Passion may seem like a word that gets tossed around too much these days so as a result, people don’t think much about it. They think it’s overrated. Just another buzzword.

But if you really sit down and think about it, you’ll begin to see the value of it. For one thing, passion brings energy and without energy, you can’t do anything. Sure you can force yourself to do things with sheer willpower, but that’s so exhausting. You have to generate your own energy all the time and by the time you use it all to do what you’re not passionate about, you have nothing left to power anything else you want to do. You just want to crash, watch TV, eat and sleep.

Contrast that with someone who has passion and it’s like they have their own sun within them continually energizing them.

I truly believe too many people are stuck doing things they have no passion for and it’s such a hard way to live because life becomes a slog. It wears you down. You have to push yourself to do things. It’s exhausting. Nothing left in the tank to do what you really want to do at the end of the day. You have to recharge yourself and the cycle starts all over again the next morning.

The second reason why passion is important in creating great things is because it’s the catalyst for creativity. When you’re passionate about something, it’s on your mind 24/7. That allows what you’re thinking about to penetrate into the subconscious where it does its thing and spits out those great flashes of insight to help you in your journey. You can’t have those great light bulb ideas without passion. You’ll just have mediocre or average at best because you’re dealing only with the conscious/logical mind.

Third reason is tied into the first reason, namely energy. Yes, passion gives you energy to do, but it also gives you energy to OVERCOME. A lot of people will let the smallest problems stop them but passionate people can easily break through walls. It allows them to go the extra mile without them even noticing.

All this ties into the most important reason why passion is needed for creating great things:

It makes you live up to a standard of EXCELLENCE.

Passionate people aren’t going to cut corners or take the easy way out. They’re too passionate to let that happen. They’re not going to be impatient and do something inferior. They’re willing to spend time to have it done right. They’re willing to overcome a lot of things to do so and they have the energy to do it. They’re willing to think of great ideas to avoid compromising on quality.

The result is much time spent creating, refining, thinking of and incorporating great ideas, refining again, overcoming obstacles, not settling for average, forging their creation in the crucible of excellence and the result is something that people deem as simply extraordinary.

So the question is, how can you find what you’re passionate about?

Here are 2 very simple questions to ask yourself:

What do you want to learn more about?

What do you like talking to others about?

If you find that you don’t want to learn more of anything, you need to head to a bookstore and start browsing. See what catches your eye. There’s too much out there for a person not to want to learn anything.

Once you find that something, you’re going to want to talk about it with others to learn more about it, to get their viewpoints and insights.

And then you’re going to want to learn even more about it.

And then you’re going to want to CREATE.

And sometimes, you’ll need to learn new skills to help you create but that’s fine because you have the energy to learn those skills now.

And then you’ll see what that passion will do for you in terms of your creation.

Once you live life like this, it’s like your life goes from black and white to color. Life’s not dull anymore. You’re not dull anymore. You become magnetized. People and ideas become drawn to you. It’s like you’re on fire (internally) and the glow is visible to those around you.

The only way to create great things is to have that energy, to have those great ideas, that endurance, that commitment to a standard of excellence and you can only have those things by working on what you’re passionate about.

Nothing else will do it for you.