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Interest Vs Passion – A debate that is never going to stop

I usually come across in many group meetings and webinars that our senior executives occasionally use the word “Passion” stating that our employees are extremely passionate in their work. I always think if the employees are really passionate why some companies under perform, employees change jobs, why they still show dissatisfaction?

I always believe the word “Passion” is extremely powerful and honestly speaking most of us don’t posses it. That’s true. The dictionary meaning of ‘Passion’ is “strong and barely controllable emotion”. As per my understanding it is a highly intense emotion that consistently carried out within us for many years sometimes till end of life. Now questioning ourselves do we posses it especially in our daily work?

Why leaders often use the word ‘Passion’

As said many leaders often use the word ‘passion’. Why? Answer is simple. Just to motivate us. They lie to us. They say we are so passionate in our work so the reason the companies achieved many milestones and they still set higher targets for next year.

So how we are able to work and make companies success even though we are not passionate of what drives within us. Some years back I was working on a project. It was so exciting for me. I use to get up every morning and feel so excited to start work till the end of day. It went on same way for a few months. One fine day the project was completed.

Later I was given the similar project as I did the good job in my previous projects. Though I was excited in beginning, eventually I never felt as excitement as I had. I finished the project. When my manager offered me again the similar project, I refused and told him that I am looking for a different one.

I questioned myself why it is so. Why I didn’t have the same excitement on a consistent basis. After prolonged thinking I found the reason. It was actually ‘Interest’. I was having interest to learn something new, so I felt excited and did my first project in an excellent manner. Later l didn’t find anything new in subsequent projects so didn’t had the same level of excitement.

Difference between Interest and Passion

initially but eventually it fades out, you can term it as Interest. Interest is something you feel momentary excitement but may not last for so long. It can be on and off. Passion is something, which burns inside and never fades out. That is simply it starts as interest with excitement but grows eventually.

Being employee, we all are excited to learn many things but nothing gets maintained. It is the human nature. You can ask a question why we can’t expect a change. People get bored in doing same stuff and they expect change. So what is wrong? Yes and that is perfectly true. People expect change and we all can’t do the same job. So what is passion then? Does the passionate people do the same work always?

Let me explain what I reckon. Passion can be explained as the inclination towards the vision. If a person strongly believes a vision and immensely put an effort to achieve he/she would be termed as passionate. The process of implementing the vision involves different sorts of work. The passionate people look for those different works and keep changing the work for time to time so that they don’t feel bored.

There is one person in our companies in which we work is extremely passionate. Guess. who is that?………..

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The founder of the company. He is one who has the vision of building the company and passionate towards achieving the vision.

How can companies run successfully without passionate employees

The next question comes to your mind. If employees are not passionate then how can companies achieve targets? It is with the ‘Interested’ employees. As said employees feel excited to learn new stuff and implement its job. If they feel bored, companies offer other interesting job. Therefore, companies achieve milestones with the ‘interested’ employees. Note that only a few ‘interested’ employees exist in any company, the rest work for money and survival.

How to identify passion

Identifying passion is the most difficult part in anyone’s life. In order to identify what are you passionate about; you need to first re-invent yourself. Who you are and what for you are. I don’t want to go more in-depth about finding oneself as it will be out of box subject and will discuss on other occasion. In short, you have to ask yourself what excites you more and if that excitement lasts consistently. There are some abilities within our self that comes so natural without much effort. Identify those abilities and chose careers related to them. Interesting video below.

Summary

In summary, those who call employees are ‘passionate’; they actually meant ‘interested’. Most companies become successful only because of ‘interested’ employees.

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