(This is Installment #6 of Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life. Today’s post is the beginning of Chapter 2: The Early Influences That Drive You To Create Your Life. In this chapter, I will help you begin to explore why you have chosen the life you have. I’ll help you examine the people, events, decisions and circumstances that in some way have determined how your life got the way it is, and how you can unwind it and change it, if you want it to be different. I hope this helps anyone looking to understand their own life better or anyone looking to go in a new direction. To change your life, you must first understand the influences that brought you to your current circumstances. Then, it’s easier to find the right path by harnessing your passion. Enjoy and please share with friends. And remember, please post your feedback.)
Everyone knows someone who just exudes positivity and passion. They seem to be enthusiastic about everything they do, and are always bustling with a variety of activities. And they’re excited about them all. They seem to have an unlimited reserve of energy, ideas, and solutions to problems, and are curious about everything. It also seems nothing can get them down or make them negative. They roll with the punches and approach everything they do with high energy, zeal, and an expectation of enjoyment and success. They are inspirational and fun to be around because the energy and attitude they have are infectious. It makes us feel good to be with them. You may even wonder sometimes (perhaps it’s why you are reading this book), “How did they get like that?”, or maybe, “How could I be more like that?”
While some of these unusually passionate people may have born with what seems like a “passion gene,” it’s more likely that they were just fortunate enough to spend their developmental years in an environment prone to making them view life as enjoyable, positive, hopeful, and even exciting with all its possibilities. They learned — consciously or subconsciously — how to adopt and sustain a positive, passionate approach to life. Their experiences, attitudes, choices and the people around them shaped their passion-driven life view. In this chapter, I explore how you can begin to shape or reshape your life so that you can approach everything you do, even some of the things you may now dread, with more energy and passion, and begin creating your fascinating life.
As with most human behavioral traits, there are a combination of factors that influence our programming when it comes to passion – they are people, environmental circumstances and experiences. These influences help shape our outlook on life and the behaviors we choose. Our capacity and willingness to embrace our passions, and build our life around them, are influenced early in life and are fine tuned as we develop and grow. It is a never-ending process.
To develop a passion for anything, we must freely engage in the activity without the thought of success or failure. We must engage out of fun, curiosity, or a sense of challenge. We must enjoy the process of pursuit of the passion, not just anticipate an outcome. How we are introduced to and guided through our early experiences with our passions, or would be passions, is also critical. In my case, I had parents, friends, coaches, and teachers who supported me in pursuit of my tennis and business passions. Occasionally I encountered negative people, but it just made me engage more fully and focus more intently. I wanted to prove the naysayers wrong. I wanted to show them that I could live life on my terms by following my passions.
I’ve interviewed many people that have turned other people’s negativity into positive, forward-thrusting passion. Cirque du Soliel feature performer, Jerome Sordillon, told me that his early school teachers’ negativity drove him to prove to her that he could accomplish something with his athletic skills. Because he was a French national-champion gymnast as a young teen, and strong, Jerome’s school put him in a curriculum to be a construction worker. He hated it. After completing three years of course work, he was assigned to a required internship. After three weeks, he was miserable and quit with no idea what he would do with his life. Today, he twirls high above the stage, hanging from two straps and “walking” on air to the amazement and delight of cheering crowds around the world. He chose to follow his passion. I’ll talk more about Jerome’s story later in this chapter.
As I began to write this book, and reflect on my experiences and observe the lives of others, I realized that it is a few key people we encounter throughout our lives who build and enlarge our capacity to harness passion. When we are young, they ignite our curiosity and inspire our dreams. They help us learn to develop confidence and mitigate fear. These people are the fuel of our lives, powering our passion engine. I sensed this early in life, and gravitated to the people who were positive, encouraging, and full of life and curiosity. The people who laughed often and smiled a lot – they were fun to be around. I stayed away from people who were negative, cynical and draining, and who were always looking for the next shoe to drop in life. They were not fun to be around. They seemed to suck any passion right out of you. I avoided too much exposure to those people, and still do today. These negative people deplete your energy and steal your passion, and while I always try to be compassionate to people who are in a tough emotional place because of difficult life circumstances, I guard myself from being infected with their corrosive negativity. I tried to learn from the passionate people I encountered when I was young, the people who set a positive example of how to look at life, how to choose behaviors, how to roll with the punches, and how to create an amazing life. These people fueled my passions as I developed, and that fueling has never stopped.
