[Blog] The Chimes of Your Heart

Dave Martin

What is the focus of the productive hours of your life? Are you passionate about your job or do you simply go through the motions, waiting for the weekend? According to research, half of American workers hate what they do.

But passion is the fuel that propels men and women toward any significant measure of achievement in their chosen fields of labor. Passionate people are the source of real change in the world. And the leaders and innovators in every industry share one thing in common: They simply love what they do. They have learned that, by doing what they love doing, they are both personally and financially rewarded and they simultaneously impact others in a positive way. So finding your passion in life is the single most important predictor of your future success and significance. Consequently, the search for passion must become every person’s highest priority.

Recent psychological research has demonstrated an undeniable link between emotions and performance. Good emotions stemming from satisfaction are required for superior performance in virtually every occupation. Whether in the arts or in business or ministry, great performers are driven by positive emotions.

In fact, the lack of emotional involvement in the workplace has led researchers to coin a new term: absent while present. People actually show up for work, but they aren’t really there while they’re there (if you know what I mean). They show up late, take extra-long lunch breaks, leave early and spend most of their workdays surfing the web or chatting at the water cooler. Have you ever seen that bumper sticker that reads, “A bad day fishing is better than a good day working?” Enough said!

If the work that awaits you each day doesn’t both scare and excite you, then you have probably fallen victim to this pervasive mindset of disengagement, a mindset that has turned our current world into a culture of mediocrity. But finding that which “quivers your liver” and devoting yourself to the kind of work that can motivate you and reward you is one of the most important, life-changing things you could do. You need to devote yourself to that which will ignite your passions.

Every man will be remembered for his passion or forgotten for his lack of it. So I cannot stress enough how important it is to discover the engine that drives your life. But how can you tell what your true passion is? Believe it or not, that’s not such a simple thing for the average person. The typical individual has either failed to discover the adrenalin-producing love of his life or he has given up the search in favor of mere survival and weekends of pleasurable escape. Nevertheless, there is something out there that can totally take hold of every man and every woman, and there is something out there that can totally consume your heart and mind, giving you a meaningful pursuit to pour your life into while providing you with more joy, satisfaction and happiness than you could ever imagine (and more prosperity too).

Ask yourself: Am I passionate about my life’s work? If not, get busy finding out what rings the chimes of your heart.