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How Passion Unlocks Potential

Written by: Peter Nicholls

Article Overview: You're at the office, working on a project you feel was made for you. You've become absorbed in your thoughts and the sheer enjoyment of the experience. You pour your natural talents, skills and abilities into a product that only you could create. It's a feeling sometimes described as a ‘state of flow'. It doesn't just happen at work. It can be triggered by any enjoyable experience, be it physical, passive, intellectual, social, manual, environmental, or spiritual. When you lose yourself in something you love, you find yourself.

How Passion Unlocks Potential

It's after knock-off time and you're still at the office, working on a project you feel was made for you. You've become so absorbed in your thoughts and ideas and the sheer enjoyment of the experience, you haven't noticed everyone else has gone home. Your mind, body and spirit have come together as you pour your natural talents, skills and abilities into a product that only you could create. It's a feeling sometimes described as a ‘state of flow'.
It doesn't just happen at work. It can happen when you're spending quality time with the family or friends, listening to great music, singing in a choir, creating a painting, winning at sport, or walking in the hills. It can be triggered during a physical, passive, intellectual, social, manual, environmental, or spiritual experience.
It's always:
• intensely enjoyable
• a peaceful feeling of being at ease with yourself
• an expression of your inner self, in your own unique way
• a positive experience that expands your thinking and stirs your creative juices, and
• generates a ripple effect, flowing through every part of your life and work, lifting self esteem, self confidence and sense of self worth.
It can at times inspire your sense of life purpose, value and meaning.
We're told we only use a small percentage of our brain's potential. The more you allow yourself to think and act naturally, the greater your prospect of discovering a talent you didn't know you had - or forgot you had - sometimes introducing you to a new and enjoyable interest.
We all spend so much of our lives trying to ‘fit round pegs into square holes' - struggling to learn skills and talents that others tell us we need if we want to be successful, especially in business. Too often, we (and others) overlook the powerful potential we unlock when we're at play, doing something simply for enjoyment. When you ‘lose' yourself in an interest you love, you ‘find' yourself - your natural instincts, skills, abilities and talents come to the fore.
All of this is vital to the business employer or manager. Success in business today demands more than the skills and abilities set out in a job specification. Think how much intellectual property your organisation lost the last time a long-term employee left. ‘Transferable skills' are an often under-appreciated element of individual and corporate success. They're developed not only at work but also in personal life - any time you're experiencing the state of flow that comes from losing yourself in an interest you love.
Developing business skills is only one of many benefits that individuals and employers gain from passionate interests outside of work. They also
• provide the most natural form of stress management,
• generate new energy, reducing the symptoms and costs of burnout, illness, absenteeism and staff turnover, and
• build the self esteem and self-confidence that trigger workplace enthusiasm, optimism and innovation, resulting in high quality products and happy customers.
Most importantly, they add greatly to the employer's chances of keeping good staff, keeping them happy and achieving sustained high quality work productivity.

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Article Tags: energy, innovation, passion, potential, skills, talent



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Your age? - Hi Nana, Have you voted? You can give your age group a boost. What is your Potential? On another forum I read of a 17 year old, who always earned some money. He washed cars and had regular repeat income. Eventually he gave it to his friend, then he did the newspaper round. Then he learnt about the Internet and games. Got fed up and began to learn programming. Eventually he earnd a good income and by the time he was your age, he earned beyond 100,000 Australian Dollars. Give yourself a vote. Kindest Regards Beat "Unlock People's Potentials!!"
Re: Cold Calling - In my experience the problem with hiring cold callers is that many of the successful candidates already realize that they have a talent for sales and are already working for themselves. Most of the candidates that would take a job cold calling most likely do not have solid selling or client service skills. I used to work for a brokerage firm in Victoria and we hired co-op students to cold call. In my opinion that was a mistake. Potential clients can sense inexperience very quickly and without a seasoned cold caller on your team prospecting will be very challenging.....the key is to find someone with skills that isn't already doing there own selling....tricky. Good luck Phil
Re: On taking Action - [quote="jvprosperity":1hd0zjku]I was surprised to not see the words along the lines of taking deliberate action within the article. Do yo think it's an important part of the 6 points Evan summarized from the article or is it implied?[/quote:1hd0zjku] Hi Andy, I think taking deliberate action is implied in the six points. For instance, I interpret them as follows: 1. Set your sights on where you’re going - Write your goals down on paper. 2. Educate yourself - Read everyday about your field and even take courses on it. 3. Passion pays off - Enjoy what you're doing. 4. Grow your money - Invest your money. 5. No guts, no glory - Go out and sell your product/service/self everyday as if it were last. 6. The Biggest Secret? Stop spending. - Put aside as much money as you can into savings your account/retirement fund.
The Old Girl's Network - (2003) - Haven't read this one yet... Contents A business of one's own: setting the stage Passion: Turning what you love into a real business Vision: Bringing Your Idea Into the World Pioneering Spirit: Discovering new frontiers Tenacity: Passions Bulldog Raising Capital: Translating your vision into dollars and cents Focus, feedback and flexibility Leadership lessons Life after the survival stage: Managing onward There's a Took Kit in the back that has lots of good stuff, including: Outline for competitive analysis: the basic issues to address before starting your company Outline for executive summary and business plan, with sample summary Explanation of non-disclosure agreement Milestone setting "Do you have what it takes" quiz Sample financing term sheet Due Diligence checklist Sample advisory agreement Process and systems review Outsourcing overview
The 7 Greatest Truths about Successful Women - Picked up a few books on my weekly trip to the library, thought I'd share their tables of contents. The 7 Greatest Truths about Successful Women: How You Can Achieve Financial Independence, Professional Freedom, and Personal Joy, by Marion Luna Brem. From the inside cover: In 1984, battling both cervical and breast cancer, and facing $500,000 in medical bills and a disintegrating marriage, Marion Luna Brem was desperate to find a way to support herself and her two young sons. With more than a few strikes against her, she started knocking on doors, looking for a job. Seventeen doors later, the blunt speaking manager of a car dealership in central TExas declared, "I've been thinking of hiring a broad." And with that invitation, Marion took her own first step on the road to financial independence, yada yada yada Today, this "broad" owns two automobile dealerships, an advertising agency, and a stake in a local bank. She sits on the boards of several businesses, etc. etc. 1. Who Wants to be her own boss? 2. Ladies, Start your engines 3. Resiliency 4. Nurturing 5. Intuition 6. Creativity 7. Passion 8. Self-Value 9. Sensitivity 10. Leadership 11. Balance


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