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

Our own lives are all shaped by the crosscurrents of our personalities and the circumstances in which we live. The decisions you make and that others make for you all influence the paths you take or turn away from. Finding your Element means reflecting on your own cultural circumstances—on the opportunities for growth that you want and need now.

You can think of your aptitudes as both general and personal. As human beings we are all born with more or less the same basic kit.

To find your Element you may have to challenge your own beliefs about yourself.

Before each of the practical exercises in this book, I suggest that you try a simple meditation just for a few minutes, to calm yourself and focus on the questions you’re going to explore. Here’s one way to do this:

I’ve always believed that you have to move toward your fears and not away from them. If you don’t exorcise them, they can haunt you long after they should have faded.

What sorts of activities come especially easily to you? What do you feel your natural talents are? How did you first become aware of them? Do you have any aptitudes that you’ve never considered developing? Do you have any talents that you haven’t developed but wished that you had? Do you have any talents that you’ve been discouraged from developing

Being in your Element gives you energy. Not being in it takes it from you.

that one

“I was working in an elementary school as an assistant language teacher. Sometimes they let me do things that I could create, and the rest of the time I just did what they told me to do.