Ingredients to a fulfilled life

Two ingredients, I think, are very important for a satisfied life, are PASSION and PURPOSE.

Passion is the driver and purpose the track that the driver can run on.

Passion could be defined as "a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept" or "an object of desire or deep interest". It also could be described as zeal or enthusiasm. It is the ingredient that keeps us focused and intense for the task ahead. Passion draws all the juices of my life into what I'm doing. Its really the reason I do what I want to do. Without passion, the task becomes dreary and mundane and I easily become bored with the concept and see no future or end to what the task involves. Passion comes because I am involverd with something that is my make-up, my slant, my 'ability'. It suits my personality and my mission in life. Passion is not excitement ( now this is not a study in the definition of terms, but rather a flow with semantics). Excitement, generally, will leave you disappointed if the expectation that you excitedly entered the task for, is not met.

People often ask me if I'm excited about the new venture, but my answer now is "Not really". What I am when I enter a venture, is passionate. It keeps me motivated and allows me to give my best to the task at hand. We need to be passionate about our mission in life, about our destiny. Many, lose their passion, either early in life or somewhere along the way. This is generally due to disappointments or external pressures from relationships, circumstances or misguided self-perceptions.
Passion is evident in how we talk, how we think, how we walk and how we approach life. An enthusiastic person will come alive when they talk about their passion, about their vision, their dream or their task. You will soon identify a passionate person or what a person is passionate about by how they enthuse themselves for the mission or task at hand. Enthusiasm , means to be inspired from within, to be in-breathed. Inspiration, the Bible says is to be God in-breathed."The inspiration of the All-Mighty, gives understanding, wisdom and skill." it says in Job. This is the wonderful ingredient that God has given us to live at a fulfilling level of our lives.

But passion needs something, it needs purpose. Purpose is the track that passion runs on taking it to the end destination. Whether it is a task, a career, a venture, a relationship, a life's mission, or just life, it needs this track called purpose. Purpose is like that strategic plan that keeps order and focus.

Passion with out focus becomes a lot of enthusiasm with nowhere to go. Have you seen people like that? They are all excited and enthusiastic, but are like a racehorse on a tread-mill. Not going anywhere. If you fail to plan, you have planned to fail, someone has said. Oh! and how true.

Without a purpose this great ingredient we have called passion or enthusiasm will be wasted breath and wasted energy. I love getting up every day with a knowledge of my purpose and where I'm going to direct my energies for the day, for the week and for my life. We need to take time to develop a strategic plan, so that we are moving in the right direction and not becoming frustrated with this treadmill thing, or just running out of 'place' somewhere on the our enthusiastic, passionate road... to nowhere.

If we don't have this purposed plan, with an end, a vision in 'sight', we are are on the road to nowhere and will experience the frustration and mundane boredom people, in general, experience every day, because they don't live passionately on purpose.

Enjoy your life!

As clergyman Henry van Dyke wrote nearly 100 years ago, "To be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars; to be satisfied with your possessions, but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to think seldom of your enemies and often of your friends... these are little guideposts on the footpath to peace."

Everyone needs a mission for their lives; a purpose that they know is clear, meaningful and somehow influential to this world. It says of King David that he served his generation and then died. Without this meaningful mission it seems that life becomes just a sequence of mundane duties that has no inspiration or direction.

But this mission is more than just money or pleasure, which are so temporary in their ability to fulfill us. No, this mission is one that can be maintained and is inspirational in the face of the most trying of situations and circumstances. It will always ensure that there is a harmonious balance to all the facets of your life, and leave you sensing the deep knowing that you are experiencing your best life.

Have you spent time really looking at what it is you are 'called' to do here on this earth? What it is that you will do and should do that will serve this generation?

Have you written down this mission and purpose for your life and developed a strategic plan of tasks that will keep you on track to fulfill this mission for your life?

Don't just survive! life is too short for that. Enjoy every day. Live each day. Go to bed at night having that sense of contribution in some small way that will benefit this world because you were in it.