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The Passion in You

"We all share the capacity for personal intensity.  Nobody is born without it.  But many of us never learn to tap into the source of our intensity because we fail to discover what inspires it: we do not discover our personal passions.  Passion refers to the force for intensity in all of us; passions are the things that elicit - draw out- our passion individually.  Your passions might be writing, gardening, and working with children; mine might involve business, competition, and personal improvement.  In considering the distinction between the two, think of your life as a building under construction.  Your talents are the bricks that give shape to the building, whereas your passion is the mortar that holds it all together.  The variety of passions is limitless, so the buildings we construct are as varied as the urban skyline.  But few of us are fortunate enough to discover all or even some of our passions, so our buildings remain unfinished - skyscrapers, cathedrals, warehouses, and monuments unrealized (Chang, 2000, p. 17)."

Reference:  Chang, R. (2000).  The passion plan.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The Passion Plan is available on loan from the Ohio State University Leadership Center.  A complete listing of all the Leadership Center's resources is available on our website http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu/

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Created: 2008-04-02, Updated: 2008-11-12