How to find and do work you love | Scott Dinsmore | TEDxGoldenGatePark (2D)

Transcriber: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Ivana Korom Wow, what an honor. I always wondered what this would feel like. Eight years ago I received the worst career advice of my life. A friend told me, "Don't worry about how much you like the job you're doing now. It's just about building your resume." And I had just come back from living in Spain for a while and joined this Fortune 500 company. I thought, "This is fantastic. I'm going to have a big impact on the world." I had all these ideas. And after about two months, I realized that around 10 a.m. every morning I had this strange urge to want to bang my head against my computer monitor.

I don't know if anyone has ever felt that. And soon after I realized that all the competitors in our space had already automated my job function. And that's when I received this sage advice for developing my resume. Well, while I'm trying to figure out which two-story window I'm going to jump out of and turn things around, I read completely different advice from Warren Buffett, and he said, "Taking jobs to boost your resume is the same as saving sex for old age. " (Laughs) And I heard that, and that was all I needed. In two weeks I was out of there and I did it with one intention: to

find

something I could screw up at.

That's how hard it was. I wanted to have some kind of impact. It didn't matter what it was. And I quickly discovered that I wasn't alone: ​​It turns out that more than 80 percent of the people around me don't enjoy their jobs. I guess this room is different, but that's the average Deloitte has done with their studies. So I wanted to

find

out what sets these people apart, the people who do passionate

work

that changes the world, who wake up inspired every day, and then these people, the other 80 percent who live these quiet lives. despair. So I started interviewing all these people who were doing this inspiring

work

, reading books and doing case studies, 300 books in total on purpose and career and all this, totally personal immersion, really for the selfish reason of...

I wanted to. finding the job I couldn't not do, which was what that was for me. But as I was doing this, more and more people started asking me, "You like this career. I don't like my job. Can we sit down for lunch?" I'd say, "Sure." But I would have to warn you, because at that time my dropout rate was also 80 percent. Of the people I sat at lunch with, 80 percent would leave their jobs within two months. He was proud of this, and it's not like he had any special magic. It was that I would ask him a simple question.

It was, "Why are you doing the work you're doing?" And very often his response would be, "Well, because someone told me I should." And I realized that so many people around us are climbing this ladder that someone tells them to go up, and they end up leaning against the wrong wall, or against no wall at all. The more time I spent with these people and saw this problem, I thought: what if we could create a community, a place where people could feel like they belonged and that it was okay to do things differently, to take the road less traveled?

Where was that encouraged and inspired people to change? And that later became what I now call Live Your Legend, which I will explain later. But as I made these discoveries, I noticed a framework of three really simple things that all of these different, passionate world changers have in common, whether you're a Steve Jobs or whether you're just, you know, the person with the bakery at the end. of the street. But you are doing work that embodies who you are. I want to share those three with you, so we can use them as lenses for the rest of today and, hopefully, the rest of our lives.

The first part of this three-step passionate framework is to become a self-expert and understand yourself, because if you don't know what you are looking for, you will never find it. And no one is going to do this for us. In college there is no specialization based on passion, purpose and career. I don't know how that's not a required double major, but don't even get me started on that. I mean, you spend more time choosing a bedroom TV than you do choosing your major and area of ​​study. But the point is that it's up to us to figure it out and we need a framework, we need a way to navigate through this.

Therefore, the first step of our compass is to discover what our unique strengths are. What are the things we

love

to do no matter what, whether we get paid or not, the things that people thank us for? And Strengths Finder 2.0 is a book and also an online tool. I highly recommend it to find out what you are naturally good at. And next, what is our framework or our hierarchy for making decisions? Do we care about people, our family, health, or is it achievements, success, all of that? We have to discover what it is to make these decisions, to know what our soul is made of, so we don't sell it to some cause we don't give a shit about.

And then the next step is our experiences. We all have these experiences. We learn things every day, every minute about what we

love

, what we hate, what we are good at, what we are terrible at. And if we don't take the time to pay attention to that and assimilate that learning and apply it to the rest of our lives, it will be in vain. Every day, every week, every month of every year, I spend time reflecting on what went right, what went wrong, and what I want to repeat, what I can apply more to my life.

And even more than that, when you see people, especially today, who inspire you, who do things where you say, "Oh God, what Jeff is doing, I want to be like him." Why are you saying that? Open a diary. Write down what inspires you about them. It won't be everything about your life, but whatever it is, make note of it, so over time we will have this repository of things that we can use to apply to our life and have a more passionate existence and make a better life. impact. Because when we start putting these things together, we can define what success really means to us, and without these different parts of the compass, it's impossible.

We end up in the situation... We have this written life that everyone seems to be living, climbing this ladder to nowhere. It's kind of like in Wall Street 2, if someone sees that, the farmhand asks the CEO of the big Wall Street banker, "What's your number? Everyone has a number, where if they make this money, they'll give it all up." . He says, "Oh, it's simple. More." And he just smiles. And it's the sad state of most people who haven't taken the time to understand what matters to them, who keep searching for something that means nothing to us, but we do it because everyone said we're supposed to. .

