Sir Ken Robinson: Finding Your Element

so hello and unwelcome 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 finally your element 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 I meet some people quite a lot of people actually who feel they don't have any real talents they don't have any special talents to speak of also they don't much enjoy the work they do if they do work they don't enjoy their lives all that much you know what I'm talking about don't you I'm not saying it's true of you but you know it's true of a lot of people they don't enjoy their lives they kind of get on with it and wait for the weekend 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 a 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 my most natural and authentic self it can be anything by the way absolutely anything but they would describe themselves if I haven't done it already for them as being in their element I did not make up the term the element by the way it's a common expression is if we talk about people being in their element and what I've really Tris tried to is describe what that means and and how you can bring that about in your life if you don't have it already it's something that you get and we all get things very differently don't we I mean some people walk onto a sports field and they feel immediately at home you know jump into a swing tall and think I know what this is I mean we all know what it is but where depends what condition when we jump in the swing pool ready girlfriend we don't know what it is but let's put aside those people who do not know what swimming pool is but we don't care about these people or the element quite frankly um I mean for example one of the people I remember talking about in the book in the first book and it's called the element the sequel operation is called finding relevant one of the people we talked about in there is a mathematician who when he was four taught himself to read by watching Sesame Street so he has a rather curious accent as a consequence when he was eight he took a college entrance math exam and got 98% when he was 20 he took his PhD in pure math and got it and when he was 30 he was awarded the field medal for mathematics which is the equivalent of Nobel Prize too reasonable to say isn't it that he gets math he's got the hang of it in a way I never did I've given up I'm putting my energy somewhere else I was on a plane and recently I start to talk this woman was sitting next to me by the way I don't normally do that I don't mean I don't talk to women and I do but I don't normally speak to people on airplanes if you fly you know why don't you from a long flight you don't want it do you I'm a social person I just don't want it particular on a long flight like five hours the worst thing I can happen people strike up a conversation with you before they've closed the door of the plane and I mean I I'm happy to talk to people as we're landing I'm perfectly happy regretting the five our conversation we didn't have rather than one we actually had that I I didn't want any I was chatting this woman next to me and as to what she did instead she's an accountant and I said how long have you been an accountant she had all my life and I said what do to you she said well I I was always good with numbers I just got them I just got them you know what I'm talking about some people pick up a trumpet and just get it I don't mean they're perfect with it but they know what they're doing some people pick up a word process and words start coming out of them some people you know are naturally gifted in sport my point is we all have natural talents they're all different but many people that never discover them and the reason is that natural talent is like natural resources in the earth it's often buried beneath the surface there have to be conditions which bring it up and you then have to refine and cultivate these resources that you have and the people we think of as highly talented are among those who found their particular talents the people often think they're not specially talented it's often I think because they simply don't know what lies inside them they haven't had the opportunity to find that yet so big in your arms is partly that it's it's finding your natural talents but it's more than that you see because you can be good at something but not like it I know what kinds of people who do things that aren't really careful to be in your element you have to love it and if you love something you're good at well you know as they say you never work again at that point years ago I but one of the first books I was involved in we had a fantastic editor and I got chatting to her she was really good I mean irritatingly good you know she kept pointing out little faults in my writing style which I which I bought you know with admirable fortitude frankly anyway I forgave her for for being so interesting horrible good to change the subject with her I said when did you get to be a book editor the brackets what qualifications did you feel you have to be criticized by writing and she said about five years I said how did that happen said well I said what we're doing before this she said I was a concert pianist I said really and so why aren't you doing that now she said well because I was I'd been playing for years and one night I was doing a concert in London giving a concert in on the south bank in London and at the end of it the conductor and I went out for dinner and over dinner he turned to me and he said you know you were terrific this evening she said well thank you very much he said but he said forget me saying this he said but you didn't really enjoy it did you she said how do you mean he said well you didn't really seem to enjoy the performance she said well no I suppose not really he said do you enjoy playing she said well no not ready he said well why do you do it she said what I suppose because I'm good at it and he said you know being good at something isn't a good enough reason to spend your life doing it so she said I finish the season I closed the piano lid I cancelled all my engagements and I haven't played since