Passion.

It’s something that you hear a lot about these days as one of the keys to success, if not personal fulfillment. Many articles have been written lately on how to harness or foster that passion, including my own piece on how our passions spring forth from our inner strengths. Where we run into problems, though, is when we create this expectation that passion can sustain our drive over the long run. To illustrate what I mean by this, let me share with you how I view my role in parenting.

When I talk to others about my life as a parent, it’s clear that this is a role I love doing. And yet, I doubt anyone would say that this is something that I’m passionate about. As I’m sure other parents can relate to, there are days where I would love to have a moment’s peace; a break from trying to figure out who did what to who and why. But even in those moments, I still enjoy being a parent because I love it.

And while it’s easy to assume that this love of parenting is merely an extension of my love for my children, the truth is the reason why I love this role – a job that for many of us will be the hardest one we take on in our lives – is because of the sense of purpose it gives to my life. That’s why even in those moments where being a parent presents those personal challenges, my drive to succeed in being a good parent never wavers because I value the purpose it brings to my life.

And that’s what we need to understand about our business and the work we do; that if we think the key to being happy with our jobs, with our work is Click here to continue reading »”How to Transform Passion into Purpose”

Bret L. Simmons posted a thought-provoking piece on his blog this week where he talked about human “capacity”.  Simmons defines capacity as “the potential each of us has to do more and be more than we are now”.  Although this lead to some debate over whether human capacity could be viewed as being without limits, as I pointed out in my comment on this piece, the real issue is how do we go about defining or quantifying the limits of our capabilities.

As children, we learned early on about the limits of our abilities, of what activities we excelled at and which ones we struggled with.  Thanks to the varied curricula of the education system, we were able to test our competencies in understanding scientific principles, of creating inspired works of art, and whether we could score a goal in a hockey net.  Even if we couldn’t do some of these well, we were still expected to try, to push ourselves to do the best we could.  Although we took on these challenges in order to Click here to continue reading »”Defining the Limits of Our Abilities”