An excerpt
from Create a Life You Can't Wait to Live
by Zig Ziglar
1) INVEST IN INSPIRATION
When people consider where to give some of their income for charitable or nonprofit purposes, they often think this way: "Gee, I don't feel very passionate about any of those causes, and I want to really feel strongly about what they're doing if I'm going to give my money to them." Have you ever thought that? Have you ever said that yourself?
If you treasure your money, you probably won't b e giving much of it away. But if your heart gets involved as a result of coming to know the people you've been asked to help, you're much more likely to support them financially as well as physically and emotionally.
Do you see the difference? One view says, "When my heart kicks into gear (i.e., when I feel passionate), I'll invest my resources." But the correct view is, "I'm going to get involved because familiarity will increase my awareness, and once relationships are established I'll want to invest more than just my time and energy."
Let's say your passion is to own your own flower shop someday. Right now, you're not involved with flowers except as a hobby and impressing your neighbors with your gorgeous gardens every spring. But the children have left the nest and you know the time is right to make this move—to give wings to your passion. If I were to come to your house and spend an hour talking with you about your passion, I'd be looking for signs that you're investing your time, talent, and treasure. I'd be looking for bookshelves full of books on flowers and running a small business, magazine subscriptions on the same subjects, your class schedule for the course on entrepreneurship and small-business management you're taking at the local community college, check stubs from your payment of dues to the appropriate floral associations, your applications to several local flower shops where you plan to work as an apprentice for the next year or so to get experience, the syllabus from a success and motivation seminar you recently attended...and on and on.
The fastest way I know to build and develop your passion in a given area of life is to invest your time, talent, and treasure in it.
2) INQUIRE FOR INSPIRATION
Do you want to keep your passion alive? Find a mentor—someone who has the same passion—and make some kind of arrangement to meet with that person on a regular basis for inspiration. There is nothing more inspiring to me than meeting with someone who is already successful at what I have a passion to do. Inspiration is caught better than it is taught.
There is no better way to stay inspired than by spending time in the presence of inspirational people. There is a healthy sort of peer pressure that keeps pushing us forward, a symbiotic effect that causes us to become more in the group (even a group of two—you and your mentor) than we could become by ourselves.
How do you find a mentor—someone to inspire you and help keep your passion aflame? In short, you ask. Obviously, you have to first find someone who is doing what you want to do, and preferably someone who does it well, shares your values, and has plenty of experience. Then, you ask. There are other resources available on mentoring relationships that you can read. But it boils down to your courteously inquiring as to whether this person would agree to spend a set amount of time with you on a regular basis to impart what he or she has learned about "the business"—whatever it is you have a passion to pursue. You'll be surprised how many people—especially retirees—would love nothing better than to have an outlet for imparting the passion they've been pursuing for decades.
Find someone inspiring and attach yourself to them, but only if you follow the Golden Rule of Apprentice-Mentor Relationships: don't become an apprentice unless you're willing one day to be a mentor yourself. That's what happens naturally in extended families. Apprentices grow up to be mentors—and it's the way passions stay alive for generations.
3) GET INVOLVED TO FIND INSPIRATION
Sometimes we have to get up and get involved in order to find inspiration and keep passion alive. The bigger the movement is in which we choose to get involved, the more we are inspired. Which inspires you more—being the only person sitting in a football stadium or being one of 70,000 screaming fans who are just as excited as you are about the home team?
Whatever your passion, get involved in it at a level that's bigger than you are. When you become part of something bigger than you are, you become accountable. You become inspired to do your best. You become motivated to not let others down. And that fuels your passion in ways that can't be described—it can only be experienced.
4) IMAGINE FOR INSPIRATION
One of the things that spurred me on as a rookie speaker was my imagination. I pictured myself speaking before crowds of thousands of people, knocking them dead with my humor and wisdom and humbly receiving their standing ovations. That didn't happen overnight, but I never allowed that picture to be erased from my mind. And eventually, everything I had imagined, and then some, became reality.
Bruce Barton made an interesting observation: "I do not like the phrase, 'Never cross a bridge until you come to it.' It is used by too many men as a cloak for mental laziness. The world is owned by men who cross bridges in their imaginations miles and miles in advance of the procession. Some men are born with more of an imagination than others, but it can, by hard work, be cultivated—not by mere daydreaming, not by lazy wondering, but by hard study and earnest thought."
Whatever your passion is, turn your imagination loose and let it inspire you to keep working to make your dreams become reality.
Remember: it's your job to fuel your passion, and inspiration is the fuel you need.
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