said I've spent my life since then immersed in books and she said I've never been happier in my life never been poorer but never happier this is the point you have to love it if you love something it just doesn't feel like work it's a passion that calms you so to be in your element as though those two things it's doing something you have an aptitude for that you love and if you find that meeting point your life goes in a completely different direction as Confucius once said you never work again Confucius had not read finding your element by the way but I feel in a way he had why does this matter I think it matters enormous li there are three reasons I think why it matters I mean there are many but I've got time to talk about three of them quickly the first thing is personal it matters to you to your life to what you do with your life and the quality of it I mean I was born in Liverpool in 1950 and I know you don't believe that by the way the 1950 thing now I felt the intake of breath I thought the surge of incredulity sweeps of the audience I'm Agnes beet you're thinking here so boyish you know I live in LA all right I've had work done anything if you think of all the circumstances and meetings and occasions and missed opportunities as well as natural options that led to you being born it's a pretty extraordinary situation though you're here at all and of course many more people do not make it than do so congratulations yeah we got here and many people didn't and for a lot of people life is not as long and fruitful as many other people's only one said I thought it's a wonderful comment is that you should never resent getting old it's a privilege denied to many it's curious in this town that people spend so much time pretending they're not maturing as if it's somehow it's a mistake of nature that it should happen and maturing is a natural process I'm going to come back to this but to be born at all as a miracle and what astonishes me is how little people are willing to settle for in their lives that they'll just put up with things endure them but not really enjoy their being here so finding your element to me is essential to personal fulfillment because it's about discovering the truth within you who you are and what you're capable of the things make you feel at your most authentic as people do when they are in their element the things they wake up the more thing I have to get to this as opposed to people awake another thing oh god I've got to do this again I have the privilege to speak about finding your element in different parts the country and signing books for the previous book as well the element and I often ask people what they do and say do you like it and it intrigues me how often people say they'll correct me spontaneously I love it and you know then that they've found this thing by the way it may not be the same thing forever you may progress through various incarnations in your own life as you evolve yourself but it's so it's personal there's a second reason though which is social I suppose we can put it that way it is astonishing now I think how many people feel disengaged from what they do in most surveys if you ask people what they want from their lives they'll come out with some version of saying I want to be happy or I want my kids to be happy or I want my family to be able happiness is one of those Ottoman goods that people buy into but happiness is not being cheerful happiness is a state of well-being it doesn't mean that your constant in a great mood but you feel somehow settled within you but it's not an exaggeration to say that a vast horde of people do not feel centered in their own lives or living lives that have purpose of meaning according to the World Health Organization by 2020 the second largest cause of mortality among human beings will be depression depression in all its myriad forms and depressions that you know a bit of a portmanteau term I mean it covers all kinds of different conditions of course but depression taken over all is one of the things that is thought like it to be the biggest cause of mortality 30% of adults in America are currently estimated to be suffering from some form of depression so last year the category of drugs called antipsychotics which only used to be available for people who are under supervised care in mental institutions for you know recognized conditions last year's sales of antipsychotic drugs on prescription are free more freely available for the first time overtook sales of drugs for cholesterol and acid reflux to become the highest category of drug sales it's those drugs now concert a 14 billion dollar market for the drugs companies in America recent studies have suggested to by Gallup that a huge proportion of adults are disengaged from the work they do again they show up to work you know and they appear to be working but if you're their boss they wait till you leave the room and get back on Facebook you know it's not this isn't the thing they want is not the thing they love for so there's a social reason to think about finding your element the social reason is that everyone is entitled I believe to discover the thing that gives their life purpose and meaning and if they do there's a different character and quality to the lives we lead not just individually but collectively but there's a third reason why finally relevant matters so much which is economic we spend most of our lives at work and we should be doing work that fulfills if we can or finding something in the work that we do that is fulfilling and if we don't find it at work there should be some part of our lives where we do find it and all the evidence is if people find some part of their lives there that they are deeply fulfilled by even if the work they do doesn't fulfill them then at least their life has a different sort of balance but by the way people have all kinds of things that you might not love at all I recently tweeted a sentence that would be meaningless ten years ago and I mean ten years ago people didn't tweet today did they I mean if they did they were discouraged when they people say I'm sorry what was that would