By Ken Robinson, Lou Aronica
Second part of Robinson's "The Element; How Finding you Passion Changes Everything". Not as engaging as its predecesor, but you'll find interesting practical ideas and stories.
In the end, I get the idea that, as an example, you don't have to dedicate yourself to something you love, music for example, if music is not going to pay the bills; but if you work in something else, such as finance or sales, a side music project must give you the stamina to function properly in every other area of your life.
Best book quote: "Being in your Element gives you energy. Not being in it takes it from you."
Amazon Page for details
My Rating: 7 / 10
Click Here to Read My Notes
Second part of Robinson's "The Element; How Finding you Passion Changes Everything". Not as engaging as its predecesor, but you'll find interesting practical ideas and stories.
In the end, I get the idea that, as an example, you don't have to dedicate yourself to something you love, music for example, if music is not going to pay the bills; but if you work in something else, such as finance or sales, a side music project must give you the stamina to function properly in every other area of your life.
Best book quote: "Being in your Element gives you energy. Not being in it takes it from you."
Amazon Page for details
My Rating: 7 / 10
Click Here to Read My Notes
I did it because I’ve always believed that you have to move toward your fears and not away from them. If you don’t exorcise them, they can haunt you long after they should have faded.
When you’re in your Element, your sense of time changes. If you’re doing something that you love, an hour can feel like five minutes; if you are doing something that you do not, five minutes can feel like an hour.
Being in your Element gives you energy. Not being in it takes it from you.
To find your Element, you need to regain that perspective. One way is to create time and space to be alone with yourself, to experience who you are when no one else wants anything from you and the noise has stopped. One method is to meditate.
The most common challenge in meditation is to stop thinking, which turns out to be one of the reasons for doing it.
As Julia Cameron describes them, “Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages—they are not high art. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind—and they are for your eyes only.
Stopping the noise, changing perspective, and giving it a try are three core processes for finding your Element.
Finding your Element involves understanding the powers and passions that you were born with as part of your unique biological inheritance.
Finding your Element means reflecting on your own cultural circumstances—on the opportunities for growth that you want and need now.
as Carl Jung puts it, “I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Many of the opportunities you have in your life are generated by the energy you create around you.
Ogilvy’s life is a striking example of how we create our own lives from many disparate elements—of how life is not linear, it is organic.
Finding your Element means being open to new experiences and to exploring new paths and possibilities in yourself and in the world around you.
“What makes people successful,” he said, “are their motivation, drive, and ability to learn from mistakes and how hard they work.”
When people say they are good at something (“I’m good at puzzles”), they are often identifying an aptitude. When they define themselves by something (“I’m a cryptographer”), they are usually identifying abilities. Being in your Element takes both aptitude and ability.
Biology affects the aptitudes that you’re born with; culture can seriously affect whether you discover and develop them.
The key to making the most of your capacities is celebrating how you learn and using that learning style to explore as many interests as possible. Once you accept that how you know things is a critical component of what you know, you’re free to apply this to as many disciplines as suits your fancy.
I think it was the American actress and comedian Phyllis Diller who said that we spend the first three years of a child’s life teaching them to walk and to speak and the next twelve years at school telling them to sit down and shut up.
At the end of the day, what you really want is the guy who inspires you, not the guy who influenced you.”
For Hans Zimmer, music was not only a passion: it was a pathway to a life of meaning and achievement.
Passion is about what feeds your spiritual energy rather than consumes it.
For every activity you can think of, someone will love it and someone else will be allergic to it.
When I was cutting pieces of wood in the basement, I really felt that there was something grabbing my hand and showing me how to do it.
Exactly where your spirit comes from and how it relates to your body in general and to your brain in particular are perplexing questions that lie at the heart of science, philosophy and religion.
The guitarist Eric Clapton says that it’s essential that artists and audience “surrender” during a performance. “I can’t really explain what it’s like except in a physical sense,” he’s said. “It’s a massive rush of adrenaline, which comes at a certain point. Usually it’s a sharing experience; it’s not something I could experience on my own. . . . It’s not even just the musicians: it’s everyone that’s involved in the whole experience. Everyone in that place seems to unify at one point. It’s when you get that completely harmonic experience, where everyone is hearing exactly the same thing without any interpretation whatsoever or any kind of angle. They’re all transported toward the same place. . . . You could call it unity, which is a very spiritual word for me. Everyone is one at that point, at that specific point in time, not for very long. Of course, the minute you become aware of that, it’s gone.”
However you conceive of it, being true to your spirit in the here and now is in part what finding your Element is all about. Why does this matter?
Sometimes finding your Element is a sudden inspiration and sometimes it comes over you gradually. The result is the same. Your life is transformed by a different sense of engagement, satisfaction, and purpose.
Ultimately, the two most important questions to ask yourself in the search for your passion are: what do you love, and what do you love about it?
But often our images of what will make us happy are illusions, not visions.
The power of being in your Element is enhanced when it nurtures within you a greater sense of purpose. Having a purpose in life is the wellspring of sustained happiness.
