"Growing" Passion In What You Have To Do

Continuing from my last post, I am going to talk about how I "grow" my passion on things that I do not like to do in this post. I must say that after "growing", I love the things that I do. Take for example web development. I used to hate it, instead I like hardware programming and relatively low-level programming such as Assembly and C programming (which I still have interest in today). Now, I must say that I love it! I get a sense of satisfaction whenever I build a web application.

Is it what you are good at?
First of all, we must recognise that we are not always good at what we have interest in. On the other hand, we may not have interest in what we are good at. If this is the case, great! It will be easier to grow passion in it. Since you are good at it, you can easily create something out of it. Instead of complaining I hate this I hate that, do it and feel proud of yourself. You have successfully completed something you hate! Celebrate it. Soon, you will find yourself happily doing and celebrating till you love it!

How it develops myself as a person.

I believe that nothing is a waste of time, including doing nothing. On this note, doing nothing allows me to clear my mind and relax, so it is actually not doing nothing. Anyway, one other way to motivate yourself is to ask yourself how can doing a certain task improve you as a person, develop you as a better person. Most likely, this is intangible, such as improvement of soft skills. It may also be tangible too. For example if you are so lazy to go to the market with your mum because she would ask you to carry stuff, treat it as a way to grow your muscle (of course if you think that spending time with your mum is not important)!

A way to challenge myself.

Take it as a challenge. Not to challenge anyone, but to challenge yourself. If you really hate a certain task but have to do it, set small goals and tackle it slowly. Tell yourself this, why can't you do something which many others can do? Are you in anyway inferior to them? No! Everyone is equal. It all depends on whether you have to do it and whether you have the heart to do it.

How it helps the greater good, which may be something of your interest.

I believe that everyone has a kind heart. Quoting a Chinese phrase, 人之初 性本善. This means that "man at birth is fundamentally good in nature" [1].

So, when all else fail, think of how the task that you do can help the others. It may be just one guy, it may be a few, it may be the public in general. It doesn't matter, just do it to help others. Don't you just feel good that you have made someone else's day? To give one simple example, taking the effort to find out which wire in a breadboard is connected wrongly helps your team to progress, in addition to giving your teammates more rest time. Isn't this great? Won't you feel happy?

As lazy as he is, Nobita likes to help people. And of course my favourite Doraemon too!

There are many ways to "grow" passion and motivate yourself to do things. It's just a matter of whether you want to change your mindset. Two choices:

1) Complete the tasks happily by motivating yourself.

2) Do it just because you have to do it, in the process feel grumpy.

[1] Meaning taken from http://bit.ly/13q9okm