy doing it. I am sure you will want me to give you an example but I won’t just give you any kind of example, I will give you empirical examples; something that happens every day and everywhere.
Everybody knows Tunde – your regular 5 star employee – upwardly mobile, ambitious and relied upon to get the job done by his employer. He has won the employee of the month 11 times in a year for the past 5 years and just as he was about to get a raise and a promotion, Tunde dropped a bomb shell; he was terminating his employment with his company X and moving to a competitive company. Then the haggle starts; company X says I will attach a car to your new position; company Y – a competitive company – says I will give you a house in Ikoyi so you can get to work on time; company Z – a start-up company which is not in competition – says I will give you three times the combined money that company X and Y are offering
Let’s do an analysis of probabilities; for anybody to accomplish sterling performance like Tunde, the person must have passion. Passion is therefore a necessary prerequisite to successful venture but the real question we should ask ourselves is “what is Tunde really passionate about?” If Tunde chooses company Z, we can surmise that he is passionate about money not the job; if he chooses company Y, we can surmise that he is passionate about change of environment and enjoys what he is doing and if he sticks with company X, we can conclude that he is passionate about loyalty and prefers to stick with what he is doing.
The moment of truth when he makes this kind of decision declares his passion. Encarta dictionary defines passion as an intense enthusiasm for something. This enthusiasm is intense because it is mixed with overpowering emotions such as love, hate, joy or anger. Tunde may have been regarded to be passionate about his work before these three choices stared at his face courting him to a relationship. These three choices open us up to a different dimension about Tunde; does Tunde really enjoy his work or is he really grasping for the reward of the work?
When I hear someone say “I am passionate about what I do”, I wonder why people delude themselves. Nobody is passionate about work without a reward no matter how noble it may sound to tell someone I enjoy what I do. This is actually a sequel to “Talent and the Talented“ where I emphasized developing of talents to skill which opens opportunity. The whole concept of opportunity is the reward we derive from it. The reward does not have to be money in fact money itself is not a reward. If Tunde ends up in company Z, it is not the money that drives him but what the money can accomplish; better school for his kids, better health care, etc.
I have established the fact that passion is derived from reward – the reward of being happy. The longing for happiness is what precipitates passion. We go to school, work hard to get good grades because we believe we will get good jobs to give us good remuneration to marry, have kids which will make us happy. Have you realized that our whole struggle in life is to be happy? We are therefore defined as “species who want to be happy at every given time”.
If happiness is the end result of everything we do passionately we are therefore going in circles to be happy. Some people derive happiness from oppressing their fellow humans; some people derive happiness from learning new things; some derive happiness from playing football and getting cheers from fans, some derive happiness from dancing, singing, etc. If money is removed from this equation, then the happiness is short lived; we will then become frustrated. Though we are doing what we derive joy from but the fact that we cannot get money from it makes us go in circles. So our primal instinct is go for what gives us the money first then chase what we enjoy doing.
There are some challenges associated with doing this; there is a 90% probability that you may not go back to what you enjoy doing because of the fear of not having enough. If you do not follow your passion, you become a slave to this world and you will be grouped amongst the data of world’s population. This means you just exist and you have simply not made any impact on this earth. If you are a Christian, you definitely know you have buried your talent like the one guy with the one talent. You will become a victim of this world because the talent you have will be taken from you. You will be debased and even with all your money, you will not be happy. You are simply a living ghost.
Kunle Afolayan, the son of Ade Love – a prolific film producer and actor in the 80s – left his progressive career in the bank to chase his dream of film acting and production like his dad. He was never known in his Local Government while working for the bank for 7 years but 1 year in the film production industry, he is known round the world; he was recently invited to London Film Festival to discuss his one and only film production – IREPADA. Lalit Modi is one of the few billionaires in India but he was hardly known when he was running his family’s multibillion dollar conglomerate but when he ventured into his passion of cricket, the whole world sings the praise for creating the India Premier League. He is no more a census figure in India but an icon to reckon with.
