Anyone who’s read much of my work knows that I’m a big believer in the power of passion. I’ve even began researching a book on the topic (it’s in the queue, after I finish my current project on the power and importance of voice).
Having said that, I’m also well aware that the word “passion” is often misunderstood, and overused to the point of being a cliché. Search “passion business quotes” or “passion business success”–or even just “passion”–and you’ll see what I mean. But clichés, as a writing teacher once told me, are really just words, ideas, or storylines that are oversimplified or used too blithely, on a surface level, without enough understanding or supporting material to make their use feel both specific and authentic.
Passion is, indeed, a critical element in business, adventure, entrepreneurial, team or individual accomplishment. And it’s also an astoundingly powerful force. But it’s also a force that’s far more complex than many motivational speakers would acknowledge. (Hence the book on the subject.) “Passion” is also a term that’s often misunderstood and misapplied. And I was reminded of this fact again this past weekend, reading a column “Lady Gaga and the Life of Passion” by New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Reading Brooks’ musings about what makes people passionate, my first thought was that he must not have any first-hand experience in the subject. He talked about passion as an intellectual concept, in the third person, and he talked about “people who live with passion” as if they were a foreign tribe he was studying as a scientifically removed anthropologist. He wondered what propels people to seek passion. Perhaps, he said, they “have an intense desire to complete themselves,” or “are propelled by wounds that need urgent healing or by a fear of loneliness or fragmentation.”
Brooks also seems to view passion as something interchangeable with exuberant emotionalism. People with passion, he said, “have the courage to be themselves with abandon”–Lady Gaga being his prime example.
As someone who both studies passion and knows, first-hand, about passionate pursuits, I feel compelled to offer a different (and, at least in my view, more accurate) take on the subject. For starters, passion is not the same thing as exuberant abandon. Both elements can exist in the same person, to be sure. But passion, while a potent motivational force, is often felt and expressed by people who are masterfully controlled; who have a fierce but quiet determination for a pursuit, or to achieve a goal.
I have often said that one of my goals was to grab hold of life with two hands; to live so as to feel vibrantly alive and to make each day, and the whole of my days, really count. But I can also tell you that feeling fully alive is mostly about what the psychological field now calls “mindfulness” (being present in the moment) and being excited about your endeavors … both because you enjoy what they entail, and because they feed you and matter to you in some way. But you don’t have to feel the full fire of passion in order to feel alive.
So what IS passion? To be fair, passion is a more complex subject than even I realized, when I first began researching it. And part of the reason the word passion is both over-used and mis-used is that its meaning has evolved over time. In fact, it’s only in fairly recent history that it’s evolved into something most of us see as a positive force for success and accomplishment.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) devotes almost three full pages to the various definitions of “passion.” Interestingly enough, the two most common ways we tend to define passion today–“an amorous or strong sexual affection,” and “an eager outreaching of the mind towards something; an overmastering zeal or enthusiasm for a special object”–are the last two entries pertaining to passion in the OED, down at the end of the second page. The older definitions describe it as either suffering (as in “the passion of Christ”) or an emotional state or force that leads people to act in irrational or highly emotional ways (as in “crimes of passion”).
Perhaps David Brooks views passion in that last sense: as an emotional, exuberant force that can lead people to act in highly emotional (and often irrational) ways. But when leaders talk about living a life infused and inspired by passion, I highly doubt they’re talking about flying off the handle or indulging in emotional abandon. I know for a fact that I’m not.
When legendary entrepreneur Richard Branson wrote a blog post entitled “Passion and Purpose Go Together,” for the Monitor earlier this year, he defined passion as “caring deeply” about an idea, product, or service. “Launching a startup simply to make money is likely to result in failure,” he said. “If you don’t care deeply about your idea, how can you motivate others to work with you or to buy your product or service?”
Bingo. Passion–certainly as it is most commonly used (and perhaps overused) by leaders and motivational speakers today–means having a deep and serious commitment to something. Believing deeply that it matters.
The best articulation I’ve ever heard of this definition of passion came from an entrepreneur named K.R. Sridhar, founder and CEO of the alternative energy company Bloom Energy, in Silicon Valley, California. K.R.’s given a lot of thought to the topic, because he believes passion is so important to encourage –not only in a business or team, but in children and students, as well.
Passion, as K.R. described it to me, is a fire that burns within, and which fuels determination and perseverance even in the face of great obstacles. But what sparks that fire, he said, is not emotion, but a vision. Passion is sparked when we have a vision of something … a career as a musician, a new technology or product that could transform a company, an industry, or the world, a better school lunch program, a child well cared-for and raised, or a particular outcome or goal … that matters to us. A vision that resonates with values we hold dear, deep within us.
It is because a particular vision matters to us deeply that we feel ourselves suddenly fueled by an inner fire and force to pursue it and try to make it real, and refuse to give up even when the going gets hard. Indeed, sometimes our passion for a pursuit is sparked only when the going gets hard, and we realize we care too much about it to give up. In the process, we become charismatic and transformational … specifically because we care so much, and believe so much. We also gain both power and perseverance, which makes us stronger and more able to accomplish that vision.
I am passionate about writing, about exploring the world, about sharing the lessons of that exploration, and about making a difference on some level, to the world beyond myself. That is why I continue to scrape and innovate and wrack my brain for solutions that will allow me to continue being a writer, and continue exploring, speaking, consulting and contributing, even though the publishing industry has become far more challenging to navigate. K.R. Sridhar was passionate about his vision of an off-the-grid sustainable source of clean electricity … so much so that, after much thought and family discussion, he quit a tenured professorship at the University of Arizona to try to secure funding to build a company that could make that vision a reality.
But if passion propels us down the harder and less charted roads of life … why do we envy people who exhibit passion for what they’re doing? It’s because the transformational fire of passion lights us up from within. Studies support the fact that pursuing or working on something you’re passionate about makes you feel vital and alive. But it’s the vision, and the belief that the vision matters, that’s behind that fire. Not exuberant indulgence or emotion. This is why it’s not very effective to simply encourage individuals or teams to get passionate about their work. Passion doesn’t just happen. To generate passion, you have to work with people to try to craft a vision of what their work is, or can be, or can accomplish, that sparks that passion and commitment. Even, in the case of teams, if the vision and passion ends up primarily focused on not letting each other down. (See: combat troops in a foxhole.)
Lady Gaga may well have said that she wanted “to be an example to the universe of what passion looks like.” But I believe that what she, and others who desire to live a “passionate” life, are really saying is that they want to find a path that feeds their heart and soul and feels meaningful enough that it sparks the fire of passion inside them. And no matter what else is true about Lady Gaga, I promise you this: beneath her wild outfits and stage persona, she has a vision … of a goal, a life, or how she wants to spend her days or accomplish in her activities and career … that matters deeply to her. And that vision is what gives her the fire and persistence to do not only what she does, but the way she does it, as well.
