photo courtesy of Rubyran

Earlier this week, I stumbled across a blog post by Johnny B. Truant on the importance of motivation. Seeing that it was Wednesday morning and I had no more writing assignments to complete that week, I figured I could use some motivation to keep working instead of playing Wii Tetris all day.

In his post, Johnny recounts an old Buddhist parable about a young man who wants to learn Zen. To make a long story short, this student keeps pestering a Zen master about it until the master grabs him by the neck and dunks his head underwater for a few minutes.

“When you want to learn as badly as you wanted to breathe, come back and we’ll talk,” the master says.

(There’s another version of this story where the Zen master sets his student’s hair on fire. Those guys are violent.)

Johnny goes on to explain how he finally got serious about succeeding as an entrepreneur, working crazy hours, seven days a week, to make his business work.

And you know what? It pissed me off.

Johnny admits that he makes time for his family, but the post still made me mad. You’re telling me that in order to be successful I have to stay glued to my computer screen for 14 hours a day, tweaking AdWords accounts and pitching affiliate products and pretty much ignoring my eight million other interests? What about photography and gardening and that new Pulitzer Prize-winner I haven’t read?

No thank you. I guess I don’t want it that badly after all.

Then I started thinking—what do I need as much as breathing?  What does set my head on fire?

The answers came easily:

•   Writing
•   Helping women succeed

I became a copywriter so I could write for a living. In doing so, I discovered that I really liked marketing. It was rewarding, creative, and I was even pretty good at it – despite the fact that technology is constantly changing and creating new challenges for me to solve.

When it comes down to it, though, what I’m really passionate about is writing, and helping women succeed. Marketing is just a means to those two ends.

Johnny’s post pissed me off because I had lost track of my “why.” When that happens, it’s hard to justify hours spent in front of the computer, away from other interests. I was getting bogged down by the day-to-day details without recognizing my true passion.

That makes marketing especially hard, because it quickly starts feeling like drudge work. You didn’t start your business so you could make cold calls and attend networking meeting and send press releases and follow-up emails. But sometimes those things feel like all you do. So you start asking, “What’s the point?”

And self-promotion, without that why, without that hair-on-fire feeling, just feels false. No wonder so many people hate it.

What’s your WHY? And when’s the last time you tapped into the passion that it evokes? How do you stay tapped in? Let me know in the comments section below.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s Friday and I have some Wii Tetris to play.