WARNING: Do You Know What Passion Really Means?

Outside of the realms of a romantic relationship, I have also heard many people use the word "Passion" or "Passionate" to refer to how they felt about a particular topic, cause or career choice.  I assumed, like many others, that this word had a solely positive connotations. I thought it meant someone had strong feelings about something or were very interested or committed to whatever they were referring to.

However, this weekend I had the most amazing opportunity to spend a whole day with Dr. John Demartini in a seminar on Wealth & Spirituality in Dublin.  Dr. Demartini is most famous these days for his work on   "The Secret" but he has been studying human development and philosophy for 38 years and sharing his wealth of knowledge with the world by traveling around and teaching through seminars, writing books and appearing in the media. He is a truly inspiring, knowledgable and caring man and I could not recommend going to see him highly enough if you ever get the chance.  

One of the many things I learned this weekend is to be very careful in the way I use the word passion when referring to my career as coach.  I used to say I am passionate about coaching or personal development but little did I know that this word has a hidden meaning.   He says that passion is another word for suffering and being addicted to something, this is definitely not the meaning I was trying to portray!  I got home and changed any social media profiles using the word passion and I have pretty much erased this word out of my mind now. When I looked up the word it is defined as a strong emotion however its synonyms can include: infatuation, mania, obsession, agony, anger, distress, fury, rage and resentment, amongst others.  I don't think people generally mean to elude these type's of meanings when they say "I am passionate about...." They would be much better off to say 'I am committed to....' or 'I value....' so they are not giving any impression of suffering or obsession.  In fact it may even be a good idea to stop using this word when speaking about romantic relationships too as I don't think any of us want to be speaking about suffering or obsession in that context either - well at least I don't!

Go out and spread the word about the true meaning of this tricky word!!  

I will be posting up more about what I learned from Dr. Demartini in future written and video blogs so please stay tuned, this lesson was not even a chip off the iceberg!