But once we have this framework together, we can begin to identify the things that make us come alive. You know, before this, a passion might come and smack you in the face, or maybe in your potential line of work, you might throw it in the trash because you have no way of identifying it. But once you do it, you can see something that is congruent with my strengths, my values, who I am as a person, so I'm going to take advantage of this, I'm going to do something with it and I'm going to go after it and try to make an impact. with the.

And Live Your Legend and the movement that we've built wouldn't exist if I didn't have this compass to identify: "Wow, this is something I want to pursue and make a difference." If we don't know what we're looking for, we're never going to find it, but once we have this framework, this compass, then we can move on to what's next... And that's not me up there. .. Do the impossible and exceed our limits. There are two reasons why people don't do things. One is that they tell themselves they can't do it, or the people around them tell them they can't do it.

Either way, we started to believe it. Either we give up or we never start. The thing is, everything was impossible until someone did it. Every invention, every new thing in the world, people at first thought it was crazy. Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile, it was a physical impossibility to beat the four-minute mile in a running race until Roger Bannister stood up and did it. Then what happened? Two months later, 16 people covered the four-minute mile. The things we have in our heads that we think are impossible are often just milestones waiting to be achieved if we can push those limits just a little bit.

And I think this probably starts with your physical body and your physical state more than anything, because we can control that. If you think you can't run a mile, you prove to yourself that you can run a mile or two, or a marathon, or lose five pounds, or whatever, you realize that confidence builds up and can transfer to the rest. of your life. your world. And I've actually gotten a little used to this with my friends. We have this small group. We go on physical adventures and I recently found myself in a kind of precarious situation.

I am terrified of deep, dark blue water. I don't know if anyone has had the same fear since they watched Jaws 1, 2, 3, and 4 about six times when I was a kid. But anything that's above here, if it's cloudy, I can feel it right now. I swear there's something in there. Even if it is Lake Tahoe, it is fresh water, completely unfounded fear, ridiculous, but it is there. Anyway, three years ago I found myself on this tugboat here in San Francisco Bay. It's a rainy, stormy, windy day, and people are getting sick on the boat, and I'm sitting there in a wetsuit and looking out the window in pure terror, thinking I'm about to swim to my death.

I'm going to try to swim across the Golden Gate. And I guess some people in this room might have done that before. I'm sitting there, and my friend Jonathan, who had convinced me, came up to me and could see the state I was in. And he said, "Scott, hey, what's the worst that could happen? You're wearing a wetsuit. You're not going to sink. And if you can't make it, get in one of the 20 kayaks. Also, if there's an attack shark, why are they going to pick you up? 80 people in the water?" So thanks, that helps. He says, "But really, have fun with this.

Good luck." And he dives in and swims away. OK. Turns out the pep talk totally worked and I felt a total sense of calm, and I think it was because Jonathan was 13. (Laughter) And of the 80 people who swam that day, 65 of them were between nine and 13 years old. Think about how you would have approached your world differently if at age nine you had discovered that you could swim a mile and a half in 56-degree water from Alcatraz to San Francisco. What would you have said yes to? What wouldn't you have given up on? What would you have tried?

As I finish swimming, I get to the Water Park, I get out of the water and of course half of the kids have already finished so they are cheering me on and they are all excited. And I have a total popsicle head, if anyone has ever swum in the bay, and I'm trying to defrost my face, and I'm watching people finish. And I see this kid, something didn't look right. And he's just flailing around like that. And he can barely take in a breath before slamming his head down. And I realized that other parents were watching too, and I swear they were thinking the same thing I was: This is why nine-year-olds aren't allowed to swim from Alcatraz.

This was not fatigue. Suddenly, two parents run and grab him, put him on their shoulders and drag him like this, totally limp. And then suddenly they walk a few more meters and drop him into his wheelchair. And he pumps his fists in the craziest display of victory he's ever seen. I can still feel the warmth and energy of this man when he achieved this achievement. He had seen him that same day in his wheelchair. He just had no idea he was going to swim. I mean, where will he be in 20 years? How many people told him that he couldn't do that, that he would die if he tried?

You prove people wrong, you prove yourself wrong, that you can make small incremental efforts at what you think is possible. You don't have to be the fastest marathoner in the world, just your own impossibilities, to achieve it, and it all starts with small steps. And the best way to do this is to surround yourself with passionate people. The quickest way to do things you think can't be done is to surround yourself with people who already do them. There's a quote from Jim Rohn that says, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." And there is no greater trick in the history of the world to get where you are today and where you want to be than the people you choose to put by your side.

