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Next week Janet and I travel to Calgary to participate in Engage Today - Engaging Community, Changing the World. Janet will launch the Global Passion Initiative for Canada and speak along with the Dalai Lama, Sir Richard Branson, Stephen Covey, F.W. de Klerk and others.
The Global Passion Initiative is intended to focus attention on the primary role that passion plays in individual lives, in organizational life and in the life of society. As we travel to countries around the world, our message is that we have gotten lost, and it is time to return to passion.
All the great advances in human history have resulted from individuals following their passions. Thanks to Nicolas Tesla and Thomas Edison following their passions, today we have the use of electricity. Thanks to Michael Faraday, we the electric motor that has provided us with untold number of labor-saving devices. Thanks to Count Zeppelin, the Wright Brothers and others, we now can travel around the world in a few hours.
Passion has provided us with the greatest material comfort man has ever known. But over the past decades many people saw this material prosperity and said, "I want that!" They started making money-based decisions, forgetting about what things were most deeply meaningful to them.
As a result, in 2005, Harris Interactive found that only 20% of working Americans were passionate about what they are doing. In 1970, 5% of Harvard graduates went into finance. In 2007, 20% of male graduates and 10% of women graduates chose this direction.
In our financial institutions, money-based decision-making led to sub-prime mortgage lending, the creation of mortgage backed securities, and the aggregation of these securities. This house of cards had no foundation in real value which is only created when decision-making is connected to passion, to the things that hold meaning. As a result, when the winds of foreclosures blew, the house fell down and the impact was felt globally.
Passion is what connects individual intelligence to universal intelligence. It is the spark that lights the fire of creativity in us, and guides us along the path of our life purpose. When we are living that purpose, giving our unique gifts, then our life and our actions are connected to real value and what we create provides a firm foundation for sustainable growth.
The five points of the Global Passion Initiative are the five keys to creating a prosperous growing economy:
1) Passion - the things that hold deepest meaning, the things that matter most to us, the things we love most. When we are following our passions, we feel passionate.
2) Passion-based Decision-making - We call this "the key that guarantees a passionate life." Whenever you are faced with a choice, a decision or an opportunity, choose in favor of your passions.
3) Passionate Workplaces - Gallup found that passionate employees stimulate innovation, the primary source of differentiation. When companies have engaged, passionate employees they have the engine for ongoing innovation and competitive advantage.
4) Passionate Living - Passion-based decision-making applies to all areas of life. It is the basis of fulfilling relationships, enjoyable recreation, and success in all of life.
5) Passion-Based Economies - The other four elements provide the foundation for a passion-based economy, a social network in which all of the parts are integrated with the others, where individuals and organizations function in harmonious interconnection, perfectly organized by their congruence with the fundamental laws of nature that guide and organize all parts of life.
In the past, the ability to follow passion was hit or miss. The exciting opportunity of today is that The Passion Test provides a simple, systematic method to help anyone discover the things that matter most to them, so that living passionate lives is a real possibility for everyone.
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