If this didn’t happen for you, it’s okay. The good news is that you can fuel or refuel at any point in life. You make the choice. Human interaction and energy are critical for developing and harnessing passion, because passion energy grows when shared and combined with the passion energy of other people. I call this the Chain of Passion. Who has been part of your Chain of Passion? Who lit a fire under you as you were growing and exploring life? Who inspired you to get up a little earlier each day to take a run, hit one-thousand tennis balls, study a bit more than was required to just get by or just look at the beauty of the sunrise? And who are you inspiring now?
Given that people are the fuel, I thought it best to start this passion quest roadmap by helping you examine and understand the biggest contributing factor to finding and developing passion – the people who have shaped your life. The relationships covered in this chapter are the ones that have imprinted the passion code in all of our hearts and minds, and understanding their impact on us is critical for leading a passion-driven life. While many of the people discussed are most likely people you have encountered early in life, you never stop encountering people who can influence your passion. I meet them all the time and when I least expect it. The Chain of Passion can link to us whenever we are ready.
Let’s look at the following types of people who have shaped your life and influenced your capacity to harness your passion:
Parents, Siblings and Relatives
Friends
Teachers
Coaches
Other Role Models
Parents, Siblings, and Relatives
The people who have undoubtedly had the most influence on us are our parents. When we are babies, the importance of this relationship is obvious. We would not have survived without them or some adult feeding us, bathing us, and getting us dressed every day. They took care of us when we were sick, and as we grew into toddlers, they helped us navigate walking and moving around the world on our own without encountering too much danger.
When we entered school, our parents helped us with our early development in reading, writing, math, art and dealing with other kids and teachers. They tried to insure that we got enough physical activity to develop our bodies, and tried to get us to eat healthy foods. If we were fortunate, they began to introduce us to activities like sports, music and reading outside of the required school assignments, or suggested (or better, insisted) we get a part time job. I remember my mom taking my siblings to piano lessons every week, driving my sister to the skating rink every morning at six am and driving me and my brother to my first tennis lesson with a women named Mrs. Hecht in Barrington, Rhode Island. This was a day that would later prove to be life changing.
Without making an exhaustive list of all the things parents do for their kids, it’s easy to see that they are a pervasive and significant influence in our lives. When we were adolescents, this sometimes felt like a mixed blessing as we were trying to assert our independence, but there is no doubt that our parents played a prominent role in our development of a general life view. If our parents were negative, cynical people, odds were that we might develop a negative and cynical life view. If our parents were positive people, who expected to enjoy playing a game, win or lose, it’s likely that we did, too. If our parents expected to be well paid for their time or work, chances are that we expected the same when we set out into the working world. If our parents viewed life as a noble struggle to put food on the table for their family, chances are we did too. And if our parents viewed life as an adventure of their own making, well, you get the idea. Often, they are the first link in our Chain of Passion. Did your parents add a link for you? How did they influence your ability to harness passion? Did they help you embrace your passions or make it difficult to do so?
We have all been programmed from our earliest experiences to think, feel and act in a certain way, and sometimes not necessarily in the best way to create the life we want. Many people tragically live someone else’s dream. Some people develop without much parental influence or guidance. That’s okay, because research shows that strong passion may develop even under those circumstances. In her New York Times best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perserverance, Angela Duckworth concludes that, “A degree of autonomy during the early years is also important. Longitudinal studies tracking learners confirm that overbearing parents and teachers erode intrinsic motivation. Kids whose parents let them make their own choices about what they like are more likely to develop interests later identified as a passion.” If you were left alone to forge your own path, you may have found it easier to pursue your passions as a result.
