Passion, in the workplace?

Passion per the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

: a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something

: a strong feeling (such as anger) that causes you to act in a dangerous way

: a strong sexual or romantic feeling for someone

Let me say that I am not about to recreate the wheel.

We all know the importance of passion in our lives. The passion for our spouse (I sure hope),  our families, our communities, but passion for our jobs?

Benjamin Franklin  Is quoted as saying “Most people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75.”

Which is funny because in the 1750-1800’s the average life expectancy was 36.

But what happened between 25-75. We went off to die at our jobs! Without passion for what we do, we are all sure to die at work, waiting for someone to come along and bury us…

What happens to us when we go off to work? How many of us "whistle while we work?" One survey from the thesocialworkplace.com reports that less than 50% of employees are satisfied with their jobs. Not only are we not passionate about what we do, we are not even remotely satisfied... HELP!!!

Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last.” 
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

So who is at fault that we are not passionate about our work? It couldn't be that we are at fault, so lets blame our employers. The latest surveys on employee engagement show that less than a third of the employees feel engaged at work and about 20% are disengaged and actually doing more damage than good at work. That leaves about 50% of employees linger and die a little bit at a time at their jobs. 

If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.”
— T. Alan Armstrong, Author and Writer

Maybe its the other way around. There are some of us that can find our passion and the go out and turn it into our livelihood. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of us just have to allow what we are to become our passion. Maybe we just have to look into ourselves and say on a daily basis that we love what we do because it allows us to do what we love...

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” 
— Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist

Maybe Einstein was right here too. If we allow our passion to be curiosity, about our profession, about our business, about our ability at add value, then we can become passionate about our jobs too...