How to Nurture Passion

Passion is the fuel that drives the pursuit of a purpose. Many feel that enthusiasm is essential. Some feel that the ability to be passionate originates with a strong sense of self, especially high self-esteem. That is why a critical stage of the process is Know and Nurture the Person. Through this stage, you clarify your values and gifts, which define what you are passionate about. People use many approaches. Whether you have a purpose or not, you can cultivate passion. Here are four techniques.

Clarify Values and Gifts

You can find what you are passionate about—your passion—in the connection between your values and gifts. If passion is lacking, revisit what is meaningful to you. There might not be deep enough meaning behind the use of your gifts. If so, determine ways to increase their meaningfulness. Alternatively, probe into your gifts. Are you doing something for which you lack talent because you value the outcome? If so, go back to the Know and Nurture the Person stage to explore your gifts further or see if there are ways to increase your sense of competency with the appropriate skills. Jim Collins in Good to Great6 recommends getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. Using this metaphor, consider a company that hires the right people—those perceived to have productive Passionate Pursuer traits—then spends considerable time and resources training these workers. Studies show that within a year more than 25 percent of these employees are no longer engaged. Getting them in the right seats may mean providing projects in line with their values and gifts, so employees have a greater sense of meaningfulness and competency from their work. Being in the right seat therefore fosters passion, and ultimately brings more engagement, progress, and productivity.

Develop One-Pointedness through Meditation

Shinzen Young, mindfulness meditation teacher, explains that meditation increases your ability to focus and concentrate. With that single focus, or one-pointedness, comes intense interest or passion: “When you become one-pointed, your object of meditation becomes an object of fascination. This produces pleasant, joyful body sensations, which encourage you to pay even more attention. This becomes a feedback loop. This does not give you purpose, but it gives everything more focus. It gives a moment by moment purpose of fully participating in life, and from this you might get a sense of your life purpose.” Use the Core Practice in Appendix B to develop one-pointedness. You can transfer the skill of being single-focused to many activities.

Transfer Passion to Other Experiences

Visualize yourself with more intense passion. Here’s how. Vividly recall a time when you were passionately pursuing some purpose. How did it feel? Remember and reconnect with the pleasant body sensations, mental images, and talk during that pursuit. Connect with all parts of that feeling. It feels good. You are energized and alive. You are so involved in the activity that nothing else seems to matter.

If you were passionate then, you can be passionate again. Transfer your passion from one pursuit to another. Visualize yourself doing some activity for which you desire to feel more passion. Recall your earlier experience. Imagine yourself in detail doing the new activity and experiencing all the same gratifying sensations.

Gordon Gamm, attorney and humanist movement leader, shares his approach to this concept. “We have a capacity to create passion in our lives. I recommend the use of Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) to take the ordinary and make it special. Much of the way we experience life is based on the choices we make of our feelings. Realize how much control you have over your emotions. Transport yourself into a time of passion, a special experience, from the past. Reexperience it with your entire range of senses. For example, I find passion in spiritual experiences such as nature, music, dance, poetry, and walks in the woods. We can transfer emotions to other experiences. Realize that you can make what you’re doing fulfilling and exciting.”

Remove Hindrances Blocking Passion

Consider what might be hindering your passion. Control, fear, impatience, desire, societal influences, and other hindrances are possibilities. Once you identify the obstacle, take the actions to remove this block from your bag.