you mind not doing that the people trying to read it here would you mana I asked people to say if there's a job that they couldn't stand a job that other people do that they couldn't stand but they know they love this other person lives it's amazing the response I got I mean I got things you would expect you know like proctologist because people misunderstand proctology and proctologist love the work they do at least I I imagine so that mean there must and I'm glad they do I recently spoke at the National Convention of pathologists who are dealing not just with all of tissues and then analyzing them they're passionate about the work they do they love it actually love it actually I often you know when you give talks at these events you're given a little present at the end just a thought if a public television to think about before we finished there are two aspects to being in your element there's aptitude and passion but there are two conditions for it too it's not enough to know what these things are you need to really want it so the two conditions for finally relevant our attitude and opportunity finding your element is about what is entailed in this process and it's really a two-way journey that's the point I want to make you see we all live don't we in two worlds quite distinct worlds what I mean is there's a world that exists whether or not you exist a world that came into being before you did and we'll be there when you've gone a world that pre-existed you and will exist afterwards a world of other people of objects events of phenomena but there's a world that exists only because you exist a world that came into being when you did and will end or change when you end or change according to your beliefs in these areas a world of your consciousness the world that is you that place that only you know properly if you do know it properly but other people cannot really know properly it's the world in which it was once said there's only one set of footprints the world of your private being and you see the outer world that we all share through this inner world Anais Nin once put this beautifully she said I do not see the world as it is I see it as I am and we frame it within our own conceptions and attitudes and belief systems it's why we all therefore do live in often very different worlds we see the same world very differently to find around is an inner journey to begin with in my experience the reason people don't understand their own talents is because they don't know themselves very well we live in the world of terrible distractions and noise and we need if we're to find our and we need to get to know ourselves better it's also an outer journey into the world around us if you live a close life with repetitive experiences it's unlikely you'll have those new experiences that may trigger a new discovery in yourself you need to be bold to try new things that you've not tried before and to put yourself to different sorts of tests I think of this not as a journey in the conventional sense but as a quest you see a quest is a medieval conception isn't it which has ties into knighthood which I thought it was rather appropriate to mention at this point right frankly but a quest is is a journey you undertake whose outcome is not certain you set off in high spirits and optimistically but it's not like saying we're over from here to San Francisco I know San Francisco is there and I know how to get to it a quest is a journey of discovery and you may find yourself discovering things along the way you hadn't anticipated you may find yourself in unexpected places it's like setting off on the high seas you know you may set off with a clear destination in mind but you may be blown off-course some people actually sink but you may end up on some foreign Shore you hadn't anticipated which turns out to be a better option than one you had in mind that's all part of being alive there are principles though that applied to this journey the first thing is this that every life is unique now it's easy to say this and it's often forgotten can I ask you something how many people do you think have ever lived how many human beings let me be clear by this I'm talking about modern human beings I'm not about prehistoric creatures you went round on their knuckles grunting you know I'm talking about attractive people like us you know with you know with striking profiles and and a sense of irony worth thought we've evolved but maybe a hundred thousand years ago I mean modern human beings behaviorally we evolved about its thought about a hundred thousand years ago the arguments continue but that kind of range so how many of us you think there have been I mean people like us have woken up in the morning concerned about what the day may bring raising families if they did you know wondering what their lives as a whole may adapt may add up to but with our sorts of thought process access to language and so on how many do you think have preceded us or and and I hear now what number comes to your mind out loud you have to be out loud because I'm what ten billion ten trillion one hundred one hundred billion seven billion bit of a range isn't it all right seven billion 1 billion to a trillion ok let me tell you nobody knows all right of course not people have amigo around since the dawn of time with calculators that one hang on there's four more over here hang on no I'm sorry it's six but there have been informed attempts to get to the bottom of this if you google the question which is what I did you'll find yourself on places like the Center for population studies and things on that the UN and people have been making attempts to figure it out taking account of you know demographic shifts and paddlers of birth and migration all of that it's a complicated equation what it comes to somebody the back it was very close to it they said think the figure people will gather round now to say that probably the total number of people have ever lived is somewhere between 80 and 110 billion so let's say a hundred billion as you said let's go with a hundred billion the thing is that every single one of those lives is