What’s the deal with passion and business?

I often hear people say, “To be in business requires passion”, “Entrepreneurs need passion to be successful”, or “You won’t make it in business without passion.” The list goes on and on.

My intention in this article is to discover if passion is truly required for business (or life for that matter).

So what does passion mean?

The word “passion” is circa 1175. The latin passionem, refers to the “sufferings of Christ on the Cross.” It literally means to suffer and to endure something. In Greek, pema (the root word of passion) means “to hurt, misery, woe.“ The Old English meaning is “enemy, devil.” The gothic sense means “to blame.”

Suffering? Endure? Enemy? Blame? Misery?

Bottom-line: To be passionate means to be in pain. At the core operational level, when you say ”I am passionate” you are literally conditioning yourself to “Suffer, endure, be miserable and be in pain.”
And what does being in pain have to do with business or entrepreneurship? Absolutely nothing! Business provides what people want. If you’re not doing that you are not in business – you’re doing something, but it definitely is not business. Entrepreneurship is an exercise in awareness. To be an entrepreneur means taking hold of an opportunity that others cannot see.

So, if you want to add passion to business, you can. I am not going to stop you. If you want to add passion to entrepreneurship, you can. That is your prerogative; your choice. But, you should be clear: you are adding it. It is not required. The kicker in all this is that we are not even aware that we are doing it, so passion seems like a “good thing” to add to business.

Personally, I definitely did not sign up for that.

My advice is: Be careful what you add to business.