Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life

"Finding Your Element" is a book written for people who feel the pull to uncover what they're really meant to do in life. Whether you're just starting out in the workforce, or you're well into your career, "Finding Your Element" will help you discover your passions and talents, and live a better life doing work that you truly love.

So what do you do if you don't think you have any special talents or passions? What do you do if you love something you're not good at, or you're good at something you don't love? What if you can't make a living at your Element? All of these questions and more are answered here.

"Finding Your Element" is written like a workbook. There's plenty of narrative, but it's also full of case studies and examples, and exercises that help you discover your true passion in life. There are also several thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter that will help you dive deeper into your personal passions and interests.

Sir Ken Robinson is a leading advisor and speaker on creativity, innovation, and human potential. His previous book, "The Element," the companion to "Finding Your Element," is a worldwide best seller. He's also the most watched TED speaker in the conference's history.

Lou Aronica is the author and co-author of several books. He also collaborated with Robinson on "The Element."

So, keep listening to find out why a vision board can help you define your goals, the difference between aptitude and ability, and a simple way to unlock aptitudes you don't even know you have.

"Finding Your Element"has 10 chapters, and ends up at 225 pages. Although it's a compelling read, it's not the type of book you should finish in one sitting. The authors encourage you to read this book slowly, and really take your time going through the exercises and questions.

Remember, you're trying to find your passions, and the work you're meant to do in life. That's not something you should rush through. It's best to treat this book as a course on self-discovery, and take your time along the way.

Chapter one gives you a good overview of the principles the authors use throughout the book to help find your Element. And, they outline several simple exercises you can do right now to start figuring out what kind of life you want to live.

One of these is to create a vision board. This is a collage of images and phrases that represent your goals in life. You glue these pictures and phrases to a large piece of posterboard. Or you can put them up on a corkboard, or even tape them to a window. However you do it, your vision board should be in a place where you can see it every day.

To make a vision board, look for magazine pictures, newspaper clippings, or printed images from the Internet that speak to you in some way. Think carefully about why an image or phrase moves you. Chances are, it represents something you'd like to see in your own life. Why is this thing missing in your life? What could you do to turn this image into a reality?

Start collecting these images and phrases slowly, and think about how you'd like to see yourself in one year. Add them to your collage as you find them, and take time to look at your vision board daily.

The authors go over other techniques like meditation, automatic writing, and mind mapping. These processes are fairly well-known and very easy to do, and they're meant to help you start opening up to the processes and exercises found in the rest of the book.

There are also several thought-provoking exercises in chapter one that help you take stock of what you're doing right now in your life and career. We thought all of these exercises were useful in helping you slow down and look carefully at your life, and how you'd like it to change.

Chapter two explores an issue that most of us have probably grappled with at least once. What are you really good at?

To find your Element, you need to understand the differences between aptitudes and abilities. The authors say that aptitudes are part of your raw potential. These are the things you just have a knack for.

Abilities need a need a fair amount of education and apprenticeship to develop. Just because you're born good at something, doesn't mean you're an expert. Expertise has to be developed and honed. Your Element requires both aptitude and ability.

Here's a good example from the book. If you say you're good at puzzles, you're defining an aptitude. If you say you're a cryptographer, you're defining an ability. Without training and practice, your natural aptitude for puzzles could have been just a hobby. But with education and support, you've turned that aptitude for solving puzzles into a career as a cryptographer.

The authors say that you may not know what all your aptitudes are because you might not have called on all of them yet. This is fairly common. And there are plenty of exercises in this chapter to help you uncover what you're good at.

The authors bring up an important point here. You can have more than one Element. And you can have many aptitudes. Your aptitudes can, and probably will, change over time as your talents mature and your interests change.

This is why it's important to stay flexible through this whole process. There are no right or wrong answers, and you don't have to follow lock-step with anyone else. Everyone's journey is unique, so don't waste time comparing yourself to anyone else.

Chapter three dives deeper into your aptitudes. But here, the authors look at how you know you're truly good at something. This might sound like an overly simplistic problem. After all, most of us know what we're good at, right?

Not all the time. You might have an aptitude that's so effortless you never think about it. You might live in a culture that frowns upon a particular activity or lifestyle. Or, you could have an aptitude for something you've never tried to do.

This is why it's so important to always try new things. You'll never know if you're naturally good at something unless you try it first.