different and unique as you want is nobody has ever lived your life and nobody else ever will you're a unique moment in the whole of human history now you may be like other people of course you mean I for example you know I think about things that I thought were special unique to me but I'm an awful lot like my father now my father was born in 1914 and we looked like each other and you know it's one of the instances you get older you start having thoughts that your father shared with you when you were young that you condemned him for and you know you turn into a like people turn into their mothers but I'm a lot like my dad so some of what's unique about is inherited I'm also but I'm not a clone of my dad I'm also a lot like my mum you know in lots of respects and I have five brothers and a sister and we all share some of these attributes but we're all different can I ask you how many of you've got children of your own all right how about two or more all right well look let me make you a bet and I'm confident I will win this bet if you've got two children or more I bet you they are completely different from each other aren't they you would never confuse them would you like which one of you remind me when your mother and I are introducing this color-coded system so we can distinguish you from now even identical twins are different and we're different because our biology is subtly different we carry within us the traces of all of our forebears but in particular unique combinations we're also different because of our cultural circumstances the lives that we've led which have led us down certain paths I can't live the life my dad lived because he was born in a different age with different opportunities as I was from him and that's the second principle that life is creative you create your own life we are distinguished from most of the species on earth in this respect you see in most respects well like the rest of life on earth not me but in one respect we're very different we have powerful imaginations by imagination I mean the ability to bring into mind things that aren't present to our senses with imagination you can visit the past you have a past with imagination you can enter the world of other people you can empathize with imagination you can anticipate the future you can't predict it very easily by the way I mean you can predict certain things you can bricht events in the physical world that's what the natural science is about but the human world it's very devoted to predict what's going to happen it's what Jay K Galbraith had in mind once when he the economist he said that the primary purpose of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable I was looking at the the iPhone has been out for a few years now I don't if you know but if you buy an iPhone you know when they designed that they built in this capacity to receive apps and they're now hundreds of thousands of them I don't if you know but the iPhone has an app that you can buy you can download it which turns the iPhone into a blues harmonica really a blues harmonica you turn it on its side the notes in Oklahoma's come alongside you blow along it and play the Delta blues on your phone I can't imagine that that form part of the original design specification at Apple can you you know we're gonna play we're gonna build this phone it's gonna destroy the competition but don't forget it's vital that you can play the Delta blues on it because businessmen get depressed and business women too and at the end of the beatings they're gonna play Howlin wolf you know their eyes they're not gonna buy the phone no what happens is a generally powerful idea attracts other powerful ideas to itself it's why human life is very hard to predict because we we bounce off each other in all kinds of very interesting ways you create your life and you can recreate it I think of things have happened in my life until I was four everyone in my family was convinced I was going to be a soccer player in the local soccer team because I was good apparently as a kid at that age and then remember they were these big polio epidemics that swept across Europe and America in the fifties and I got it I was the only one the family to get it despite my best attempts to cross infect the entire community but no I mean I was anyone to get it in the family and Janko I was paralyzed overnight you know from being this kind of able-bodied kid I was in hospital for nearly a year and then I came out and I was in a wheelchair so that was a really put an end to my soccer aspirations or least my parents aspirations for me I mean it wouldn't stop me getting in the local team now by the way you give now they're performing I think there be rather pleased if I made myself available system but but the idea you know when I was a kid in Liverpool with this large family in the 50s that I would be living in Los Angeles talking to you isn't that rigidly improbable idea and I say it not as some kind of compliment to myself but to say your life is completely improbable too I mean how many of you really anticipated the life that you are leading now and that you've led so far when you were kids I mean you may be working in a field that you wanted to get into but this job these people this place the life you've actually had the partners you've had the kids if you've got them big you can't that's the point you create your life as you move through it and you create it according to the opportunities you see around you and the talents you find within you and whether you're open to both and you can recreate it so life is unique every life here is unique it's creative and thirdly it's organic what I mean by that is life is not linear it's organic you compose it as you go it's a constant process of improvisation isn't it you see you kid yourself sometimes you there are times in your life where you have to write your resume out and you put it all down on you know a side of paper you put key dates in you put certain headings in bold some in italic and you make the whole thing look like it was a plan don't you because the last thing you want to do is to give the impression