January 2013 posting

Passion or Happiness I am a great believer in passion and that is the underlying theme of the book - Creating Your Own Rainbow. At the last Trainers Meet Trainers, I spoke for the need for passion and Prof. Thiagi while accepting parts of it kind of disagreed and said ‘passion gets you nowhere.’ I stumbled upon the term – the new generation of purpose driven leaders. And, I was intrigued to read Oliver Segovia’s comments – he talks about a friend who loved the liberal arts. As she was never keen on a 9 to 5 job, she pursued her passion, got her PhD and she was the happiest person anyone could know. Then came the economic meltdown and she suffered the anguish of an uncertain future. He goes on to say that while most of us work towards finding our dreams, that approach does not work in the competitive world today. He proposes - Forget about finding your passion. Instead, focus on finding big problems. Put problems at the center of our decision making process, it ia is about moving beyond you and becoming a valuable contributor. He adds that people working on the biggest problems are compensated in the biggest ways, not in a strict financial sense, but in a deeply human sense. For one, it shifts your attention from you to others and the wider world. You stop dwelling. You become less self-absorbed. Ironically, you become happier if you worry less about what makes us happy. He says it is critical to develop situational awareness, look into the problems in a personal way, connect with people working on big problems and taking time for you. I was stunned to hear his comments: “Happiness comes from the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs. We've been told time and again to keep finding the first. Our schools helped developed the second. It's time we put more thought on the third.” For more information visit Oliver Segovia at http://blogs.hbr.org