How can we chase our passion and at the same time not be bothered about what we will eat and drink? The answer to the question has eluded so many people. Let us take a peek at the manual of our life; there lies all the solution we sought for in this world. Abraham was a man that could hear God like most people can. One day, he felt in his spirit that God was telling him that he was father of many nations. This was kind of rhetoric putting in mind that he does not even have one child not to talk of having the potential to have any since he was quite old and the wife he loves so much has passed menopause. He got confirmation on all side that he was going to have a child by visitors who told him he was going to have a child. This child was going to be the child of promise which Abraham quickly interpreted was going to be the seed of the many nations.
Intuitively, we know the seed that will lead us to the passion we desire but some us choose to ignore it while others try their best to force it. Abraham discovered the seed, explained to his wife and they forced it by producing Ishmael. Ishmael is a passion you decide to create outside your inner promptings; you build such seeds in lieu of your impatience. God rejected Ishmael as the passion of promise – heir of many nations. When Abraham stopped forcing it, God gave him the seed in the form of Isaac. When Abraham stopped forcing the seed of passion, he made lots of money while waiting for the seed to manifest.
This is the secret my dear; when you intuitively feel a promise in you bigger than yourself that is definitely what you will enjoy doing. When you are on track with this inner-promise, the power of sin becomes useless in your life, you will be in fantastic health, you will not compete with your fellow brethren, you will be an icon in the field that leads to the promise and you will make money beyond your wildest dream. It may not be instantaneous and self gratifying but it would be sure. I did not make 200 thousand dollars by blogging; I made more than (>) 200 thousand dollars by following the inner prompting of promise though I did not know where it will lead me to when I started. It’s just like a pregnant woman who has no idea how the child will look when she puts to bed that’s the same way the promise is. You feel the birth pangs, you feel uneasy, you feel pains sometimes and when this child finally comes to the world, you eventually have a form and you name it.
It’s not easy to give birth to your passion just as it is not easy to chase after money; the work is the same but the rewards are different. If you chase after money, you will simply exist on this earth with the money because God himself made us understand in Genesis 11 that there is nothing that man sets his heart to do that he cannot do when God was talking about humans building tower to heaven. If you follow that inner prompting that will make you constantly passionate, you will leave a legacy for your children, you will be an icon, you will be very famous and wealth and health will run after you and finally, you can never be found wanting of sin.
Rahab followed the inner promptings of her heart when she helped out the Israelite despite the fact that she was a prostitute, she became a prominent figure in history and was named in the biblical hall of fame. She had a choice to give out the Israelites and collect a reward from the king but she chose instead to follow the inner promptings despite the danger accompanied with it. This is a mere difference between passion and money. It is those that follow their passion that makes a difference in their world not those that decides to join the money wagon. This is why the young rich ruler that met Jesus felt inadequate despite his huge sum of money and following the law judiciously. It isn’t about obeying the law and chasing money, it is about following the inner promptings of your heart.
This is the difference between a 419 guy and a blogger; while the 419 guy may make immediate returns from his hard work because it requires hard work to be a 419, it may take the blogger some time but the blogger will eventually hit it when he/she is following her inner prompting. The 419 guy will violate his conscience because every human conscience goes against wrong dealings but he may deaden his conscience by justifying what he does. One of the craziest lines the 419 guys cook up is that the white stole from their fathers so they have a right to steal from them but the white guys are no more buying their fraudulent line so they deprive their fellow Nigerian brethren through telephone frauds. Later when they cannot defraud anymore, they will start carrying guns and ammunitions. The end is definitely sure for them.
The bloggers end that follows his/her inner prompting (not the one doing it for money) is also sure; the blogger will become an icon in his field and will therefore be consulted by the world. He will make tremendous amount of money and he will make a name for his children. The blogger will bleed along the way just like the 419 guy; he/she will have his low points and high point but the end is sure because the process is right. Lucky Luciano – a famous American mob star in the 1940s – could not have said it better when he said “it will take the same work to get money doing bad than it will take doing good”. I will rephrase it this way – it will take the same work following your passion than it will take chasing after money; you will both end up getting the money but the guy that follows his passion will leave his footprint in the sands of time.
