Passion: Do You Need It To Succeed?
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Passion Personified: Crazy Soccer Fans
I’ve heard it a 1001 times. All the entrepreneurial “start-a-business” books talk about it.
- “Start your own business by identifying your passion in life.”
- “You’ll only succeed if you are passionate about your business and its purpose.”
- “Don’t start a business on a topic you are not passionate about, or you’ll never be happy. “
Recently, a reader commented:
- “It is not hard to get new ideas or inspiration if you really have passion at your niche.”
My view? I think people have it upside down.
Passion shouldn’t be the cause of your
business or blog. It should be the effect.
Let me explain.
People don’t get passionate about a sport or a team and then start watching it. No. They first start watching the sport and then they get passionate about it.
I remember going to my first American football game in USA a few years back. (You may know that I’m not an American citizen from my profile. What you may not know is that I’ve lived quite a few years in America.) I didn’t go to watch the game because I was passionate about it. Heck - I didn’t even know all the rules of the game. But you should have seen me cheering and shouting in the stadium. I was as excited in the crowd as everyone else. Because I went to see the game, I got passionate.
Passion Stems From Commitment.
Ask any writer.
If a writer waited for passion and inspiration to come before she starts writing, she’ll never finish her book.
But once she sits down and commits herself to write, passion and inspiration comes on its own.
If you wait for passion to show up before you act, you’ll never move far. If you are committed enough to your blog, passion will come automatically.
Action Summary:
Make a decision today. Commit yourself. Decide how many hours per week you’ll spend on your blog. Ask a few close friends to help you keep focused. Keep on telling your blog readers what plans you have for your blog before you are ready with them. Commit before you can unleash. And the unleashing becomes easier.
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salam sir!!
bang on target! I came to your blog via northxeast and man that article you wrote there as guest blogger. You deserve a salute.
about this article yeah ..very true.
I used to run away from blogging but once just bye a matter of chance I happened to visit digital inspiration and then inquired about it here and there on internet.
I was within sometime in a situation where I was reading all the archives of DI (labnol.blogspot.com) and the links which it passed to other blogs.
Slowly i was submerged in the sea of blogs and couldn’t resist but to come up with my own blog in blogspot. Few days back I switched to wordpress and i am just loving this. today I am the one and only one who runs a blog among my engineering institutes’s students and teachers…or even count the management and the director
Posted 12 Sep 2007 #
I totally agree with your post.
Posted 13 Sep 2007 #
Passion is a powerful word. Everyone talk about being “commited” and “passionate” to be an entrepreneur ? Why not “workaholic” which is as powerful as passionate, or “fond of” which is as “weak” as commited ?
When you become an adult, you often have quite a history of liking things and disliking others. That helps a lot choosing a field of expertise. You have very little chances of enjoying a soccer match if you dislike sports to begin with
Passion/fondness and commitment are two sides of the same coin, you can’t really become passionate or commited about something if you don’t like it to begin with, and if you don’t force yourself to commit to it in the beginning. Let’s remember that most of us go the entrepreneur’s way to get rid of a job we don’t really like, it’s not to force ourselves in something else we dislike
Posted 13 Sep 2007 #
[…] Passion [BlogClout] […]
Posted 14 Sep 2007 #
I am not sure if your posts would ever help me but I admire the way you write.
Posted 16 Sep 2007 #
I enjoyed this post Ankesh! Sometimes we just have to get a project going and it will gather steam (momentum) as we go. Who knows we might like it!
If we wait to have a passion - we may never get started!
Posted 16 Sep 2007 #
[…] Passion: Do You Need It To Succeed? My view? I think people have it upside down. Passion shouldna_Tt be the cause of your business or blog. It should be the effect. […]
Posted 16 Sep 2007 #
I couldn’t agree more. A year and a half ago I started blogging with the intention of trying to somehow earn a living. Since then I’ve become obsessed with improving the way I design and write, all along figuring out exactly what I like to do. I still don’t have a clear idea, but I’ve starting building websites just for the love of it instead of just to earn a living. Yep, the passion continues to grow in leaps and bounds!
Posted 18 Sep 2007 #
Lair: Thanks for your intelligent comment. Let me try to make the point again…
Do you ever wonder why people who have had arranged marriages have a lower divorce rate than people who have love marriages?
Its a paradox that boggles the minds of most Westerners. People who are married without falling in love should have higher divorce rates than people who have fallen in love and then marry - right? But the opposite is true. According to some article I read long time back, 50% of love marriages end in a divorce. But only 10% of arranged marriages end in a divorce.
Why the discrepancy? Because people who marry (commit) - fall in love eventually. But people who start with love - can’t always find long term commitment.
Passion and commitment maybe two sides of the same coin. But commitment creates stronger and lasting bonds. If you have to select between the 2 - always select commitment.
Posted 18 Sep 2007 #
[…] Kothari from BlogClout published interesting post Passion and if you need it to succeed in blogging. I think this is one of the best articles in this […]
Posted 21 Sep 2007 #
You’re so right! I knew I wanted to become a writer and when I was first starting, I took a gig writing about the media, journalism and how technology is just changing everything. Doing all that research on the topic resulted in a passion for keeping up with the changes in media and all the new inventions and innovations out there.
A tip for those who are passionate about the same things as I am - check out the Knight News Challenge (http://newschallenge.org) - you can win a grant to fund your ideas related to technology and journalism.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 #
I’m not sure if I agree with you when you say passion stems from commitment. Passion inspires commitment and drives you towards your go. Passion equals motivation.
Posted 14 May 2008 #
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Posted 29 Mar 2009 #