MOTIVATION - Living Your Life With Passion

MOTIVATION – Living Your Life With Passion


By Nikki Viljoen of N Viljoen Consulting CC- May 2009

Several years ago, I undertook to interview a whole bunch of employees to ensure that they were in fact working the correct positions. You see, over the years, things had become discombobulated and people were given work to do just so that they could put food on the table and often others were moved into other positions to accommodate them. I am sure that you can understand that this caused quite a problem. So in an effort to put the right staff in the right positions – I had to interview them and then compare what they were doing to what they were capable of doing or were trained to do to what they wanted to do.

Why am I telling you this? Well you see one of the questions that I asked was “What are you passionate about?”

The scary thing about asking this question is that many people answered with an “I don’t know!” It broke my heart and made me really sad to think that there are so many people out there who have no passion, who work at jobs that they do not enjoy and that are quite meaningless to them, except to put food on the table and allow them to ‘exist’ in life. How sad is that?

So ask yourself these questions and then answer them honestly:-
1. Do you know what your passion is?
2. If you did not have to work for a living what would you like to do and why?
3. If you just won R10 000 000, what would you do once you had bought the house and the car and done the holiday and why?

Most people just generally want to be healthy, or wealthy or just plain happy or another favorite is to ‘spend time with my family’ or even ‘travel the world’.

That’s all very well and good, but there is more to life and quite honestly, there is just so much time you can spend with the family and just so much time you can spend living out of a suitcase and traveling the world before you will feel the need or the desire to do something else. What is that something else? What is that need or that desire?

Once you can answer that question you will have the answer to what your ‘life’s purpose’ is and when you know that - your passion will surface.

Be warned though, it will not just surface – it will erupt from the core of your very being, it will be uncontrollable and it will fill your mind every waking hour. Once you have found it, nothing will take it’s place. Suddenly, what you want to do with your life will become very clear and how you get to it or achieve it will engulf you. It is one of the most enriching and fulfilling feelings that you will ever experience.

So don’t tarry! Find your passion and start living your life to the fullest. Achieve your potential and reach your goals. Life will never be the same again!

Nikki is an Internal Auditor and Business Administration Specialist who can be contacted on 083 702 8849 or nikki@viljoenconsulting.co.za or www.viljoenconsulting.co.za