to a prospective employer of the actual chaos you've been living through you want to convey to them that this was a strategic plan that you've been executing faithfully since you were 15 it's not you actually make the whole thing up so life is organic and it's not linear there are three key principles now I say funny relevant is it is a two-way journey it's an inward journey at an outer journey the inward journey is to get your get to know yourself better what you're trying to find out more about in your life if you're finding your element are firstly what your attitudes are the things that you're good at one of the problems you confront is that we live in cultures with a very narrow conception of aptitude and it's an idea that's been promulgated systematically through many of our education systems we have a very narrow view of ability in schools we tend to confuse all forms of intellectual ability with IQ or academic ability and actually human talent is tremendously diverse a multi ferrus my brother Derek for example was always dismantling engines putting himself putting them back together again he had a natural aptitude for mechanics when he was 10 people brought their motor bikes from across the neighborhood for him to fix them he was fixing these things for the teachers at his school who were failing him at the end of each term for not being very interested in academic work you know what I'm talking about some things people are good at our disparaged discouraged or marginalized and the consequence of that is that people often conclude they're not very good at anything because I haven't found something that they might be good at so one of the principles of Fany relevant is to have a much bigger conception of aptitude but the second part of finding irrelevant is knowing more about your passions let me just say a quick word about this my passion I mean things that you love to do you see in English we only have a couple of words for love and they're not terribly helpful we use the same word for you know for your feelings Wars Donuts and your fiance so it's not very helpful we need to make more more nuanced I think around this the Greeks have a word for it which is filos which is that sense of loving activities it's the word that gets tacked on or at the end of words like a being a bibliophile or a Francophile your a love for certain ways of doing things certain things that's what I mean you see finding your passion is an intriguing process you know the word passion itself has changed its meaning what it originally meant was suffering and endurance it's in that sense that people in Christianity talk about the Passion of Christ the suffering of course now it means the exact opposite it means things you love to do things that fulfill you things that give you a sense of deep reward and of meaning a purpose and that transitioned from a sense of suffering and endurance to a sense of fulfillment Israeli this journey that I'm describing finding your arm is in that sense not in a religious sense I don't mean it that way here funny won't in that sense is a spiritual process what I mean by that is that there are some activities aren't there that feed your spirit that lift you up that energize you there's a distinction to be thought of here between physical energy and spiritual energy you know some talk about if you're doing something you love at the end of the week you might feel physically exhausted but on a high spiritually it turns your energy if you're doing things you don't care for you might be physically fine but depressed if you do something you love to do an hour feels like five minutes doesn't it if you do things you don't care for five minutes feels like an hour if you do something that resonates with your spirit your whole sense of time shifts it's like you're surfing on an energy that's lifting you up so the inner journey is also about finding that the things that resonate with your spirit and very often it's things where you take for granted that we haven't thought about for a long time we think back to our child didn't think yeah I should love doing that why did I stop doing that sometimes maybe you were steered away from him and maybe you won't so the inner journey is about those two things about finding your aptitude and passion but then there's the outer journey I just want to say I've won a couple of couple words about this before we wrap up you see to find your alum you have to want to when I say that we live in these two worlds it's true we create our own view of the world it's what a niacin in meant when she said see the world sir - this I see it as I am you know that there have been lots of attempts not the whole of human culture cultural history to come up with classifications of human beings you know like the signs of the zodiac the humors that were very prevalent in medieval times sociologists have got into this in a big way as psychologists have no Jung came up with his ideas of introverts and extroverts people have talked about the different temperaments I remember once reading a sociologist who said there were I think 14 people 14 types of people in the world I think a 15th was recently found just outside Cleveland it's it's helpful to think about it that way but but we shouldn't confuse the theory with the reality we're in different roles in different situations with different people people bring out different things in us they suppress different things in as different aspects of ourselves or revealed in different sorts of situations so we've tried to talk a little bit about these forms of classification but I urge you never to take them seriously if if there are a set number of people in the world types of people my near assessment would be probably a hundred billion of them that we are all unique instances and we can learn from these classifications but we shouldn't be imprisoned by them what I talked about Happiness earlier that many people are not happy one of the key reasons for it it's an obvious thing for us to agree on I think is that there is a terrible tendency to confuse happiness with material well-being being the driving theme