How to find work you love

While, what and honor. I always wondered
what this would feel like.

So eight years ago I got
the worst career advice of my life.

I had a friend tell me,

"Scott, don't worry about how much
you like the work you're doing right now.

It's all about just building your resume."

And I'd just got back
from living in Spain for a while,

and I'd joined this Fortune 500 company.
I thought, "This is fantastic.

I'm going to have this big impact
on the world. I had all these ideas.

And within about two months,

I noticed at about 10 a.m. every morning
I had this strange urge

to want to slam my head through
the monitor of my computer.

I don't know if anyone's ever felt that.

And I noticed pretty soon after it
that all the competitors in our space

had already automated my job role.

And this is right about when I got
this sage advice to build up my resume.

Well, as I'm trying to figure out

what two-story window I'm going
to jump out of and change things up,

I read some altogether different advice
from Warren Buffett, and he said,

"Taking jobs to build up your resume
is the same as saving up sex for old age."

(Laughter)

And I heard that,
and that was all I needed.

Within two weeks, I was out of there,
and I left with one intention:

to find something that I could screw up.

That's how tough it was.

I just wanted to have some type
of an impact. It didn't matter what it was.

And I found pretty quickly
after that that I wasn't alone:

it turns out that over 80 percent
of the people around

don't enjoy their work.

I'm guessing this room is different,

but that's the average
that Deloitte has done with their studies.

And I so I wanted to find out,

what is it that sets these people apart,

the people who do the passionate,
world-changing work,

that wake up inspired every day,

and then these people,
the other 80 percent

who lead these lives of quiet desperation.

So I started to interview all these people
doing this inspiring work,

and I read books and did case studies,

300 books altogether
on purpose and career and all this,

totally just self-immersion
really for the selfish reason of,

I wanted to find the work
that I couldn't not do,

what that was for me.

But as I was doing this,
more and more people started to ask me,

"Scott, you're into this career thing.
I don't really like my job.

Can we sit down for lunch?"

I'd say, "Sure," but I
would have to warn them,

because at this point, my quit rate
was also 80 percent.

Of the people I'd sit down with for lunch,
80 percent would quit their job

within two months.

I was proud of this, and it wasn't
that I had any special magic.

It was that I would ask
one simple question.

It was, "Why are you doing
the work that you're doing?"

And so often their answer would be, "Well,
because somebody told me I'm supposed to."

And I realized that so many
people around us

are climbing their way up this ladder
that someone tells them to climb,

and it ends up being leaned up
against the wrong wall,

or no wall at all.

So the more time I spent around
these people and saw this problem,

I thought, what if could
create a community,

a place where people could feel
like they belonged

and it was okay to do things differently,
to take the road less traveled,

where that was encouraged,

and inspire people to change?

And that later became what I now
call "Live Your Legend,"

which I'll explain in a little bit.

But as I've made these discoveries,
I noticed a framework

of really three simple things that all

these different passionate
world-changers have in common,

whether you're a Steve Jobs
or if you're just, you know,

the person that has
the bakery down the street,

but you're doing work
that embodies who you are.

I want to share those three with you,
so we can use them as a lens

for the rest of today and hopefully
the rest of our life.

The first part of this three-step
passionate work framework

is becoming a self-expert
and understanding yourself,

because if you don't know
what you're looking for,

you're never going to find it.

And the thing is that no one's
going to do this for us.

There's no major in university
on passion and 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
picking out a dorm room TV set

than you do you picking your major
and your area of study.

But the point is, it's on us
to figure that out,

and we need a framework,
we need a way to navigate through this.

And so the first step of our compass is
finding out what our unique strengths are.

What are the things that we wake up
loving to do no matter what,

whether we're paid or we're not paid,

the things that people thank us for?

And the Strengths Finder 2.0 is a book
and also an online tool.

I highly recommend it for sorting out
what it is that you're naturally good at.

And next, what's our framework
or our hierarchy for making decisions?

Do we care about the people,
our family, health,

or is it achievement, success,
all this different stuff?

We have to figure out what it is
to make these decisions

so we know that our soul is made of

so that we don't go selling it
to some cause we don't give a shit about.

And then the next step is our experiences.

All of us have these experiences.
We learn things every day, every minute

about what we love, what we hate,

what we're good at,
what we're terrible at,

and if we don't spend time
paying attention to that

and assimilating that learning

and applying it to the rest of our lives,
it's all for nothing.

Every day, every week, every month
of every year I spend some time

just reflecting on what went right,
what went wrong,

and what do I want to repeat,
what can I apply more to my life?

And even more so than that,
as you see people, especially today,