Seth Godin, the best selling author of Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin and many other books, does a great job tackling the question of why some people are passionate about changing the world and others aren't in this walk and talk with Tony Hsieh (the founder of Zappos).
Seth refuses to believe that passion is something you're born with. So if it's not heredity, what is it that differentiates someone like Tony Hsieh of Zappos from a random person working at a "compliant" type of a job without any desire to change the world? The difference, Seth says, is fear. It's the most important emotion in the world. We evolved as human beings to fit in. If you did not fit in to the village of 150 people and the chief got mad at you, you were kicked out, the tigers would find you and you would die. So we were trained to fit in, to do what we're told, to buy into the norm.
Today, the ideas is the currency, not the ability to do what you're told. If you want to make an impact in this world, you better overcome your fear of being different and stand out from the crowd. To do that, ask yourself what your fears sound like, what is their tone of voice, and how you're going to overcome the internal resistance to change.
Here is an inspiring video of a group of people who have overcome their fears and gone from a compliant type of job into creating something that matters to them.