rarely of modern culture hasn't it of materialism that if you get this stuff you'll be happy all the evidence of course is to the contrary that some of the most affluent countries in the world are also home to some of the least happy people in the world there is no correlation between wealth and happiness we should know that you only have to look at people who win the lottery and to see how desperate their lives often get mangled as a consequence I mean I provide grew up in a large working-class family in Liverpool I'm not romanticized in poverty by the way I'm not saying let's all get poor it'll be great I'm not saying that I'm not saying that you know there are some things we like but they don't in and of themselves deliver happiness to you happiness is not a material state it's a spiritual state if you look at the history of psychology and psychiatry it's interesting that the vast majority of what's been written and researched in these fields since the last century since the 19th century has been about the negative effects of feelings it's been about negative feelings it's been about fear anxiety and depression very little has been written or researched about what contributes to positive emotions like joy happiness and compression in the last view is that's begun to reverse there's a big movement now it's called positive psychology which is trying to look more properly at what makes us fulfilled and the conditions under which these things come about and there's a very interesting article Sonja Lyubomirsky who is in the mainstream as some thinking positive psychologists say that there are various factors that contribute to a sense of well-being spiritual well-being part of its biology you know some people are naturally a bit more miserable than other people something will get more buoyant than other people you know that so biology accounts for some of it circumstances account for some of it but neither accounts for all of it because there's a third factor which is very potent which is behavior what you actually do what you choose to do with what's at your disposal internally and externally and the people who are most fulfilled are the ones who take action to be that way and one of the ways in which you can be that way is discover these talents and passions to find your element it's one of the great sources of well-being of spiritual fulfillment I said I had probably my father who was so supportive of me being a soccer player because he was a great sport in himself thought the worst tragedy ever to our family when I got polio when I was four and until then it was but five years later completely independently my dad at the time was working as a as a steel erector in Liverpool he'd been out of work and he got this job which the family needed the other work we're nine Canton him and my mum and he went to work one morning and being back at work just a few weeks my uncle came knocking at the door to get my mum and he said what's up and she said you know Jim's had an accident and he she thought well now what's out to him because you know in that line of work you often have accident so he'd broken his arm he'd fall on his head and so she kind of lifted her eyes I said without now what and she said they went to the hospital expecting to see him sitting there in a smiling saying here we go again and she said she walked down the center of the hospital ward past all these different people looking for to see where he was and they got towards the end of the ward and there was only one bed left that was curtain doff and she said they opened the curtains and she went in and there was this figure she said on the bed swathe from head to foot in bandages with tubes coming in out and they said Miss Robbins this your husband and she's and they said you have to prepare yourself I don't think he's gonna make it what happened was it had been holding up a big beam of wood to put in this boiler on the Rope it snapped this thing had fellows a beam of teak wood and it fell on his neck from about 30 feet and broke his neck and they said I mean at the end that his neck broke the thickness of a cigarette paper above the point where your neck breaks if you're hanged judicially so they literally said he was hanging by a thread here and they said he probably would make it but the thing was he never lost consciousness and he didn't make it through the night and he made it through the next day and then he made it through the next week and a veggie was transferred to a different Hospital but he was a quadriplegic for the rest of his life for 18 years quadriplegics often don't live that long you know it's about nine years I'm told he live for 18 and the reason was sheer willpower he remained the head of the family my mother and he were very very close and they laughed endlessly they had that just a fantastic relationship my house was just filled with laughter all the time I was growing up and he was the center of that and and together they just created this wonderful ambience in the family what it proved to me is that the power of attitude is all powerful and that if you can get yourself into that frame of mind despite the pain he wasn't some kind of Pollyanna life by the way him it was very funny vigorous critical guy you know that we just respected and we kind of we always want to see what he had to say about something but he was vibrantly alive all the time and this power within him inspired everybody else who met him and it also Illustrated one things that the positive psychology movement talks a lot about which is that people kind of have a default happiness the indications are that you know if somebody wins the lottery they had kind of exhilarated for a while but then they go back to being miserable the way they were before but if they're naturally happy terrible things will happen some and they'll probably get back to that point again and it was the case that though we had to make terrible adjustments and all kinds things had to be figured out you know several years after the accident my dad was kind of back to himself he couldn't do what he could do before he was dependable everybody