Harness Your Passion

It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.

Sheryl Sandberg

The best advice I ever received when I was first starting out on my writing journey is…in order to be passionate about what you do, you have to be passionate. In the beginning of every new adventure, you’ll, no doubt, be passionate. But, as time goes on, it’s normal that your excitement will start to wane and you’ll need to find ways to get excited all over again in order to keep moving forward and create long-term success.

The advice went something like this…to harness your passion, you should try to be passionate about everything you do, like cleaning the bathroom. If your job is to be sure the bathroom is clean then do it with passion. Learn to love sticking you hands in and scrubbing a dirty toilet. Wiping hair out of the tub drain. Cleaning toothpaste off the mirror or out of the sink, Sing, dance, daydream, wiggle your booty, whatever it takes. Take pride in the job and make that bathroom as sparkly as you can get it.

My thought when I first heard this was, seriously? You really expect me to be learn to love cleaning the toilet? That’s going to take an entirely new and different mindset to accomplish that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of the few people I know that loves to clean. I get instant gratification from seeing the transformation when things go from dirty to sparkling.

But asking me to love cleaning the toilet is asking a bit too much. Mindset is definitely key when it comes to seeing passion from this perspective. Rather than simply “being passionate,” to maintain long-term success, you’ll need to develop what I like to call your “passion muscle.”

Developing Your “Passion Muscle”

The easiest and most efficient way to develop your “Passion Muscle” is to practice, a lot. Practice involves more than just writing. It involves creating a plan, being organized, setting goals, developing the right mindset and follow through.

In my desire to learn more about how to create long-term passion for what you do, I decided to challenge myself to becoming passionate about cleaning the bathroom. I set a schedule of when I would clean and decided to stick to it. I gathered my cleaning supplies before I started, every time I cleaned my bathroom.

I put on gloves, grabbed my Lysol Wipes, turned on some WHAM/George Michael-early days of course, and sang and danced my bathroom beautiful. I wouldn’t say it made me passionate about cleaning my bathroom, but it did make the job much more fun. And now at least I don’t dread it and my bathroom stays clean.

To maintain a passion for writing you have to…practice. And that’s means you have to write, and write a lot. As part of your practice keep a running list of ideas you want to write about. Journal everyday, create a blog about something you love and post to it daily.

Write about your dreams, your hopes and your ambitions. Write articles to publish on sites like Medium or LinkedIn. Find blogs that match your niche. Contact the blog’s owner and ask if they allow guest posts. Write short stories, start a novel. Anything so that you are writing everyday.

Setting Your Goals

Along with writing you also have to read and read a a lot. In order to be a good writer you have to be a lifelong learner. I was never very passionate about reading when I was in school. I always found myself with the Cliff Notes version of every book we were required to read, until I discovered my love of writing. After that reading became second nature and I’ll read almost anything.

Reading is essential to the writing process because it helps you to strengthen your communication skills. It can also teach you how to be more persuasive and simply become a better overall storyteller. It doesn’t matter what you read, only that you do.

Once you’ve defined what you want to write about, it time to tune up that passion muscle by setting a goal to write and complete at least one article a week. Start each goal with the end in mind. Before you begin a project, have an idea of what you’d like the end result to be. And who you’re writing for, i.e. who’s your audience?

The next step is to make a plan. Set aside time to research, read and write. Gather any and all materials you need to help you get the job done. Turn on your favorite tunes, put on some comfy clothes, and chair dance your way to finished.

If you’d like more help organizing your plan download the Personal Plan Planner.