One way to find out is to make a list of aptitudes you see in other people, aptitudes you don't know whether you have or not. Highlight the ones you'd be interested in exploring in yourself. Next, make a list of activities you think would draw on these aptitudes. Circle the ones you'd be willing to try, and then come up with a list of steps you could take to try each one.

Your Element pulls on your natural aptitudes and abilities. But there's another important component that the authors address in chapter four. You have to love what you're doing. You might have a natural aptitude for building websites, but if you don't love it then the work won't bring you joy. It's not your Element.

So what do you do if you love something you're not good at? The authors say this is ok. Aptitude is important for finding your Element, but passion is more important. If you love something, you will constantly be drawn to do it. And, you'll always be pushing yourself to get better. That counts for a lot.

You might also be underestimating yourself. The authors say that when you love something you think you're not good at, it could be because you're setting unreasonably high expectations of yourself. When you have a passion for something, it's tempting to want to be the very best. And when you're just starting out, you might compare your efforts to the work of people who are already experts.

It's easy to get discouraged when you do this. Instead of comparing yourself to the experts, draw inspiration from their work. Don't focus on how far you have to go. Just keep going.

Another chapter we really like is chapter seven. Here, the authors look at the obstacles and opportunities many people face when they start searching for their Element.

This is a useful addition to the book, because finding your true calling in life isn't always easy. There are going to be many ups and downs, and you might have to take some scary risks along the way.

The authors could have sugarcoated this part of the journey, but they didn't. Instead, the exercises and stories help you understand the reality of the risks you might face. And often, these are less important or severe than you might imagine.

So think about these questions. What's keeping you from doing what you really want to do? What would it require to get over those hurdles? What would the consequences be of jumping over them?

You next need to think about the resources you have. What's available to you right now that could help you pursue your passions? If you made an all-out effort to do what you believe you should be doing with your life, what paths are already available to you?

Before you take any steps forward, you need to think about your mindset. The authors say that many people can clearly see what it would be like to do what they love most. That part is pretty easy. But they don't spend time thinking about how they might feel along the way.

Here's a good example. Imagine your dream is to become a teacher, and you can picture yourself teaching a class all day, every day. It's a rosy picture, and you can easily imagine how satisfied and fulfilled you'd be at the end of the day.

But take a minute to consider the emotional ups and downs a teacher goes through. They're elated when they break through with a student, and they're frustrated when they can't get through to another one. There are also the possible frustrations of afternoon paperwork, overbearing parents, and weekly staff meetings.

The authors say they regularly talk to people who've started to do the thing they believe they should be doing, but they're worried they made a mistake because they didn't prepare themselves emotionally.

Every new situation, even if it's a dream come true, requires time for adjustment. If you take time on a regular basis to imagine how you might feel in your new life, not shying away from the possible downsides, there'll be fewer surprises once you get there.

The authors wrap up the book with an inspirational chapter that will encourage you to keep going. There's a quote here we think sums up what it takes to get started on this journey.

It's from Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

It's impossible for any of us to see the entire staircase we want to climb. But we know the steps are there. We just need the courage to take that first step.

So, what's our last word on "Finding Your Element"?

We loved this book. The writing is warm, funny, and approachable. It's obvious from the first page that the authors care deeply about helping people discover their true calling. And you can't help but feel their sense of optimism and opportunity as you progress through the book.

As you heard at the beginning, this book is meant to be a journey. Because of its workbook-like style, you need to treat it like a course. We believe that skipping the exercises and questions will detract almost all the value from the book – not least because most of the exercises build on each other. If you miss exercise four, you won't be able to do exercises six or seven. So it's best to go through the book slowly, and not skip any of the exercises or prompts.

The book is full of inspiring real-life stories that apply to each stage of this process of self-discovery. You get to read about people who found their purpose in life early on, and others who stumbled onto it by accident after they retired.

These stories prove that there's no set path in finding your own calling. Whether you're reading this book at twenty, or you're about to turn seventy-five, there's still time to uncover the work you feel you're meant to do, or the passions that will bring added depth and richness to your life. We applaud the authors for including all these stories from people with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds, because they prove that we all get there in our own unique way.

Finding your true calling in life isn't easy. And, it probably won't happen overnight. But it's a journey worth taking because doing what you love will transform your life to one of passion and purpose. And, we believe that this book is a perfect tool to help you get there.

"Finding Your Element," by Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica, is published by The Penguin Group.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.

Click here to buy the book from Amazon.