but he was back to being him and he fought through with this sort of power of will and it just always been to me an object lesson that it's that you you can create your life to be one sort of life or a different sort of life you can as we know manifest things in your life if you work hard enough on them it's Joseph Campbell's point isn't it in the hero's journey that if you apply yourself to certain opportunities if you look inside yourself properly opportunities will appear that were simply not available to you before doors open that you didn't even realize were there so it's about attitude and it's about opportunity I want to end here with just two quick stories one of them is that you have to create opportunities in your life to have the life that you want one would be my feature and finally your element is a wonderful girl called Ellen MacArthur Ellen MacArthur was born in England in a small mining in the place called Derbyshire which is about as far from the ocean in England as you can get England doesn't really compare with America in size as you know I mean when I came here I was with my son James's night we were going it to Portland Oregon and with we thought well we'll drive we said to somebody how how far is it and we were struck by the fact the answer was given to us in hours not miles they said what about 16 hours I thought well how far is that because in England you can't or Britain you can't drive for 16 hours in a straight line yeah if you keep doing laps of the country they're gonna clock up the appropriate manage anyway she was born as far as you can get from the ocean and in a mining town no money and when she was four she said her auntie Thea bought an old boat and our grandmother Ellen's grandmother took Ellen and her brother down to the harbour in the South of England to see this old boat she'd gone never never had any thoughts about boats never seen the sea properly that close up shouldn't they got miss boat there's noodling around she said she went down into the cabin said she loved it because it was like a doll's house like a little house but she said she'll never forget what happened when her grandmother when our auntie theater auntie Thea raised the sail on this boat said that the wind Billard ins this sail and she said it just sent like an electric shock for me it was the greatest sense of freedom I'd ever had to feel this thing pulling at the boat and should I just fell in love with the ocean and boating at that point so she went back up to Derbyshire said there was nobody else who shared her interest in boats they didn't have any money for boats it was a mining town so she started saving her pocket money to buy herself a boat and it took a year sneers yes but she got this fun to buy herself a boat she went to college and was gonna become a vet but didn't do well enough there and so she started some other studies then she said you got glandular fever said which is the best thing that ever happened to her because she was lying in bed with glandular fever and the television was on and there was a film of the Whitbread round-the-world yacht race I said it took my breath away that you could do that that baby didn't need to buy but you get somebody to sponsor you to get a boat anyway at the age of 22 Ellen became the first person to or the fastest person to sail solo around the whole world she went on to be one of the most accomplished sails sailors in modern history she now has a wrong foundation and is funding education projects all around the world and also other philanthropic world work in in development now I mention it because Ellen's determination to fulfill this passion that she felt when she had to create the opportunity that she could then take and the whole point of saying your life is unique creative and organic is that we can all do that you don't have to sail around the world solo fast nobody else to be in your element it can be working with children in your school it can be working with animals it can be being a carer it can be anything you can think of that makes you feel alive because in the end it's not about winning some global prize it's winning the prize of your life back and having that life one of the people though that I did just want to mention that I've become very friendly I can do a lot of work in Oklahoma the past few years Oklahoma wants to become the state of creativity now stop that no see when when I say that outside of America people go really inside America people go really really Oklahoma is full of wonderful people three and a half million people it's amazing place any anywhere where there's that many penny where with his people there's this deep resource of natural talent so believing in that's really important it's very interesting you know if you look at as it were famous failures you know like Steve Jobs was sacked from Apple Oprah Winfrey were told was demoted as a news anchor because they they said she wasn't fit for television Michael Jordan was dropped from the school basketball team Walt Disney was sacked from his newspaper job because they said he lacked imagination you can go on with these Einstein was told he would never add up to anything Winston Churchill was not a thrown out of school because his English results were so bad he went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature having done all the things he did in the military life so you know I say resource are often buried deep beneath the surface you have to look for them and believe they're there in you and the people around you and it's true in Oklahoma and I've become an ambassador [Applause] you know it's like you know people have never been to LA you know think it's all the movie business and nothing else and Plastic Surgeons you know and we know that's not true there are dentists here anyway one of the people I've got so ready well his wonderful guy called Bart Connor don't you know about Connor but Bart Connor has a very interesting tale when he was I think eight he discovered that he he could walk on his hands as easily as he could walk on his feet now we don't know how he discovered this but he did and then