I was reading about the new Patti Smith autobiography, Just Kids, and was amazed at all the things this woman did in her life, not just the quantity of things, but even  more so the variety of things. For those of you who weren’t around when Patti Smith was popular in the media, she is most famous, certainly to me anyway, as a musician. Her album Horses is on many of the “100 top rock albums” lists. But, in addition, she was a painter, performance artist, an actress, and writer, even co-writing a play, Cowboy Mouth, with playwright Sam Shepard.

When I read about someone like this, I wonder about my quiet little life. Do you ever have similar feelings, sort of amazement at what some people accomplish in their lives, and more than a twinge of jealousy? If so, you are not alone.

It usually makes me wonder why I am not like that. My first wife was certainly like that. At 21, after earning her bachelors degree, she started a drug rehab program with a group of nuns. After she got her MPH (Masters of Public Health), she started a home day care program for out-of-work women (welfare moms). I was always amazed, watching her, experiencing her passion and creativity, and, once again, feeling more than a little jealous.

I was recently reading an article about persons who do extreme sports, BASE jumping (parachuting off bridges and skyscrapers), hang gliding, rock climbing. Such people, according to the study, frequently have deficiencies of dopamine. This deficiency means they need more excitement than a “normal” person just to feel alive. The author labels such people as Type T personalities.

But just because you don’t have a top rock album, or don’t BASE jump off of bridges, doesn’t mean you don’t have urgings, urgings to create something big, to do something special, to give your life more meaning.

You don’t need to have been born rebellious, like Patti Smith, and you don’t need to have an inadequate amount of endorphins like extreme athletes, to have a more meaningful, fuller life.

Living with passion doesn’t mean you have to do many different things. One is enough for most of us.

You just need to discover your passion.  Most of us just need to dig a little bit deeper to discover our passion. We have to work at it. Investigate. We need to force ourselves to try new things, to have new experiences. There is no need for us mere mortals to settle for “just getting by.”

Because once we discover our passion, something we love, our life gains so much more meaning. We are filled with energy.

But until we know what that purpose is, there is no way for us to fulfill it.

If you don’t know what it is, what passion you are here to pursue, why not make it your mission to find your passion. Try something you have always secretly (maybe even secretly to yourself) wanted to explore.

Some of your investigations will not pan out, like my adventure with sailing. Two hours into the class the instructor returned to the harbor to give my nausea a chance to subside.

But maybe one will result in you finding a life time passion like I did when I took a sculpting workshop. You can read all about it on my blog www.bobprentisssculpting.com.

Life is too short to not have passion in it. Why not get started today?

When I think about motivation the image in my head involves trains. I have always loved trains, perhaps because they remind me of my Dad. Every Christmas he would set up the Lionel trains, the big ones, with three rails, to circle around the Christmas tree and all over the living room. I’m sure it drove my Mom crazy, making her living room such a cluttered mess, but she was a good sport, since it only happened once a year.

In my image of motivation, I see a string of cars in a siding. There are box cars, tankers, refrigerator cars and flat cars. They are just sitting there, sitting there going nowhere. The goods inside the cars are stuck in the siding. Being stuck in the siding they aren’t doing anyone any good; they have no value so long as they stay in the siding.

Then the locomotive comes along, and backs into the siding. It hooks up to the cars, reverses its engines, and pulls those cars out of the siding. It pulls those cars into the city and into the markets in the city. Once the goods in the cars get into the market, they can be bought and sold; they have value.

This is the same thing that happens with motivation. The cars represent your dreams. As long as they are stuck in the sidings of your mind, they are without value; they are merely dreams, merely wishful thinking.

But hook those dreams up to motivation and bring them to the market place, and suddenly they have value. They become more than dreams, they become real!

Dreams can be wonderful in their own right; they can make life more fun, more tolerable. But how much better is a dream that is valuable, that is coming true.

Add motivation to your dreams, and make them real.