Like the rest of nature, human talents and passions are tremendously diverse and they take many forms. As individuals, we’re all motivated by different dreams and we thrive—and we wilt too—in very different circumstances. Recognizing your own dreams and the conditions you need to fulfill them are essential to becoming who you can be. Finding your own Element won’t guarantee that you’ll spend the rest of your life in a constant unbroken state of pleasure and delight. It will give you a deeper sense of who you really are and of the life you could and maybe should live.” (pp. 242-243)

Robinson: Finding Your Element (Full Transcript) Sir Ken Robinson: Finding Your Element (Full Transcript)

If we’re perfectly honest, Ken Robison and Lou Aronica are not really saying too many things you don’t know already. Especially if you’ve read their previous book “The Element.” However, books are not only about what their authors say, they’re also about how they say it. And I want to say a few words about what it is, about why it matters and what you can do about it if you feel you haven’t found yours yet.

Third principle: Life is organic.

In 2010, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, estimated that every two days we now create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003." (p. 7) Probably it’s best to think of “Finding Your Element” not so much as an enlightening book, but more as a book that may inspire you. After all, when it comes to stimulation and encouragement, a cliché or two put at the right place and worded the right way is known to help. And what I’ve really tried to try to is describe what that means and how you can bring that about in your life if you don’t have it already.

Finding Your Element - Penguin Books UK

In my own personal circumstance, I know what I am passionate about and I have a plan to pursue it, but I still have a couple of years until I expect to make the transition. I liked the anecdotes and the reflections of others as they pursued their own Element, but I was a bit surprised that many of the quotes that I copied down to include in my review were from others. Now, you might think that you don’t have any unique talents to share with the world. To start with, you’re not as good at this job as the designer sitting next to you is – and they are a junior! Meanwhile, even though you’ve been working at the same company for almost a decade, you don’t seem to improve at designing. In fact, scientists have found that vast psychological and biological differences can even occur between identical twins. One of the themes of TED Talks Education is that current policies are based on a tragic misdiagnosis of the problem. They treat education as an industrial process rather than as a human one. They are driven by a culture of testing and standardization that has narrowed the curriculum and sees students as data points and teachers as functionaries rather than as living breathing people. Sometimes, the latter makes all the difference: if you’ll discover your aptitude and find a way to link it with your passions is severely affected by your immediate surroundings.Poor people, for example, don’t have the same freedom in pursuing their passions as rich ones, and some cultures permit or discourage some aptitudes.Hello and welcome! I’m Ken Robinson, and I want to talk to you about how people can discover their true talents and passions and the difference it makes in their lives if they do that. It’s what I call Finding Your Element. Finding your element is about discovering what lies within you and, in doing so, transforming what lies before you. But I also meet people who absolutely love what they do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. If you said, why don’t you stop this and try something else for change, they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, because they’d say, “This isn’t what I do. This is who I am. This defines me. When I do this, I feel I’m in my most natural and authentic self.”