While I was driving this morning to my office, I recalled the photo caption in my morning companion’s supplement – “ALL ABOUT CARING: Nursing is all about passion, compassion and dedication”

I started thinking seriously about success and what makes one successful in one’s profession. I realized that only by being passionate, performing and persevering one can be sure of success in one’s endeavours.

What is passion? Well. It is the starting point in one’s career. If one is not passionate about one’s profession, then one can conclude s/he would not be successful. One may counter that dreaming is very important and dreams really leads to success. Some how or other, I don’t believe in this, as according to me dreams occur only when we sleep. When we are awake we don’t recall our dreams or such dreams do not occur or recur. Some may indulge in daydreaming but we all know how realistic such dreams would be. Hence I would like to substitute dreams with passion. Only passion with its fervor, obsession, and craze will live with one during day and during night and this passion will alone drive one to success. Passion should be persisting one and not a passing one. If the passion is persisting, it will drive us, virtually mad, to see that we acquire everything to realize our passion. It will automatically make things happen.

What is performance? According to me, performance is that extra in our normal delivery, expectation, and focus. That is why we define performers are those who run that extra mile in their efforts to make things qualitatively better and happen. We are paid for the minimum we are expected to deliver. But when we perform we reward us with our appreciation and satisfaction. This will become a contagious disease in that we will ourselves look for performance in our roles. Once we reach that stage, others will start appreciating us as ‘star performers’.Ultimately our organizations will be able to realize extra premium from their ‘performing’ products / services from their customers. May be, only from such extra premiums, our organizations are rewarding our star performers.

What is perseverance? Despite being passionate, despite being a performer, sometimes success may still elude us. In such circumstances, one should not lose faith in being passionate and performing. One need to be resolutely pursue one’s passion and performance. Such insistence, firmness and determination may demand extra efforts and time. Such perseverance may be needed in extreme situations where the ground realities are not friendly and supportive. For obvious reasons, the other ‘non performers’ may not like one to really ‘perform’ in one’s profession and role. Probably the other ‘non performers’ may be afraid that their stake may go down or their comfort zone would be affected. In such situations they may make work place life miserable for the one who is passionate and performing. In such situations, one may need to persevere in one’s efforts.

Well. When I almost reached my office’s security gates, I realized that success is no different from nursing as a career - passion, compassion and dedication. To achieve success, we only need to nurse our passion.

Let us make this happen.