Personal Development

Its been a week since i blogged, mainly because of my last week of University. With assignments all due at the same time and preparing for expo, thing has been getting a little bit out of hand. My exam is also coming up next week. Allocating time between games, martial arts, photography and study has been pretty hard.

Pic 1: Me with a photoshopped lightsaber during the IE expo. After the clients were gone and the students went to the bar for drinks. Why do i post this pic? Because i am a star wars addict. Lightsaber is the most awesome thing ever! It is my dream to hold one of these :p for those who wonders, I’ll make a tutorial about it next week.

OK, enough rambling. Time for the blog topic.

What is passion?

Wikipedia states:

Passion (from the Latin patior, meaning to suffer or to endure) is an emotion of feeling very strongly about a person. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for anything. Passion often applies to lively or eager interest in or admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity or love.

I define passion as:

The endless enthusiasm you felt when you do something you love or you are near a person you love. Every person on earth has their own unique passion, the question is whether they have found it or not. When you do something for hours on end and still feels like you haven’t had enough, thats most likely is your passion.

While i am no philosopher or psychologist, i really believe that passion is an advanced human behaviour (unlike self preservation and reproduction which are very basic behaviour). A person could live his/her entire life without finding his/her passion at all. Now is passion a good or bad thing? And How do passion defines you as a person?

How important is passion in your life?

There is an old Chinese quote which i read somewhere long time ago, it (roughly) translates as:

“Who knows lose to who likes, who likes lose to who passionate” – Anonymous

I really love this quote. It is a definite answer to a lot of question about ourself. If we find ourself falling short on some aspect of life to other people, we can ask this question. Is our passion stronger than the other person? If you are not passionate about what you work for a living, how can you get a better position and paycheck than those who passionate about it? Passion is the main ingredient of concentration and effort. Passion is the core of love and life. Life without passion is empty.

Now lets take a break and remember the great people we have read and watch on book/television. Here are some of i remember the most:

• Albert Einstein has insatiable hunger for knowledge, he did countless research for his entire life while inventing countless theories, most notable, nuclear bomb and the theory of relativity.
• Choi Hong Hi is the General of the Korean army and the founder of Taekwondo. He was sickly as a boy, but found his passion of martial arts from his calligraphy teacher, Master Han Il-Dong who teaches him Tae-Kyon. He developed and combined his knowledge to form the ITF Taekwondo as we know now.
• Ansel Adams is considered one of the greatest grand master of photography. He didn’t just born with the skill, he didn’t even know photography when he was little. He learns piano and bought a grand piano because he loves to play it, it was his passion. But when he acknowledge photography, he get so good that every photographer refer to his photographs to look for inspiration.
• Jesus Christ who proclaims Himself as the son of God, the embodiment of the Holy spirit. He came to the earth to teach about “The way to the father”. I do not care whatever you might think about the religion which is based on him, but he is truly an awesome person. He teaches from city to city, from churches to farmer’s fields. He is so passionate about love and peace that he never stray from his path even under heavy embarrassment and torture. Now that is the ultimate example setter. I am truly shamed and sadden of the reality today where people actually go to war because of religion, the exact opposite of what he is trying to teach (we will talk about this other time).

Those people are just examples on how finding your passion and keep working on it can make or break you as a person. I believe passion is the main ingredient to be successful. Nothing will stop your quest to fulfill your passion. You will also attracts people who have the same passion as you do. Just ask any successful person in their field and they will say they love what they do.

“I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.” – George Burns

As George Burns said, I’d rather trains martial arts for 10 years and keep losing on tournaments, than to study brain surgery successfully. Heck, i don’t even give a damn if i graduate as a PhD or not. I believe you also feels the same with your passion. Have you found your passion? If yes, good for you, and you can skip the next section. If not, how can i help you find your passion?

How do you find your passion?

Pic 2: It was during a tournament in September. I lost the fight against Junior. Lost big time. I was lucky my friend Mel recorded it on video for me to learn from the mistakes i make. Now i awaits the next tournament in November to see if i have improved my techniques. Its really weird to see that how can you not block that kick to the head, which looked so slow on the video, but in front of your face, it was lightning fast!