If you believe you only have a certain amount of intelligence, certain personality and certain moral character, “well then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t look right to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.”
The growth mindset is wholly different. It is based on the belief that you can develop your aptitudes and possibilities through your own efforts.
“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it even, or especially, when it’s not going well is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”
How you respond to the world around you deeply affects how the world responds to you. If you act differently in the world, you may find that new people come into your life, and that the ones you know already reframe you. New opportunities turn up. If you take them, you effect changes in other people’s lives as well as your own. This is how the organic nature of human life evolves. Whether and how you become part of that process is a question of attitude.
Even so, people tend to play into them once the label has been applied, as with the Barnum effect.
Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
When you’re in your Element, your sense of time changes. If you’re doing something that you love, an hour can feel like five minutes; if you are doing something that you do not, five minutes can feel like an hour.
Being in your Element gives you energy. Not being in it takes it from you.
To find your Element, you need to regain that perspective. One way is to create time and space to be alone with yourself, to experience who you are when no one else wants anything from you and the noise has stopped. One method is to meditate.
The most common challenge in meditation is to stop thinking, which turns out to be one of the reasons for doing it.
As Julia Cameron describes them, “Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages—they are not high art. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind—and they are for your eyes only.
Stopping the noise, changing perspective, and giving it a try are three core processes for finding your Element.
Finding your Element involves understanding the powers and passions that you were born with as part of your unique biological inheritance.
Finding your Element means reflecting on your own cultural circumstances—on the opportunities for growth that you want and need now.
as Carl Jung puts it, “I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Many of the opportunities you have in your life are generated by the energy you create around you.
Ogilvy’s life is a striking example of how we create our own lives from many disparate elements—of how life is not linear, it is organic.
Finding your Element means being open to new experiences and to exploring new paths and possibilities in yourself and in the world around you.
“What makes people successful,” he said, “are their motivation, drive, and ability to learn from mistakes and how hard they work.”
When people say they are good at something (“I’m good at puzzles”), they are often identifying an aptitude. When they define themselves by something (“I’m a cryptographer”), they are usually identifying abilities. Being in your Element takes both aptitude and ability.
Biology affects the aptitudes that you’re born with; culture can seriously affect whether you discover and develop them.
The key to making the most of your capacities is celebrating how you learn and using that learning style to explore as many interests as possible. Once you accept that how you know things is a critical component of what you know, you’re free to apply this to as many disciplines as suits your fancy.
I think it was the American actress and comedian Phyllis Diller who said that we spend the first three years of a child’s life teaching them to walk and to speak and the next twelve years at school telling them to sit down and shut up.
At the end of the day, what you really want is the guy who inspires you, not the guy who influenced you.”
For Hans Zimmer, music was not only a passion: it was a pathway to a life of meaning and achievement.
Passion is about what feeds your spiritual energy rather than consumes it.
For every activity you can think of, someone will love it and someone else will be allergic to it.
When I was cutting pieces of wood in the basement, I really felt that there was something grabbing my hand and showing me how to do it.
Exactly where your spirit comes from and how it relates to your body in general and to your brain in particular are perplexing questions that lie at the heart of science, philosophy and religion.
The guitarist Eric Clapton says that it’s essential that artists and audience “surrender” during a performance. “I can’t really explain what it’s like except in a physical sense,” he’s said. “It’s a massive rush of adrenaline, which comes at a certain point. Usually it’s a sharing experience; it’s not something I could experience on my own. . . . It’s not even just the musicians: it’s everyone that’s involved in the whole experience. Everyone in that place seems to unify at one point. It’s when you get that completely harmonic experience, where everyone is hearing exactly the same thing without any interpretation whatsoever or any kind of angle. They’re all transported toward the same place. . . . You could call it unity, which is a very spiritual word for me. Everyone is one at that point, at that specific point in time, not for very long. Of course, the minute you become aware of that, it’s gone.”
However you conceive of it, being true to your spirit in the here and now is in part what finding your Element is all about. Why does this matter?
Sometimes finding your Element is a sudden inspiration and sometimes it comes over you gradually. The result is the same. Your life is transformed by a different sense of engagement, satisfaction, and purpose.
Ultimately, the two most important questions to ask yourself in the search for your passion are: what do you love, and what do you love about it?
But often our images of what will make us happy are illusions, not visions.
The power of being in your Element is enhanced when it nurtures within you a greater sense of purpose. Having a purpose in life is the wellspring of sustained happiness.
If you believe you only have a certain amount of intelligence, certain personality and certain moral character, “well then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t look right to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.”
The growth mindset is wholly different. It is based on the belief that you can develop your aptitudes and possibilities through your own efforts.
“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it even, or especially, when it’s not going well is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”
How you respond to the world around you deeply affects how the world responds to you. If you act differently in the world, you may find that new people come into your life, and that the ones you know already reframe you. New opportunities turn up. If you take them, you effect changes in other people’s lives as well as your own. This is how the organic nature of human life evolves. Whether and how you become part of that process is a question of attitude.
Even so, people tend to play into them once the label has been applied, as with the Barnum effect.
Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.