About Victor Mhangwana

Looking back at my life, I realise that I spent the first half learning and practicing compassion, and the second half devoted to passion. I did not know it earlier on, but these are two sides of the same coin—a deep, and strong love that shaped my life.

Straight after high school, I joined the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, whose mission was to help people understand that God’s love for them is unconditional. He loves us first and everything we do is a response to His boundless love. I spent 14 years as one of them, learning gratitude for divine love and compassion for all his creatures. I was ordained Catholic priest after studying philosophy and theology, set off ministering about God's unconditional love. I didn’t earn a salary or charge for my services; my reward was in the joy that comes from giving wholeheartedly and never expecting anything in return. Yet, often to be pleasantly surprised by reciprocal generosity. Loving the people I served was essential for my none salaried work to be meaningful. If you are not getting paid for it, you need a deeper reason to continue doing it. Yet as a priest, I often felt like I was standing on the sidelines cheering people on as they lived their lives, that in some sense I had given up my own.

So at age 33, burnt out and drained, I made a life changing decision to leave the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and enter the secular world. My new life revolved around a new love and starting a family. To my surprise, in my new secular work, what was deep in my heart was considered private—love for customers wasn’t essential. The focus shifted from inward to outward skills, from deep to surface skills, from core to veneer skills like marketing and sales techniques. It was all about making people feel special without necessarily believing they were. I noticed that at the heart of these business skills was an effort to mimic love and care, without giving genuinely love and care. The best negotiators, salespeople, leaders, counsellors, politicians, marketers, and the like are people who are good at faking love and care. Like buttlers saying all the sweet words and making right gestures but not really meaning it. I wondered why there was such reluctance to embrace real love. It is as if love fades when shared. The truth is love grows when it is shared. Why not tell a salesperson or a customer service person to truly love their product and customers?

I was not accustomed to working with and serving people I did not need to love. I missed the wholeheartedness of my previous life of ministry.

Three decades later, I have been a salesman for IBM, a manager for a start-up, and an executive for an automotive company. During that time I came across individuals in business, science, and technology who bridged these two worlds well, blending skill with genuine love. I was pleasantly surprised by billionaires like John de Figoure who treats employees and clients as they want to be treated, Vinod Khosla's unusual brutal honesty that can save entrepreneurs from terminal blindspots and the astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan's deep love for humanity, other life forms and their worlds, terrestial and extraterrestial. They loved their work, their teams, and their clients, combining compassion for people with passion for their work. This combination made them both successful and fulfilled. They showed me that it is possible even outside of the ministry to unite the two halves of my life into one—compassion and passion—the priest and the professional. I am spending the next phase of my life at the delightful intersection of passion and compassion.

My mission now is to help others honor their passion—to find it, grow it, and follow it to success. This path leads to both achievement and fulfilment. To assist I wrote the Passion-First Series of books. There are four books so far with others in the pipeline.

Then to take it a step further by helping people find the eco-system of their passion in a community the supports passion. It is vital to find communities of family, educators, co-workers, investors, cities and countries that support your kind of passions. That is how you build the eco-system for your passion to thrive.