Now there are lots of way to find out about your passion. The best way is just to meditate and reflect upon yourself, which is the activities that you found interesting.

Randall S. Hansen list some of the question you can use to help you find your passion:

1. What do you love to do in your free time?
2. What are the skills that come naturally to you without much thought or effort?
3. If you could do any job in your life, what would you choose?
4. What types of things energize you?
5. What activities, subjects, or causes have you been deeply involved with?
6. What are some areas in which your family and friends consider you an expert?
7. When you are online, or at a bookstore or library, what subjects most appeal to you?
8. What kind of work environment fits you best?
9. What do you most value in life? From work?
10. What types of volunteering have you done — or wish you have done?
11. What types of career paths have your closest fiends followed?
12. Do you possess deeply held beliefs that you have a calling in life?
13. What are the types of things that people ask you for help with?
14. What are some of the big goals you want to achieve in out life?

If you are curious, here is my answer to his question, i hope it can help you answer it and find your passion.

1. What do you love to do in your free time? – I love to take picture of random thing, I love to swing my sticks around, I love to practice breaking stuff, I love to think about human psychology and philosophy (why somebody do this and that), and i love to play games!
2. What are the skills that come naturally to you without much thought or effort? – Kicking people ass online and offline. I also self-taught photographer without undergoing any formal courses.
3. If you could do any job in your life, what would you choose? – Professional Photographer and martial art instructor
4. Question 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, – The answer is all the same: Photography and Martial Arts
5. What do you most value in life? From work? – I really love the feeling of JUST doing my passion. I felt even happier when people love my photographs and knowing they know how to defend them-self better.
6. What are some of the big goals you want to achieve in out life? – Spread the true martial arts spirit to the dying modern society where people prefer sitting on the couch all day watching stupid TV shows instead of exercising and to get healthy. I also long to be remembered as a great photographer like Ansel Adams. We will see how it goes in 20 years, hahaha.

Now that hopefully you have a basic idea about your passion, how can you cultivate it from now?

Develop your passion

Anthony Fernandos broke down the passion equation into:

Interest + Information = Passion

In short, You need to develop your interest and find more information about your passion. There are several ways you can achieve that.

1. Do more of your passion related activity – I exercises regularly, I always bring my camera to all events I’m attending and take as much photographs as i can, even though i didn’t get paid (yet).
2. Find people with the same passion (Join the club!) – I am a member of (currently) 4 martial arts club which i train, some regularly, some casually. I also joined the Monash Photography Club in my campus. It is an awesome experience to talk about thing you love the most with people who also love it.
3. Read, read, read! – I have a ever growing bookshelf at home, most of them are martial arts, photography, and philosophy related books. Even though i buy them faster than i can read them, I’m still lovin it! Books are awesome! Everytime you read it, you always find something new!
4. Research as much as you can – I am subscribed to a number of martial arts and photography related websites and blog. I also participate in a few discussion forum. The Internet has makes life so much easier these days. You can always make friend and chat with people who do the activities you are interested in.
5. Never give up – I guess this is the most important factor of why people succeed or fail. Giving up means all your effort is worthless, it means you lose, it means you fail. Keep preserving even though things seems hard and tough.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Alfa Edison, who was known to experience more than 1000 experiment failure during his quest to invent light bulb.

Passion Resources:

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/find-your-passion/

http://www.anthonyfernando.com/2008/10/18/the-passion-equation/

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-find-your-passion.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/career_doctor_cures/finding_career_passion.html

http://thelife.com/students/careers/passion/

My Last Words

Now this is my longest post ever, and i hope the quantity doesn’t deteriorate the quality. And mostly i hope you enjoy reading this article. And…(as usual, i always ends a blog post with comment encouragement)

So what’s your passion? have you found it? Or are you enjoying your passion every waking minute of your life? Are you motivated to find your passion after reading this article? discuss.