passion.
- thestudentsblogger
- Nov 26, 2022
- 4 min read
In honor of this week being the starting week of the World Cup, which I know lots of people are very passionate about, I thought we could speak about passion today (AND ALSO PROUDLY SUPPORTING THE NETHERLANDS)
We know tons of famous people who became who they were because of their passion; people like Marie Curie, J.K Rowling, Michael Phelps, Freddie Mercury (don't stop him now) and so many more you will know. One thing they all have in common is passion. Richard St. John said that one thing successful people have in common is that "they love what they do" and it's really true here because all of these famous people pursued what they loved. But even if they aren't globally known names, people still have fallen absolutely in love with what they do. For example, Carlos -a bus driver- said that he only missed three days over the course of four years. A history professor said that they spent their entire life doing what they love.
Even though all these things have been said about personal job, what about business? Normally we associate business with cold numbers rather than hot passion, and more about logic than love; but what might strike you as surprising is how often business people use the words 'passion' and 'love' when talking about what they do. Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, was asked if he liked his job he said, "No, I don't like this job. I love this job."
You can feel passion towards anything, be it a profession, people, even a field, or maybe a product. Quite funnily, James Dyson -yes that's right, the vacuum guy- said, "I love vacuum cleaners, and I will love them till the day I die."
.........
Now that's passion alright.
Passion vs Ambition
Sometimes passion is mistaken for ambition. One of my close friends in school did a talk on Ambition and I recommend you watch it:
So let's put this into a real life example, I'm really passionate about the creative arts, music, and performing and I can literally stand in front of a crowd of like 500 people and perform, no questions asked. The definitions of passion and ambition are completely different; passion is having such intense desire and enthusiasm towards something that you can have strong and barely controllable emotions toward it, like I do with music. But ambition is a strong desire to do or achieve something, like how my ambition is to study law and be a lawyer after I graduate from school. So yeah, now that that's been addressed let's move on.
GOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!!!
First of all, let me get this out of the way; YES ARJEN YES, YES, YES, GO NETHERLANDS! *ahem* Ok, now that that's done, let's talk about the links between passion and football and most importantly, the world cup.
Now, I must ask no one screams at the top of their lungs, "CHRISTIANO RONALDO SIUUUUUU" after reading this paragraph about him. Ronaldo says he dedicates himself "100% to his job all the time" and says, "it's because I love it, I love football because it's my life, to put myself under pressure, to see what I can do; it's like a challenge for me I want to do it best as I can." And he stuttered while saying that but not in a way that you can't understand but because he was stumbling over his words because he was so overcome by his passion.
My dance teacher in school played for Manchester City as a goalie, but her passion is for dance and she actually danced to open the Olympics one year, talk about passion. And she's told me once that when she's stressed; she dances. When she feels happy; she dances. When she wants to unwind or express her feelings; she dances. It's incredible how much someone can be so remarkably passionate about something that they can do it under any circumstances; so much so that you're able to hear the love and admiration in her voice when she appears on the next episode of our podcast (AHH GO CHECK IT OUT BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I MIGHT BE BIASED I LOVE IT WITH EVERY INCH OF MY HEART AND AM SO PROUD OF IT BUT IF YOU KNOW ME YOU'LL PROBABLY RECOGNIZE THE VOICE AND HENCE THE ANONYMOUS THING WILL BE NO-MORE BUT SO BE IT!!!).
But the very same friend I was talking about earlier-the one who did the talk on ambition- also has a very strong passion for mathematics; listening to her talk about it is one of the main reasons that I got the grade I did in math last year because seeing how passionate someone was about it really helped me gain interest in the topic and that interest made me hungry for knowledge and understanding so I tried my hardest in lessons and tests.
The correlation between passion and grades
For all of the other grade-obsessed people who think that their grades determine their worth like me, first off, I think we might have a problem, BUT second of all, you might be thinking, 'How can passion help me get good grades?'
Well, refer to this link and you shall see how some of the most famous people have talked about their passion and why it mattered in their job.
So that's some of the advice I can give you on passion, I hope you can now
a. differentiate between passion and ambition, b. realize what you're passionate about, and c. follow your passion, because success will follow. See you next time,
-thestudentsblogger
Comments