Harnessing Your Passion

If You Want to Be Extraordinary, Do What You Love

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

”

Buddha

Successful people are passionate about what they do. When we listen to entrepreneurs like Richard Branson or Steve Jobs, the first thing we notice is their passion.

But many unsuccessful people are passionate about something too. What makes Branson and Jobs different from the millions of people who give up on their dreams?

The difference is passion with a plan. From Buddha’s day to the days of economy airfares and personal computers, the secret of success has not changed: Discover your life’s purpose and, once you do, pursue it with every drop of passion that’s in your blood.

“My core, my whole life was medicine,” Sir Roger Bannister told the American Academy of Achievement in 2002. As a neurologist, Bannister gave his life to science. But history will remember him more for his legs than for his brains.

When Bannister was a medical student in the early 1950s, many scientists believed it was impossible for a human to run a mile in less than four minutes. Convinced that he could break the 4-minute barrier, Bannister applied his growing knowledge of human physiology to his athletic training.

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister ran the distance in 3 min 59.4 sec. The press called it “The Miracle Mile.”

By the end of 1954, 36 other runners had duplicated Bannister’s feat. The Miracle Mile wasn’t a miracle after all. Bannister believed it was a result of “the ability to take more out of yourself than you’ve got,” which sounds like something that Buddha might have said.

“Running, which is a pain to a lot of people, was always a pleasure to me because it was so easy,” Bannister explained in a 2002 interview. And though his love of running is what got him on the track, it was his passion for medicine that got him across the finish line in record time.

Roger Bannister always loved to run. When he discovered his life’s work, he gave himself to it with all his heart. His success, on and off the track, was a result of living life with passion and purpose.

Find your passion, harness it to a plan, and be willing to put in the “track time.” When your heart is in the race, you have the ability to run your own miracle mile.