5 Ways to Remain Passionate Over Time
Article provided by Brand-Yourself.com
Passion is important to me and my work with personal branding. To achieve excellence you have to be passionate about what you do. In my earlier posts, I have covered “Why I’m Passionate About Passion” and “How to Reach your Potential by Working with your Passion” and today we will look at how to keep the passion maximized once you have found it. Here’s what I’ve been doing, and what I invite you to try:
1.Keep setting new goals and challenge yourself
Setting goals for yourself will keep you focused on what exactly you are trying to accomplish. If your goals are SMART you will find them to be easier to follow up with and to verify that you reached the goals. One of the main reasons for losing passion in something is a lack of continuously setting new goals. All of the sudden there are no more goals to achieve and you feel that you have accomplished what you set out to do. The key here is to set new goals before achieving the old ones, focusing on reaching the next level. That way, there is always something left to strive for. Think both personal and professional.
2.Reward yourself
Every time you achieve a goal or even an objective, make it a habit to celebrate the achievement. When I reach a goal my reward could be anything from a long coffee break at the Skybar at the nearby hotel to a weekend out of town. You have to figure out what reward is best for you and your team, but make sure it is not counter-productive, e.g. eating a big cake when you reached the goal of losing 2 kilos (Yes, I go by the metric system).
3.Delegate/Outsource/Automate
In every position there are tasks that steal energy and drain the passion out of you. Identify these tasks and if possible, let someone else deal with them. Try to find someone that is passionate about the task at hand. Don’t limit your search to the company that you are working for, maybe a virtual assistant could help you out.
Some things cannot be delegated or outsourced, and therefore have to be done by you even if you do not like it. Start by seeing if you somehow can transform them to a task that is aligned with your passion. If that fails, start creating checklists for the tasks and try to automate them as much as possible. Not everything has to or can be done with passion.
4.Create a passionate surrounding
As I stated in my last post about passion, the people around you play a very important role in developing your passion. Show your team, your boss, and your clients that you are passionate about your job and do not let them steal that energy away from you. It will feel a little like faking it at first, but as you act like you truly feel, it will become more and more natural. (More on Fake it ’til you make it).
5.Get professional help
It could be a mentor, a coach, a psychologist or a good friend. The important part is that it is someone that you trust and that listens to you with your wellbeing in mind. Share your goals, your achievements, when you are in the flow, etc. Make sure your relationship is constructive, fun, rewarding, and that it is adding to your positive energy.
These tips will help you in maintaining your passion, but you will not necessarily feel that your are in the flow or that you are passionate 100% of the time. But look at the big picture. Even if you are not feeling passionate in this instant, are you moving in the right direction? It is important to have some “sticktoitiveness” to achieve your goals of reaching new levels of personal development.
I will leave you with an inspirational quote from Earl Nightingale: “The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”
What do you think? Looking forward to reading your comments!
Ola Rynge is an entrepreneur with a passion for the personal development side of personal branding (covered in this blog) as well as the application of personal branding and social media for entrepreneurs and small businesses (covered in The Rynge Blog). His company, The Rynge Group specializes in market oriented small business and idea development, including social media strategies and implementations. Follow Ola on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook.
Article by, and courtesy of Brand-Yourself.com for actionable tips to put you in a position of power in the job market
