Grow A Passion

Before we grow a passion, we need to know what passion means.

The meaning of passion varies from person to person. Everyone has its own meaning to this word.

To me, it’s the willingness of expressiveness, to which level and at what context. With everyone else, the idea of passion we’re all shared has a common characteristic — to suffer.

While love, desire, and romance are indisputably within, it’s the endurance makes everything possible.

It’s not a pain suffer, it’s ‘you love it no matter how hard it can be’ suffer. The suffering is the true primary motivator that will lead you to freedom, success, joy of fulfillment and fuel you day after day, especially when you’re at the darkest times.

Whilst passion has many facets and can be any form, from loving your door paint to walking your dog, today I will be focusing on skill matter.

With these principles, you can grow passion in any skill you want.

Although one in life can only have so many skills before he passes away, it’s worth to know that you can learn any skill and be passionate about it.

You might not be having much of musical potentials as some talented kids, who born in musical families, you can certainly play a bass guitar and love what you’re doing.

Think of passion is a supporting software that can upgrade your skill faster and better because you install it.

It’s understandable that people join classes to learn a new hobby, their primary motivator is happiness, seeking for anything fun.

There is nothing wrong with that. But to hone its skill, take painting for example, only happiness as your primary motivator will not take you too far, as a painter. It’s because resistance you’ll be facing brings the opposite of the experience of happiness so surely you must be on a wrong path.

Knowing that happiness is within a passion, and set the passion as your primary motivator will clear many unnecessary thoughts, such as ‘’Do I like it?’ ‘I’m wasting time and money on this.’ ”Should I keep on going?’ etc. If you live a passionate life, you’ll always know how to be happy and you’ll love what you’re doing.

If you already have a passion, you’re on the right path. The same as those top athletes, who turn their passion to their job, dedicating their lives to their passion.

Outsiders might see them as suffering, like getting up 4am in the morning to start their days for the first round of training, with hardships and strict rules. But to them, they enjoy it.

Their mentality has been rewired to a point where suffering is a great pleasure.

So, how to cultivate passion in a new skill?

Don’t be afraid to take baby steps.
With everything else, it has a start to finish. How do we become an adult? We’re all babies once. How to walk? You have to learn how to crawl first. How to form a paragraph? A word following another word. You still need to write the first word. How to finish an apple? You take your first bite then chew the rest. The idea of taking the baby step is necessary. Many people either too confident about their ability to learn or afraid to take crawling steps, as it sounds boring and lengthy.

This is exactly where your passion will grow. The easiest state for you to grow your passion, then solidify it. Set a shorter target, do it, encourage along the way and compliment it afterward. It’s the same principle you’d use to teach a baby how to walk. Regardless of how simple those two steps she makes after the long, innumerable crawling, you’re extremely excited and you’d encourage her to walk more. You wouldn’t push her down and tells her how useless she is. Same as you start learning a new skill. This time, you don’t have a parental encouragement but you have yourself. This is how you form the happiness within the passion of its skill.

Make it as a drug that you can’t resist on.
While it depends on at which levels you want the passion attached to the learning skill, you can clench it as tightly as you want. We all have insanity in one way or the other. For example, some people will have an obsession with buying shoes. To simplify the cause, in the psychological sense it’s the neuron patterns repeated themselves so frequently it became a habit. If those people can turn this obsession with the skill they want to master with, they will become obsessed with the skill, instead of buying the shoes. The interesting part of this case is that they haven’t changed the amount of energy their spending, but rather the object they are willing to be obsessed with. So you’re not giving less energy to the world, you merely change the patterns on how you spend your energy, and it changes everything.
Understand that all the skills in the world are a form of expression.

Like art, it represents your thoughts whenever you do it. So when you look into other people’s work, you’ll understand how much the person has put their efforts crafting their skill, that they’re telling their life story through the skill. You can see the passion in their work and you can see the passion in your own work too.

Find like-minded people to grow together.
Your family or existing social network might not have similar people to share your common interests. Meaning that they might not fathom your pursuit or cannot appreciate your time and effort putting into the craft. Having similar people gathering even once a month, you’ll be more boosting in moods and gain more confidence in the craft that you’re doing.
Passion isn’t only about love, fun or romantic, but also suffer, being patient and understanding. This is also why passion is a drug that we can’t resist on. Find your passion if you have none. Passions can be many, it’s the time management matter, so don’t worry if you have more than one.

What is your passion? Do you have a crazy experience? Welcome to share in comments!

Photos by Ian Schneider, Sebastian Pociecha, DDP, Japheth Mast on Unsplash