Igniting passion in others and finding meaning in work

When you are totally possessed by something, you’re more likely to skip meals and postpone sleep than to stop. 

That’s passion — when you can’t notice anything else except the work right in front of you. The whole world can whiz by while your passion gives you tunnel vision.

Psychologists (like prolific writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) have called this the flow state, or the psychology of optimal experience. What matters isn’t so much what we actually do, but rather the manner in which we make sense or frame that experience. 

Anyone can reach this peak performance mindset. And when you can dial it in, on-demand — when you know how to pursue your passion — it allows for a satisfying, productive, and meaningful output. 

The more you can engage in this flow state, the more you can kindle that spark and turn it into a blazing, purposeful inferno. 

And meaningful work spreads fast: it gives you the chance to ignite something in others. When someone sees smoke in a chimney, they know there’s a fire they can warm themselves by, too. 

Meaningful work generally includes a balance between achievement and tension. Just the right amount of difficulty so you hit goals without mowing down milestones too easily. The presence of a continuous challenge is integral to a flow state — a constant string of obstacles that alternate between predictable and novel. 

Part of finding this passionate, tunnel-visioned state is a mindset of perpetual hunger. Not quite discontent, but an unending longing for more. A dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction is what pulls you forward toward more achievement and it also provides an itch to scratch. 

As stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, work is what humans are born to do. Productive, meaningful work is what people are brought into the world for, according to him, so there shouldn’t be reason to complain when you’re called upon. 

Before you’re in the flow state, it can be hard to find the motivation to begin. Getting out of bed in the morning, for example, can take some gusto. Aurelius writes: 

“What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?… So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them?”

Finding passion is difficult. Even once you’ve found it, passion can prove evasive. Aurelius said to do good work because that’s what you’re here for. Csikszentmihalyi said that meaningful work is simply the most optimal way to live. 

Both thinkers, in a sense, advocate for doing what is in our nature — doing what you love to do. That’s what we do anyway, regardless of whether it is work or not. People do what they want because it is what they want to do. 

The lucky ones, the monomaniacs perhaps, find a way to do what they want as a livelihood. 

And it is often those individuals who can help others do good, passionate work too. 

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