Love Life Like a Leader: 3 Ways to Gain Passion

When you hear the word "passion," do you have a positive reaction or a negative reaction?

I have both! I have a love-hate relationship with passion.... On the one hand, I love passion because I actually identify as a passionate person--somebody who loves life and isn't afraid to show it. I take pictures everywhere I go (I'll interrupt your conversation to ask you to turn around and smile for my camera). I write in my journal almost every day to just BE, and feel my feelings, and feel the moment, and feel the day.

On the other hand, I always find myself standing up for people who don't have that kind of passion, who are content to be more chill and more low key and mellow. There's something very calming and grounding about being around these people.

Maybe it's personality, but I really struggled with this leadership quality of passion, which is chapter 12 of the book The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader that I am working through with my Well-Led Life Leadership Mastermind group this year. This was by far the most challenging topic that I've had to wrestle with and teach this year.

I'm going to operate on the assumption that you'd rather become the kind of leader who is passionate than become the kind of leader who isn't passionate. In this post, I'm going to share 3 ways that you can become more passionate.

What is Passion?

The meaning of the word passion has changed and evolved over time. You might know that the root of the word passion is from Latin, which means to endure, to suffer. Yet, the way we use the word passion today usually means a strong, intense feeling that compels action. So actually, you get a more robust understanding of the word passion if you put the older and the newer meanings together. What think of when I think of passion is a life-giving energy, an aliveness that drives you so much that you are willing to endure suffering for the cause that you are passionate about.

 Three Ways to Cultivate Passion

If passion is a life-giving energy that can be so intense and powerful that you are actually willing to endure suffering for its cause, then the question of how to become a more passionate person is a question of how do I gain more of this life-giving energy? Want to know what another word is for life-giving energy?

Love.

So, three ways to become a more passionate person is another way of saying three ways to love life more.

1. Focus on What You Love

The first way to love life more is to focus on the things you love about life. My energy goes up when I realize that I am surrounded every single day by lovely, beautiful good gifts from God. So make a list, literally take out your journal and make a list of 10, 20, or 36 things that make you happy. You can look at this list every morning or, better yet, add to it every morning. Add just one thing to this list and see how long of a list this can be. You can come up with hundreds of things that you love about life if you get into the details of your life.

2. Embrace Mundane Tasks with Love

The second way to become a more passionate person who loves life is to do the mundane, repetitive monotonous tasks in life with love. Let's be honest. Life is full of mundane and monotonous and repetitive tasks that we don't get excited about doing. Every single one of my leadership students said homework is monotonous and tedious, but it has to get done. I said housework is monotonous and mundane and tedious, but it has to get done.

Especially as leaders who are learning to lead our own lives well, the challenge before we lead anybody else is to learn to do the mundane tasks in life well, to do them with love--like God does.

God is life, and that's why He's so full of life that He doesn't get tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again.

"But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

God does repetitive, monotonous tasks of creating every day but doesn't get tired of it. He doesn't get tired of rising the sun, rising the moon, making daisies, and waking us up from our night's sleep every morning... Every day, God does it again, and He doesn't get tired of it. 

We can learn from that attitude, right? We can learn from our God who makes every daisy passionately every single day and doesn't get bored of it. I challenge you with the same challenge I gave to my Mastermind students: find love in going to school; learn to love having to do your homework; learn to love having to sit in your classes; learn to love practicing your piano, going to sports practice, doing your chores at home, etc.

Probably 30-40% of our lives is made up of tedious, mundane, repetitive tasks that we actually would prefer not to do. So, if we decide that we're always going to hate these tasks and resist them, then we are essentially deciding to hate 30-40% of our daily lives. That is not going to make for a life of passion and a life of love!

3. Explore New Experiences (Live Like a Scientist)

The last way that you can become a more passionate person who loves your life is to try as many new things as possible. Gain as many experiences as possible. Find out what lights you up; do new things so that you can discover new loves that you didn't know you had, especially in middle school, high school, and college when you have so many opportunities to do new things, meet new people, go places, and have healthy, positive experiences.

The fact is, you're not going to learn to love life more by sitting on a couch or by laying in your bed. You need to get out and intentionally do things. Gain experiences. Put yourself out there. Step out of your comfort zone.

I challenged the students in my Mastermind to live like a scientist. The scientist we talked about was Thomas Edison. To be a scientist, pretend you are Thomas Edison inventing a light bulb, and you need to light everything to see what burns. He was looking for that perfect filament that would create a long-lasting commercial grade light bulb.

“I have not failed. I found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison

But until he found carbon, he was famous for saying he found 10,000 ways that won't work. It wasn't failure. Same goes for us. We should live like a scientist and have 10,000 experiences so that we can discover what actually lights us up, what actually makes us come alive, what brings out the best in us, and what gives us vision for our future. We can't do that from the Comfort Zone.

Guiding Passions: A Word of Caution

A word of caution: the Bible has a lot to say about worldly passions, youthful passions, and fleshly passions. We are always going to find plenty of passion for the things that our flesh naturally craves and naturally desires--pleasure, comfort, and self-indulgence. We need to resist those kinds of passions.

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them.” - 1 John 2:15

However, there are godly passions that we are instructed to pursue as believers.

“Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” - 1 Timothy 6:11

We are instructed as believers who flee from the passions of the flesh and pursue the passions of God. Let me encourage you to pursue two passions in particular: God, and growth. When you pursue God, you will grow in passion. God is the giver of life. And if passion is loving life, then loving God will lead to loving life.

If you grow your passion for God, you will gain a passion for life.

Conclusion

I hope this post has helped you to appreciate godly passion and become a more passionate person who will pursue God and pursue growth. We serve a God Who pursues us passionately every single day. We pursue a God who never gets tired of waking us up every day, and never tires of instructing our hearts to beat and our brains to work and our bodies to function. That is the kind of God who commands our worship and our discipleship.

May you grow in passion as you learn to lead yourself well and in turn, lead others well.