Re-ignite Your Professional Passion

By Caterina Rando

Are you energized to get into your day when you wake up in the morning? Do you feel you are living the best possible life for you? Do you love your work? If not, it might be time to ignite a fire and re-ignite your passion. 

Every day, every moment you have a choice, a choice to be passionate or ambivalent in your life. A choice to reach for the stars a living a life of passion or keep holding on to the railing, by passing your time in the seat of the mundane. 

You are responsible for making sure you are served up a plate full of passion in life. No one else can go to the buffet line for you; you won't get what you want if you let anyone or anything else select the main course of your life. Only you can figure out what you are passionate about and only you can decide what will re-ignite it. 

When you are older sitting on your sunny porch in your automated, back massaging rocking chair reflecting back on your life, will you wish you had done anything different? Will there be any opportunities you wanted to take but did not, any great ideas you let float away, any important dreams you let go unfulfilled, I hope not, everybody says they want to have no regrets.

If you want to have no regrets at the end of your life that means you have to live each day of your life with no regrets. The remedy for that is passionate living. This success creating lifestyle involves doing what you want to do, going where you want to go, being who you want to be. You know you are living and working with passion when you are fully engaged, alert, alive, enthusiastic and in action in your life. 

When you are passionate about your work and your life problems are seen as possibilities, obstacles are seen as opportunities to learn and occasions to do things differently. What could be possible for you in you were living a life of passion? Would you go back to school, increase your expertise, change the direction of your business, start a different business?

The only thing standing between you and a life filled with passion is you.

Let me say that again, the only thing standing between you and a life filled with passion is you. There is probably a parts of your life where you are already living with passion, a part of your life where you feel passion and purpose, where wild horses carrying saddle bags filled with See's candy could not drag you off your mark. A place where all the energy and enthusiasm you possess beams through. 

Think about your life, where are you passionate and where do you need a jolt of passion?  

When you are committed to passionate living, you consistently bring yourself fully forward in your life. If you did that what would be different? Would you have more fun, more business and more overall fulfillment in all areas of your life? You won't really know how great it can be until you do it. If you are ready for a new lifestyle of passionate living to enjoy your life more everyday and achieve the success you strive for read on: 

Strategies for Passionate Living

1. Commit Yourself to Passionate Living 
Right now this is the only life you have. Make an agreement with yourself that you are not going to sit this one out, commit to being a participant, not an observer. Commit yourself to the process of finding and following your passion.

2. Ask Around
Ask people who have know you for a few years what they think you are passionate about. Ask family members and other people that have known you for many years what they remember you being passionate about years ago.

3. Point Out Past Passions
Make a list of all the moments in your life where you felt passion. Then identify what was it about that experience that made you feel that way. For example if you identified serving in the Peace Corp. as a time of passion, identify if it was, the adventure, the opportunity to educate others, to help shape a community, or learning about another culture that was the real passion of the experience. Alternatively, if you felt passion when you first used a computer, was it doing something new, achieving a goal or actually working with technology that made you feel the most passion.

4. Know Your Strengths
Make a list of all the things you are good at. When you run out of ideas leave the list and come back to it everyday for a week. During this time notice when you are doing something that is easy for you. Ask five people that know you to write a list of what they think you are good at. 

5. Identify Passionate People
Make a list of ten people you are acquainted with that you believe have a life filled with passion. Call them up or get together with them and ask them what a life of passion looks like and how they went about identifying their passion.

6. Keep a journal for a week and notice when you are feeling the most passionate. Write these things down and then at the end of the week reread your journal and see if there are any common threads or directions that need further investigation. 

7. Try New Things
Make a list of all the things you would like to do. Add to the list everyday. Once a week for six weeks try something new. In addition to having new experiences and perhaps finding some new passions, in the process of doing new things you will get your creative juices going and might change your perspective for a change.

8. Take Some Classes
Take a class on something you are or think you are passionate about; take a class on making your dreams come true, or on goal setting. Again, in addition to the actual class the time and attention on the process of reigniting your passion will produce ideas you may want to act on.

9. Read, Do Some Research
Go to a magazine store or a bookstore, notice what you pick up. What you find interesting. Read some books or publications you do not usually read. Notice what you cannot put down. Notice what subjects ignite your passion.

10. Get Into Action.
When you get clear about what you want, what you are passionate about the only thing left to do is get moving, get working on it, get going. Write out all the big and small action items necessary to get you living from a place of passion. Start small with little steps, and as momentum builds you will find your passion getting lit and reignited and turning into a firestorm that will fuel your fulfillment and your success.

From this day forward commit yourself to live from a place of passion, to being fully engaged in your life. As you begin this new lifestyle, watch closely and notice what is different. Watch how eventually success seems simple. You will find life to be more fun, filled with more laughter and more purpose. 

During your process of re-ignitng your passion, if there comes a fleeting moment, when, only for an instant you doubt yourself, when you doubt whether or not it is really worth all the effort and all the action, remember the words of the great 20th century philosopher, Mae West " too much of a good thing can be wonderful."

Read Only Copyright 2002 Used with permission of author Caterina Rando, MA, MCC, is the author of "Learn to Power Think," and a keynote speaker and success coach. She helps people invigorate their professional and personal lives and create the results they want. To find out more, visit http://www.caterinar.com. Caterina can be reached at 800-966-3603 or by email at cpr@caterinar.com 

Article courtesy of Bob ‘Idea Man’ Hooey & Ideas At Work! Visit our webiste: http://www.ideaman.net/ for more downloadable Business Enhancement Success Thinking series of articles by some of North America’s top speakers and experts. If you’ve enjoyed this article, please let the author know, and tell them you read it on http://www.ideaman.net/ Bookmark this site as we add new articles as they are received.