They change everything and it is a proven fact. In 1898, Norman Triplett did this study with a group of cyclists and measured their times on the track as a group and also individually. And he discovered that each time the cyclists in the group pedaled faster. And it has been repeated in all kinds of walks of life since then, and he proves the same thing once again: that the people around you matter and the environment is everything. But it's up to you to control it, because it can go both ways. With 80 percent of people not liking the work they do, that means most of the people around us—not in this room, but everywhere—encourage complacency and keep us from getting things done. that we care, for what we haveto manage them. those surroundings.

I found myself in this situation... Personal example, a couple years ago. Has anyone ever had a hobby or passion that they put their heart and soul into for an incredible amount of time, and they want so badly to call it a business, but no one pays attention to it and it doesn't make a dime? Well, I was there for four years trying to build this Live Your Legend movement to help people do work that they really cared about and that inspired them, and I was doing everything I could, and there were only three people paying attention, and they We are all good there: my mother, my father and my wife, Chelsea.

Thank you all for your support. And this is how bad I wanted it, it grew at zero percent for four years, and I was about to close it, and right around that time, I moved to San Francisco and started meeting some pretty interesting people who had these crazy lifestyles. . of adventures, businesses, websites and blogs that surrounded their passions and helped people in meaningful ways. And one of my friends now has a family of eight and he supports his entire family with a blog that he writes twice a week. They just returned from a month in Europe, all together.

This blew my mind. How is it possible that this exists? And I was incredibly inspired by seeing this, and instead of shutting it down, I decided, let's take this seriously. And I did everything I could to spend my time, every waking hour possible, trying to harass these guys, hanging out, drinking beers and working out, whatever. And after four years of zero growth, within six months of being with these people, the Live Your Legend community grew 10 times. In another 12 months, it grew 160 times. And today, more than 30,000 people from 158 countries use our career and connection tools monthly. And those people have formed that community of passionate people who inspired that possibility that I dreamed of for Live Your Legend all those years ago.

People change everything, and that's why... You know, you ask what was going on. Well, for four years I didn't know anyone in this space, and I didn't even know it existed, that people could do these things, that you could have movements like this. And then I was here in San Francisco and everyone around me was doing it. It became normal, so my thinking went from how I could do this to how I couldn't do it. And just then, when that happens, that switch flips in your head and it ripples throughout your world. And without even trying, your standards go from here to here.

You don't need to change your goals. You just need to change your environment. That's it, and that's why I love being with this whole group of people, and that's why I go to as many TED events as I can and watch them on my iPad on the way to work, whatever that may be. Because this is the group of people that inspires possibilities. We have a whole day to spend together and much more. In short, in terms of these three pillars, they all have one thing in common more than anything else. They are 100 percent under our control.

No one can tell you that you can't learn about yourself. No one can tell you that you can't overcome your limits and learn your own impossibles and overcome them. No one can tell you that you can't surround yourself with inspiring people or stay away from people who bring you down. You can't control a recession. You can't control getting fired or getting into a car accident. Most things are totally out of our hands. These three things depend entirely on us. And they can change our entire world if we decide to do something about it. And it is starting to happen on a widespread level.

I just read in Forbes that the US government reported for the first time in a month that more people had quit their jobs than had been laid off. They thought this was an anomaly, but it has happened three months in a row. In a time where people say it's a pretty tough environment, people are giving the middle finger at this written life, the things people say you're supposed to do, in exchange for things they care about and do. things that inspire them. them. And the thing is that people are waking up to this possibility, that really the only thing that limits the possibility now is the imagination.

That's no longer a cliché. I don't care what you like, what passion, what hobby. If you like knitting, you can find someone who is an expert in knitting and learn from them. It's wild. And that's what this day is all about, learning from the people who speak up, and we profile these people on Live Your Legend every day, because when ordinary people do the extraordinary, and we can be close to that, it becomes normal. And it's not about being Gandhi or Steve Jobs, doing something crazy. It's simply about doing something that matters to you and that has an impact that only you can make.

Speaking of Gandhi, he was a recovering lawyer, as I've heard the term, and he was called to a greater cause, something that he cared about and that he couldn't help but do. And he has this quote that I absolutely live by. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight with you and then you win." Everything was impossible until someone did it. You can be surrounded by people who tell you it can't be done and that you're stupid for trying, or you can surround yourself with people who inspire possibility, the people who are in this room.

Because I see that it is our responsibility to show the world that what is considered impossible can become the new normal. And that is already starting to happen. First, do the things that inspire us, so that we can inspire other people to do the things that inspire them. But we can't find it unless we know what we're looking for. We have to do our work on ourselves, be intentional about it, and make those discoveries. Because I imagine a world where 80 percent of people love the work they do. What would that look like? What would innovation look like?

How would you treat the people around you? Things would begin to change. And as we finish, I only have one question to ask you, and I think it's the only question that matters. And what is the job that you can't not do? Discover that, live it, not only for yourself, but for everyone around you, because that is what begins to change the world. What is the job you can't not do? Thanks guys. (Applause)