Building wealth amid life’s pleasures

Frederick Buechner said: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” A lot of people are making wealth but they end up being miserable in the process. The most effortless way to making wealth is doing what you are passionate about. The next phase of real productivity is not ‘hard work’; it is ‘pleasure work’. The four levels of work are ‘Pressure Work’, ‘Hard Work’, ‘Smart Work’ and ‘Pleasure Work’. When it comes to productivity, inner satisfaction and fulfilment, Pleasure Work is the best. When you really want people to be productive, don’t just give them what they should work hard on, give them what they are passionate about. The best place to put people to function maximally is in the areas of their gifts, talents and passion. Steve Jobs said: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”Aristotle once said: “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the job.”

When work is pleasure, life is joy; when work is a duty, life is slavery. There is nothing as exciting as having fun and making money in the process. You don’t need to be miserable in the process of making money. Jim Rohn said: “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

If the sole reason for taking a job is just to earn money without the consideration for inner satisfaction, then it becomes a deteriorating form of ‘financial prostitution’. Don’t be a victim of your job. Don’t allow your life to be paralysed by the uncertainty around salary; design your future around your passion and gifting. Design a future that makes you less dependent on salary and don’t confine yourself to a lifetime of living on someone else’s schedule.

People should learn to ask themselves questions like: How can I discover my passion? How can I break away from my casual life so as to avoid becoming life’s casualty? How can I evolve from being a salary earner to living a life of impact and financial freedom?

The first step to building wealth is to find an interception between your passion and people’s problem. In the process of doing this, you will need to eliminate money from the equation and ask yourself the sincere question of what you really love doing even if you are not going to be paid for it. There is nothing as fulfilling as making money while doing the things that you love doing. The fastest way to prosperity is to follow your passion; following your passion helps you achieve more freedom (financially, emotionally, socially, and spiritually). Any job that encourages redundancy and doesn’t place a demand on your creativity will eventually deplete your passion and waste away your ‘destiny’!

Maya Angelou once said: “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.” You can’t fully live life until you learn to give expression to your passion. What is your passion? It can be music, writing, acting, painting, sports, fashion designing, teaching, arts etc. Normal Cousin said: “The greatest tragedy of life is not that we die but what dies in us while we live.” Don’t carry your passion to the grave.

In the awesome and award winning movie ‘3 Idiots’, the three friends seemed like idiots when they dared to pursue their passion, to the extent that one of them pursued his passion in photography at the detriment of a blooming career in engineering; but time will always tell who the real ‘idiots’ are. Never allow anyone, no matter who they are or how much influence they have in your life to talk you out of your passion. Whatever happens, don’t negotiate your passion for anything. When you know your passion, you will know your enemies. Whosoever tries to talk you out of your passion in life is your real enemy. Hold on to it, sooner or later they will realise their folly and not yours. Anybody you lose in the process of sticking to your passion and purpose is NEVER a loss.

In his book, Passion Plan: A Step-to-step Guide to Discerning, Developing and Living Your Passion, Richard Chang, asked some heart-touching questions: “Do you spend a lot of time doing things you don’t want to do, in places you don’t want to be, for no other reason than you feel you have to? You have to bring home a pay-check, please your friends and family, and meet the expectations society has set for you.” Stop playing to the gallery of people’s applause to the detriment of your inner satisfaction. Real wealth is discovering your gifts and talents and making the world a better place through it. Education would never make you wealthy; it would only give you a platform to express your gift. Real wealth lies not in your job, but in your gifts, talents and passion.

I have often advised some of my mentees never to leave their gifts dormant while pursuing and hunting for jobs with their certificates. There must be a complementary balance in the pursuit of your passion and in the search for jobs. Everybody is gifted for something, but the winning edge comes from our ability to work on our gifts and bless the world with it. The very best way to develop yourself is in the direction of your natural talents and interest. Don’t bury your talent with your certificates.

Joseph Campbell once said: “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” Make your gift and passion your profession. Discover and monetise your gift. Whether as a full-fledged passion or a retirement plan, monetising your gift and hobby is the most sustainable way of making wealth. Look inward and repackage what you love doing to make money. Making money from your gift and hobby is excitation, but making money from your job alone is exhaustion.

You are not placed on this earth to be a wandering generality, but rather a meaningful specific. I would like to reach out to parents to allow their children pursue their passion. The real purpose of education is to discover our gifts and passion. The greatest gift parents can ever give to their children is to provide them with a platform to be themselves. Parents are meant to nurture the uniqueness in their wards. The greatest parental sin and abuse is to manipulate our children to live a life that is not theirs.

Myles Munroe said: “To know the right places for people, we must know their area of gifting.” As an entrepreneurship coach, I have come to realise that the best way to help unemployed youths is not just to help them find jobs but to help them find their area of gifting and passion.

My sincere question to you is this: What is that one thing you’re so passionate about? Follow it and it will lead you to your treasure. Real financial security and freedom is not in your job but in your passion. Your job gives you an opportunity to make a living while your passion gives you an opportunity to make a difference. Passion is the effortless path to discovering your purpose.