> I would try to discover you passion. Then go with that.
Easy to say, hard to do. I liked this idea:
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One approach I recommend for uncovering desires involves taking the time to listen to the most deeply fulfilling experiences of your colleagues’ (or partners’, or friends’, or classmates’) lives, and sharing your own with them. The more we understand one another’s stories of meaningful achievement, the more effectively we understand how to work with each other: what moves and motivates others, what gives them satisfaction in their work. It seems simple, but nobody does it. Ask yourself: How many people do you work with who could name even one of your most meaningful achievements and explain why it was so meaningful to you?
A motivational drive is a specific and enduring behavioral energy that has oriented you throughout your life to achieve a distinct pattern of results. You may be fundamentally motivated, for instance, to bring control, to evoke recognition, or to overcome obstacles. Because most of us have never thought seriously about the nature of our motivation, we lack the language to be able to describe our core motivational drives with much precision. This exercise gives us that ability. Core motivational drives are enduring, irresistible, and insatiable. They are probably explanatory of much of your behavior since the time you were a child. Think of them as your motivational energy—the reason you consistently gravitate toward certain types of projects (team versus individual, goal-oriented versus ideation) and activities (sports, arts, theater, forms of fitness) and not others. There are patterns in your motivation. If you can put your finger on what specifically they are, then you will have taken a major step toward understanding your thick desires.
The best way to uncover the patterns is by sharing stories. Stories about times in your life when you took an action that ended up being deeply fulfilling. Today it’s one of the first questions that I ask in any job interview because it helps cut through the thin stuff and goes straight to the essence of the person. “Tell me about a time in your life when you did something well and it brought you a sense of fulfillment,” I ask. I have seen this simple question transform interactions between individuals and entire communities. When stories are shared between two people who know how to listen well, the experience transports both the storyteller and the listener to a time when desire led to extraordinarily fulfillment. That’s why sharing those stories is a joyful experience. A Fulfillment Story, as I call it, has three essential elements:
1 It’s an action. You took some concrete action and you were the main protagonist, as opposed to passively taking in an experience. As life-changing as a Springsteen concert at the Stone Pony might have been for you, it’s not a Fulfillment Story. It might be for Bruce, but not for you. Dedicating yourself to learning everything about an artist and their work, on the other hand, could be.
2 You believe you did well. You did it with excellence, you did it well—by your own estimation, and nobody else’s. You are looking for an achievement that matters to you. If you grilled what you think is a perfect rib-eye steak the other night, then you did something well and achieved something. Don’t worry about how big or small the achievement might seem to anyone else.
3 It brought you a sense of fulfillment. Your action brought you a deep sense of fulfillment, maybe even joy. Not the fleeting, temporary kind, like an endorphin rush. Fulfillment: you woke up the next morning and felt a sense of satisfaction about it. You still do. Just thinking about it brings some of it back.
Such moments of profound meaning and satisfaction matter. They reveal something critical about who you are.
Knowing something about the interior life of a person is necessary to understand why they do what they do and what it means to them. Fulfillment Stories get at the heart of action by looking at it from the inside out. Fulfillment Stories ask, “But why did that action mean so much to you?” The question and answer kick off a positive mimetic cycle. You tell one of your Fulfillment Stories. I listen with empathy to what you are telling me and reflect back to you what I heard and saw and felt in your story. Then you do the same for me. Empathy imitates empathy, heart speaks to heart. Every time I told a Fulfillment Story, another rose to the surface. As I dove deeper into my past, I uncovered stories I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Not only that—I hadn’t even recognized them as stories of fulfilling action at the time.
Most people are rarely, if ever, asked to tell the stories of their deeply fulfilling achievements.
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Excerpt from the book Wanting by Luke Burgis. I bought it because the book’s topic was “Human desire is mimetic – we imitate what other people want”, which is a very powerful idea.
Unfortunately I felt the book was trashy American self help author ego stroking, but the section above stood out to me.