Follow Your Passion Passionately

Dear friends,

Nothing in life defines us more than how passionately we go about
doing what we believe in. Like the density of a diamond is measured by
its carats, similarly the depth of the human diamond lies in his
passion. It is the most important ingredient for success and happiness
in life! Without it, we are worth nothing; and as human diamonds, our
carats would be negligible. Passion can make anything happen.

Follow your passion and everything will follow. Take the case of the
high school biology teacher who loved playing football and left
everything to go on to become a football and sports coach in a
university. Many would have considered it an ordinary, thankless job.
Why do you think he chose to do it?

He realized that he was quite passionate about helping young athletes
improve their performance while running.

He pursued this passion relentlessly and went on to become a coach of
national and international stature.

But he did not rest on his laurels. His dedication and passionate will
to succeed ensured his name in the Hall of Fame gallery as one of the
greatest track and field coaches in the history of the United States,
having trained some of the finest athletes who went on to become
record holders and Olympic champions.

The fame and everything else that went with it was gratifying, but did
not reduce his passion to keep improving the athletic performance.

He pushed himself to experiment and aggressively pursue inventive approaches.

His insatiable curiosity pushed him to realize that running shoes are
the athlete’s best friend and if only an ounce could be removed from
the shoe’s weight, then, in a one-mile race, almost 200 pounds of
aggregate effort could be reduced.

His research found no takers among any of the shoe manufacturers, but
that did not deter him at all.

He went on to invent a waffle sole which was far lighter and had a
better grip than the ones that were manufactured at the time.

Yet again, no one paid heed to his invention, but he knew he had to
help athletes perform better and that was all that mattered. With this
in mind, he went on to become a shoe manufacturer himself with the
little savings that he had.

Over time, along with Phil Knight, a middle-distance runner, he
overcame many trials and tribulations and went on to establish one of
the biggest and most successful brands in marketing history with the
omnipresent swoosh logo. Yes, the same biology teacher became the
co-founder of Nike, and like the brand, enjoyed a cult status of his
own. And still his passion remained running and improving performance
of athletes.

He wanted the world to share his passion. He ignited the jogging
phenomenon in the United States. The term also became the title of his
book, Jogging, selling a million plus copies. He helped define the
sport of running as we know it today and helped people lead a better,
healthy life derived from the joys and benefits of jogging.

One passion: Running.

And many facets: Educator, trainer, all-time track and field legendary
coach, ultra-innovator, inventor, brand builder, successful
businessman, author and change agent.

That was Bill Bowerman for you.

Just like him, there is a success story waiting to happen in each one
of us – but only if we are willing to ignite the passion within us and
ready to chase it passionately! And in this chase of passion, there
will be other powerful principles that will have to be followed. But
nothing, absolutely nothing can be achieved without the unending
strong passion! One has to do what one believes in and be passionate
about what one does!

As Martin Luther King Jr said: If you are a street sweeper, so be it.
Clean the street so well that others are forced to acknowledge your
existence and feel that “here lived a street sweeper who did his job
well” because anything worth doing is worth doing passionately. Else,
neither will you be happy, nor will you sparkle, and interestingly,
not will you earn money.