he discovered they could go up and down stairs on his hands as well as eased his on his feet if he were here now he'd do it for you I will nobody thought much about this although it was he was in demand socially I mean but so you didn't think much about it but his mother did and I think where it's eight or nine some of them his mother spoke to the school there's in downtown Morton Grove Illinois she's broke to school and said that she thought Bart would benefit from going to the local gymnasium and the school agreed so she took him down there and Bart said he will never forget the feeling he had when he walked into that gymnasium I said what was it he said it was kind of took my breath away it was like Ellen MacArthur seeing the wind fill the sails he said kind of took my breath away he said it was like Santa's house in Disneyland in one place I said go on he said well you know there were wall bars there were trampolines there were trapeze --is ropes he said it was intoxicating now is that how you feel when when you walk into gymnasium is it do you find it intoxicating and looking round not all of you I think I'm just saying I'm just saying you see I don't I'll be honest too that I do not find it intoxicating to go to gymnasium on the country I need to get intoxicated within 50 yards of a gymnasium and if he loved it and he went every day or as often as he could and 10 years later he walked onto the mat at the Montreal Olympics represents the United States than the male gymnastics squad he went on to be the most decorated male gymnasts in American history to that point he's lives now in Norman Oklahoma he's married to Nadia Comaneci remember don't you the first perfect ten in women's gymnastics they have a wonderful little boy called Dylan after Bob Dylan they have their own gymnastic center and here Nadia are leading members of the world Special Olympics movement so between them they've helped to liberate the gymnastic capabilities of thousands of thousands of athletes with special needs down the thing is none of that would have happened you could rewind the whole movie not it would have none of it would have happened if his mother hadn't encouraged him there's not right you know she could have said and when Bart was eight Bart will you stop it with the hands thing we're over it we get it no knock it off and unfocus on your homework but she didn't she encouraged him but by the way we do that a lot in our public institutions and especially as the curriculum in schools gets narrower and more standardized and we exclude options we increasingly are saying to our kids or to other people stop it with the hands thing whatever the hands thing is for them it might be art or music or dance or it might be physical education whatever it is the narrowing of the curriculum which is excluding many of these programs particularly arts programs I think in humanities programs is a catastrophe because it's denying people access to some of their deepest talents all kids but at sorry institutions say stop it with the hands thing but the thing is even though she encouraged him she couldn't have known could she when she took him to the gymnasium the life that was opening up before him she couldn't have seen through that door to the road that line at their head and the reason she couldn't is because you can't you can't plan the whole journey because it's not like that life is not linear its organic all you can do is take the first step and then the next step after that and respond to what's in front of you and of course if you're in your element as he was there you meet new people new people come into your life you affect other people's lives and your life goes in a different direction you know I'm quite sure his mother did not have a linear plan I'm sure she didn't think when Bart was 8 I his Bart you'd do this hands thing I gather there's this girl in Romania and I have a Bob Dylan collection the whole thing's working out beautifully you know though abandoned you can't live it that way all you can do is open yourself to the world around you and to the world within you and see new opportunity a la MacArthur took that stand and I say you don't have to win an Olympic medal you don't have to go the fastest person around the world you have to live the life that's the most authentic for you whatever that direction that takes you in it's a quest and the result and the outcome is different for everybody but it's worth taking that first step there's a wonderful quote from Teilhard de Chardin who said something to the fact that rather than standing on the shore wondering if the ocean should carriers we should take to the waters just to see and see where that journey will take but the court I'd like to leave you with is again from a niacin engine it's not quite certain if she wrote it but it's often a tributary she wrote a a short poem called risk which speaks to me about this organic character of human life and the winnings that we should have to be open to ourselves and to the world around us to find our element she talked about her own creative journey she said there came a point when the risk of remaining tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to blossom I think that's right I think if we leave lives that are constrained against what we feel are our natural talents the effort we put in to not being ourself is greater than the effort it would take to become ourselves and although we can't predict the outcome of that the organic nature of human life its inherent creativity the diversity which characterize it means I think that if we make this determine effort to find our element we'll all be open up to a new harvest a possibility which will enrich not just our own lives but the lives of all those around us thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: King Rose Archives

Views: 425,043

Rating: 4.9053845 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Rose, Sir Ken Robinson, American Public Television, Finding Your Element, Ken Robinson, Self Help, Education

Id: 17fbxRQgMlU

Length: 54min 50sec (3290 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019