3 Reasons Why You Should Be Crazy Passionate About Life!

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. –Ferris Bueller

I’m currently grinning from ear-to-ear.  I just landed after a five and a half hour flight from Charlotte to San Francisco.  It’s 1:30 AM EST and logic would dictate here that I should be somewhat comatose.  But I’m not.  I’m grinning.  I’m in a new city for business and I feel like my kids to when they walk through the toy aisle at Target. Granted, it’s dark out, but the glowing nighttime city skyline here is beautiful. And, for just a moment while I was in the taxi, I got to see the Golden Gate bridge all lit up.  I can’t wait to see what this city looks like in the morning!  While I don’t have a lot of time here while on business, I do intend on soaking up as much as I can and being mindful of every moment … which brings me to my message: here’s 3 reasons why you should be crazy passionate about your life.

1. Be Mindful of the Little Moments

My job requires that I travel a lot, so the times I’m home and with the family, I relish each and every minute.  I try so hard to be mindful of the present because I know one day they’re going to be adults and their age of innocence will be gone forever.  I’m mindful of their laughs, their cries, their tattle-tales, everything.  I’m mindful of the moments my wife and I get to relax after they go to bed and just enjoy our company together.

When I do travel, I try to take in my surroundings as much as possible.  I take lots of photos on my HTC Incredible and sometimes post those pics on my Posterous account which is cool because it auto-posts to Flickr, Facebook & Twitter simultaneously.  Going to places like Jackson, New Orleans and Greensboro may not sound terribly exciting, but being mindful allows me to capture great moments on the road. Other places like NYC, DC & LA are more memorable, but I do take note of the small moments because who knows what tomorrow will bring. Maybe my job will change tomorrow and I won’t travel anymore. Living up these small moments make the travel so much more bearable and allows me to enjoy life more.

2. Be Crazy Passionate About Your Job

If you think I’m nuts, read one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Love your job.  Seriously.  Be passionate about what you do.  If you you’re not, find a new one.  No job is perfect.  No career is perfect.  Life for sure is not perfect.  Your work life dominates your entire life.  Period.  It’s sad when you think about it.  You spend more time with your hall/cube/office-mates than you do your spouse and your children.  If you work from home (yeah!), you still have incessant phone calls, emails, deadlines, etc to respond to and it’s still no holiday.

If you believe in your company and its value proposition, you can spring out of your bed every day excited about selling your products!  Passion is contagious.  When you love what your company does and love what you do for your company, you want to say words like, “gorgeous”, “awesome”, “beautiful”, “crazy cool”!  Sound like someone pictured above, right?  I’m not suggesting we all go out dressed in Levis, New Balance sneakers, and a St. Croix mock turtleneck to work everyday, but enjoy what you do!  Be passionate about what you do!  You’ll be healthier and feel better as a result — and others will feed off of your passion!

3. A Smile a Day Keeps the Doctor Away!

When I was in college, I minored in religious studies.  I learned about all types of wonderful eastern and western religions. The one that took to me the most was Buddhism.  Thich Nhat Hanh was one of my favorite authors next to the Dalai Lama.  Here’s a favorite quote:

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

It’s so true.  Apparently its still up for debate, but the majority of people say it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.  So smile, dammit!  A study was actually done by Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego that documented how happiness spreads through social networks.  It turns out that the researchers “found that when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it’s 34 percent.” Researchers in Sweden also found that smiles are contagious, citing that “it’s your unconscious mind taking control”! Think about it for a moment – when someone smiles, don’t you also want to smile back at them?  When your partner/spouse/children smile, don’t you immediately smile as well? Don’t you feel better about smiling?

Look, unless you’re, Heaven forbid, Job from the Bible, smile. Be happy about life. Be crazy happy & super excited about all of the awesome things.  The power of positive thinking can actually outweigh all the bad stuff and therefore allow you to ultimately think better and think more positively on how to change the stuff that’s not going right.  Negatively only begets more negativity – or as the Dali Lama once said, “Hate begets hate, and love begets love.”  So smile … it’s contagious!  Who knows, maybe you’ll even change someone else’s day around just because of your smile!

Let me know what you think!

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