While we were working on presentation and leadership skills with the AgLead group with Texas Farm Bureau the issue of getting passionate about what you believe popped up.
I teach that passion and excitement are key ingredients in goal setting and in trusting ourselves. In fact goal setting is pretty simple. We don’t just jump from where we are to “success,” we do so in steps… we learn in increments …there are steps to success. If you are going to be an engineer, first you learn math, second step you study chemistry, then science and so on. You travel the steps to success!
Now let’s get to the passion and excitement! As you travel the steps to your goal, or success, you practice what you do. For instance to learn algebra you work at it, you practice. Then you put in the effort to learn. This is where we seperate the individuals who don’t really want to be successful, not everyone puts in the same effort.
The next key ingredient to reaching success is to dream. People who dream can see the end result before they get there. They can see themselves transformed. They can feel what it will feel like to obtain the goal, they can feel success so they begin acting successful. That is what dreaming is all about. You start to become what you want to be. That is exciting!
Next we address passion and excitement. Once you begin dreaming you get excited about the success you see and you start acting successfully and you begin to share the transformation and what you can accomplish. You become passionate about what you believe and you are excited about sharing it with others.
The final ingredient on the way to success is that your life changes. You have a new intention. You are re-focused on something that you discovered that you didn’t know before. Often times it is something you discovered about yourself. You trust yourself more, you have more confidence and you believe in yourself. This is the key to success, what I call the ‘I CAN PLAY’ attitude. If you don’t believe you can do it, you probably can’t. But if you believe, if you are passionate, if you have self-trust, you have the best opportunity at success.
Back to the AgLead group with the Texas Farm Bureau. After presenting my “steps” complete with the 1)practice-2) effort-3) dream -4) passion & excitement 5) intention, an individual in the class had a troubled look. I asked him to share his thoughts.
“Gary,” he said, “passion and excitement is not our problem. We are passionate about agriculture and what we do. It truly is our way of life, but we just aren’t comfortable telling other people about it.”
I understood what he was saying. Many times I have been passionate and excited aobut something until I ran into someone who believed differently than me. Then I discovered I was not as passionate and didn’t beleive in that issue as much as I thought I did. Think about it … if you let someone else tell you what you think about something, you must not be very passionate about it. The young farmers and ranchers need to deepen their passion, deepen their self-trust and shore up their confidence so that they become what what they believe. Once they become and live what they believe at all times, that becomes their intention, their purpose. And they will share their story where ever they go. With friends, with family, in front of an audience and with people they have never met before. They will live and act what they believe.
What are you passionate about?
