Passion Is Fuel For Momentum

A new friend, David Murray, made a recent post where he stated that “Cool isn’t sustainable.” In the comments, this video was posted, and he added this follow-up question:

“Wonder why it is difficult sometimes to move past the igniter and into sustainability. What slows us down?”

The answer came to me almost instantly: it’s too much like work for most of us.

There’s effort that goes into moving the car another mile toward the destination.

If passion is the fuel, effort is the engine – and sometimes, we just run out of gas. If we’re not maintaining the vehicle that houses that engine (ourselves), no amount of fuel will get it further down the road. If we’re not stopping periodically to fuel-up and check the fluid levels, it’s only a matter of time before we crack a cylinder, blow a gasket, or abandon the vehicle altogether.

If you’ve ever pushed a car from a dead stop, you know what I’m talking about. The sheer effort involved in getting the wheels to make the first revolution can bring you to tears.

Jim Collins talks about the need for build-up and momentum in his book “Good to Great“. If you abandon the vehicle during the build-up phase, you’ll never reach escape velocity. Momentum only comes after effort has been applied to create that velocity. No velocity, no momentum. No mass, no momentum. Which means, in order to have momentum, you’ve got to have effort applied to a mass to create velocity.

Not to get too scientific, but if any one factor isn’t there, it ain’t happening. Period. You can start to apply effort – that’s where passion comes in to play. Passion is the igniter, the spark, the fuel injected. It makes the effort easier – the car goes when you step on the “gas” – but you don’t have an endless supply.

It’s almost tragic when someone loses passion. Passionless marriages that were once burning bright with intoxicating heat and energy become these dead zones where two people barely co-exist.

What happened to the passion?

They got “burned out”, or “exhausted” with one another. Quite often, one or both parties didn’t take the time to make a pit stop, fuel up, and continue to expend effort together in the same direction.

But this isn’t a diatribe on marriage. It’s a question about how to get, build, and sustain momentum for something that you’re passionate about.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Heal, then bloom. You have to give yourself time and space to recover from the effort your expending.

2. Give and take. You can’t always give, because then there’s nothing left to give. You can’t always take, because there’s nothing left to take. If your fist is clenched, you can’t accept or give anything. Live with an open hand.

3. Recognize the parts of the whole. You can’t just gas up the engine. You have to check the tires, the radiator, the oil level. Everything needs to be in working order to sustain effort for any length of time. In a company, there are many parts (people) that make up the whole (organization). Everyone needs to be in working order to sustain effort for any length of time.

4. Have a destination in mind. You may not need a map for a short journey, but it certainly helps if all the effort is being applied in the same general direction. If you’re pushing a car from the front, and the rest of your team is pushing from other sides, chances are good you’ll get nowhere. Either that, or the side that’s pushing hardest will start building momentum – which might be in a completely wrong direction. With a destination (vision) in mind, everyone can get on the same side of the vehicle, ignite their passion, and start moving toward that destination.

There’s much more that could be said on this. The idea’s not to be exhaustive, but rather to re-fuel your passion and help you generate some momentum during your build-up phase. Once you hit escape velocity, breakthrough becomes imminent.

But first, there’s work to be done.