Some kids have no choice. Their parents are not around much, if at all. I have great admiration for people who lead incredible, passion-driven lives, who did not have one or both parents present while growing up. They might have missed out on some critical early nurturing, guidance and lessons-by-example provided by parents, but somehow they found ways to learn the positive attitudes and behaviors that drive passion. At some point, we all have to own our lives and decide how we want them to go. You can live with passion or not. It’s your choice.
Vivid evidence of how parents, siblings, and relatives can consciously and subconsciously program our attitudes about life and influence our passions can be observed in families that have exceptional multigenerational success at one particular activity. Many children, grandchildren, siblings or close relatives of highly acclaimed athletes, performers, artists, politicians and business people frequently achieve identically high levels of success in the same profession or activity.
Here are just a few examples of the familial Chain of Passion at work:
We are all familiar with the Kennedy family. In that family they developed one president, John F. Kennedy; two senators, Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy; and one congressman, Patrick J. Kennedy. While you might argue that their wealth and connections created much of their political success, many wealthy families have tried and failed at this. Another notable political dynasty is the Bush clan. President George H.W. Bush has a son, George W. Bush, who also became President of the United States. Another son, Jeb Bush, was Governor of Florida. While connections and money alone can help, they can’t provide the passion needed to win elections in this difficult, and sometimes no-holds-barred, profession.
The late golfing legend and leader of Arnie’s Army, Arnold Palmer, changed the face of golf and became successful in numerous businesses upon retirement from competition. His grandson, Sam Saunders, is also an accomplished PGA tour golfer. I’m sure growing up on the course with one of the all-time best golfers somehow raised Sam’s passion for the game and expectations for himself, especially when he was competing with his grandfather. Sam said in a New York Times interview after Palmer died, “The way our family operated was, nothing was given to you. Arnold wanted all of us to be successful on our own, and my parents were the same way, and I’m so grateful for that. If you’ve always been handed things, when life gets hard, you won’t know how to handle it.” True, and kudos to his parents. But the presence of Arnie’s greatness up close and personal also had to inspire, teach and influence Sam Saunders in a way that was unique from the experience of thousands of other talented kids who did not have the great Arnold Palmer as their grandfather and did not make it onto the PGA tour.
Former world #1 tennis player and media personality, John McEnroe, has a brother, Patrick McEnroe, who also made his living playing professional tennis, reaching a career high #28 in the world. He even became the longest-tenured Davis Cup captain and was head of the United States Tennis Association’s player development for several years. Patrick now does tennis commentary for ESPN and CBS. I played against Patrick in a high school match while I was attending the Kent School in Connecticut (Patrick played for Trinity-Pawling in Pawling, NY, a neighboring town to Kent). It was a close match, and I remember thinking at some point mid-match, “He’s good, but he’s not Johnny Mac good.” But he shared Johnny Mac’s passion. I wonder how many matches Patrick won because opponents were intimidated that he was the brother of the world’s #1 ranked player? You could count one match for sure, because I lost that day when I really had an even chance of winning.
Another incredible familial success story from the world of tennis is that of the McNair family from Bethesda, Maryland. By anyone’s standards, my dear friend Fred McNair IV, has an impressive tennis pedigree. He was a top-ranked junior player, an All-American at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a French Open Doubles Champion, and was ranked #1 in the world with partner, Sherwood Stewart (another great athlete who qualified for the Senior PGA Tour in Europe after retiring from tennis!). But that’s not the interesting part of this story relative to the subject of parental influence on passion. Fred IV’s father, Fred III, was a tennis champion is his own right, reaching the level of what would now be considered an elite professional tour player. Fred III played on the United States Tennis Association National Father and Son circuit for thirty-one consecutive years with with ALL FIVE of his sons, winning eight national titles with two of them, Fred IV and John. He was a finalist another six times with two sons, Fred IV and Bruce. And in one year he won two national titles with two different sons, a feat never accomplished before or since by another father. You might say the Chain of Passion for tennis had many links in the McNair household.
