I would like you to think about these questions during the next week:
- When are you most “yourself”?
- What is the ONE thing you could do, or stop doing, that would improve the quality of your life?
- What is your greatest talent?
- How can you get paid for doing what you love best?
- Who are your most inspiring role models?
- How can you change the world?
- What is your deepest passion?
- What will be your life´s legacy?
That’s it. Keep these questions with you when you go to sleep and when you go shopping or take a shower.
Sir Kenneth Robinson once said in an interesting TED talk:
I believe fundamentally, that we make very poor use of our talents. Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. I meet all kinds of people who don’t think they’re really good at anything.
and
I meet all kinds of people who don’t enjoy what they do. They simply go through their lives getting on with it. They get no great pleasure from what they do. They endure it rather than enjoy it, and wait for the weekend. But I also meet people who love what they do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. If you said, “Don’t do this anymore,” they’d wonder what you’re talking about. It isn’t what they do, it’s who they are. They say, “But this is me, you know. It would be foolish to abandon this, because it speaks to my most authentic self.” And it’s not true of enough people. In fact, on the contrary, I think it’s still true of a minority of people. And I think there are many possible explanations for it. And high among them is education, because education, in a way, dislocates very many people from their natural talents. And human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.
Titles, labels, roles and degrees don’t define you. These are just external labels that may either enable you to use your talents for the benefit of others or they may prevent you from following your passion. Your titles and degree papers may allow you to come into the right context, from where you can act out your talents, or they might put you in a box from where you cannot easily escape. You may think that, oh well, I have studied this and that, therefore I cannot do this thing which I love and is good at. Well, that may be a point, but it may also be that the thing that you love and is good at is, in fact, something that you should be doing. You might even change the world with it.
Take some time to discover your deep passion, what makes you tick.
I believe that your passion is about to burst through the surface and your creativity with it. You CAN change the world. You have what it takes. Find and follow your passion. Develop your hidden skills. Dare to dream big.
Start with the Why!
Simon Sinek explains in a TED talk that all people and organizations know what they do, most know how they do it, but very few know why they do it. In order to inspire and be creative and come up with solutions to peoples problems you need to start with the why.
Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren’t. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do, 100 percent. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiated value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by “why” I don’t mean “to make a profit.” That’s a result. It’s always a result. By “why,” I mean: What’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? As a result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in, it’s obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations — regardless of their size, regardless of their industry — all think, act and communicate from the inside out.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it!
