TAP Your Potential: World’s Easiest Way for Find Your Passion

Did you know that the word passion means “to suffer”?

When we hear the term, “follow your passion” rarely do we think – “Gee, I’d really like to go and suffer for a while.”

Sometimes it is through our suffering that we find our passion and courage to fully live. In fact, the easiest way in the world to find your passion is to find your suffering just as Nancy Brinker.

No doubt you are familiar with the pink ribbon that represents awareness for breast cancer. In my home town we even had a pink ribbon fire truck for a while.  The pink ribbon movement was started by the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  Susan was Nancy’s sister. Susan died of breast cancer because her doctor did not know how to best treat her. It was Nancy’s suffering that caused her to found the Susan G. Komen Foundation because she didn’t want anything like that to happen again.

Nancy is not a doctor but she is a very talented marketer, and through her hard work millions of dollars for research have been raised and millions of women’s lives have been saved.

My mother passed away this January from ovarian cancer. As she was saying a tearful goodbye to her nurse, the nurse remarked that one day she hoped ovarian and cervical cancer would get the same resources for research as breast cancer. She said when she started working as a nurse they lost most of their breast cancer patients. Now they don’t.

Nancy’s suffering, her deep pain, is what lead her to want to create a world in which no one suffered like she did any longer.  Martin Luther King, Jr. also used his suffering to make the world a better place as did Gandhi.

Without Nancy Brinker turning her passion into something powerful I would have lost many friends to breast cancer and I suspect you would have to. We both have reasons to thank her. I know Susan is shining down from heaven gobsmacked at how impactful both their lives have been.

Suffering is an intense emotion and it is intensified when we realize that something can be done to end it for ourselves and others. To make the world a better place it is the combination of our passion and talents that bring about the greatest personal fulfillment.

When have you suffered the most?

What are your greatest talents?

How can they be combined?