Other examples include the late crooner, Nat King Cole, whose daughter, Natalie Cole, also became a grammy-winning recording artist. Hollywood star, Kirk Douglas, whose son Michael Douglas is a two-time Oscar-winning actor and producer. Paloma Picasso, daughter of painting and sculpting master Pablo Picasso, is a successful jewelry designer. NFL Quarterback, Archie Manning, who has two sons, Peyton and Eli, who have each won TWO Super Bowls. And Grammy-winning singer Janet Jackson had five Grammy-winning brothers who inspired her pursuit of music. Is all of this just genetic talent? Not likely. I could write several books telling more of these family passion success stories.
While it’s tempting to look at these examples and conclude that there must just be some genetic predisposition toward athletics, singing, acting, artistic achievement or politics in these families, or that these people had unique access to contacts or coaches who could nurture their talents and careers (all true), there is actually much more to the cause and effect element of these relationships. It takes enormous amounts of passion to achieve success at these levels, even with talent and contacts. Yes, who you know is important. But at some point, you have to deliver. You have to sing the song the song, throw the ball, make the speech or deliver the lines with an unusual level of exceptional skill. And that takes passion. These families, and many like them, found a way to pass down passion through a generation or, in some cases, two.
This familial passion for an identical activity – resulting in tremendous success – demonstrates exactly how much people’s ability to harness passion can be influenced and programmed by their parents and siblings. All of the parents (or siblings in the case of the John F. Kennedy and John McEnroe) involved in the above mentioned examples, wittingly or unwittingly, transferred their passion to their offspring, brothers or sisters. That passion, combined with talent and years of disciplined practice (also demonstrated by the successful parent or sibling and learned by the son, daughter, brother or sister), drove and shaped the passion behind these fascinating stories. Was passion handed down to you?
While not all cases of shared familial passion will result in the levels of achievement cited here, our objects of passion, our level of passion, and how we harness our passion, are clearly influenced by our parents and other family members. If you want to find, develop and pursue your passions to create or change your life, start by understanding how your attitudes and behaviors have been influenced by your parents and family members.
Below is an exercise to help you examine these influences in your life.
Passion Journey Exercise #1
Take out a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions:
In which ways have I been programmed by my parents, and has that programming been positive or negative in my life?
Were my parents generally positive or negative in their outlook on life while I was growing up?
Were my parents optimistic or pessimistic?
Did my parents encourage me to reach for the stars or play it safe?
Did my parents encourage or discourage my early passions?
Did my parents pursue their passions?
Did my parents enjoy life?
Did my parents feels “rich” or “poor” (not in monetary terms, but in terms of their satisfaction with their daily life)?
Is there any particular skill, talent or interest that you acquired from your parents?
In which activities did your parents encourage you to participate? Were they different from the one’s you wanted to pursue?
Did your parents’ attitudes about life change as they got older? If so, how?
What were your passions as a kid? Are they still passions now? Why or Why not?
Use the answers to these questions to reflect on your own life and attitudes. Were you encouraged to develop and pursue your passions? Are there passions you had when you were younger that were squashed by a parent, and that you would like to rekindle now? Are there thoughts or attitudes that you inherited from your parents that are holding you back (or helping you succeed) in pursuing your passions or experiencing life with a passionate attitude?
If you currently have a positive, passion driven life view, how can you build on it? If you do, go with gusto in the directions that move you. If you have a negative, fear-filled or passionless approach to life, it’s never too late to reprogram. If you are a parent, think about how your beliefs, attitudes and actions are programming your kids. Are you encouraging them to stoke or stifle their passions in life?
In the next section of Chapter 2, we’ll explore the influence friends have had on your passions.
Until then,
Let Your Passion Create Your World!
Robert (aka The Passionist)
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