-
Wow, what an 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,
-
"Don't worry about how much
you like the work you're doing now.
-
It's all about just building your resume."
-
And I'd just come 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
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 that
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 wanted to have some type of an impact.
It didn't matter what it was.
-
And I found pretty quickly
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.
-
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,
-
"You're into this career thing.
-
I don't 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.
-
The more time I spent around
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 OK
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
is 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 stuff?
-
We have to figure out what it is
to make these decisions,
-
so we know what 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,
-
who inspire you, who are doing
things where you say
-
"Oh God, what Jeff is doing,
I want to be like him."
-
Why are you saying that?
Open up a journal.
-
Write down what it is about them
that inspires you.
-
It's not going to be
everything about their life,
-
but whatever it is, take note on that,
-
so over time we'll have
this repository of things
-
that we can use to apply to our life
and have a more passionate existence
-
and make a better impact.
-
Because when we start
to put these things together,
-
we can then define
what success actually means to us,
-
and without these different parts
of the compass, it's impossible.
-
We end up in the situation --
we have that scripted life
-
that everybody seems to be living
going up this ladder to nowhere.
-
It's kind of like in Wall Street 2,
if anybody saw that,
-
the peon employee asks
the big Wall Street banker CEO,
-
"What's your number?
Everyone's got a number,
-
where if they make this money,
they'll leave it all."
-
He says, "Oh, it's simple. More."
-
And he just smiles.
-
And it's the sad state
of most of the people
-
that haven't spent time
understanding what matters for them,
-
who keep reaching for something
that doesn't mean anything to us,
-
but we're doing it because everyone
said we're supposed to.
-
But once we have this framework together,
-
we can start to identify
the things that make us come alive.
-
You know, before this, a passion
could come and hit you in the face,
-
or maybe in your possible line of work,
you might throw it away
-
because you don't have
a way of identifying it.
-
But once you do, you can see something
that's congruent with my strengths,
-
my values, who I am as a person,
-
so I'm going to grab ahold of this,
I'm going to do something with it,
-
and I'm going to pursue it
and try to make an impact with it.
-
And Live Your Legend
and the movement 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 with."
-
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 --
-
doing the impossible
and pushing our limits.
-
There's two reasons
why people don't do things.
-
One is they tell themselves
they can't do them,
-
or people around them
tell them they can't do them.
-
Either way, we start to believe it.
-
Either we give up,
or we never start in the first place.
-
The things is, everyone was impossible
until somebody did it.
-
Every invention,
every new thing in the world,
-
people thought were crazy at first.
-
Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile,
it was a physical impossibility
-
to break the four-minute mile
in a foot race
-
until Roger Bannister stood up and did it.
-
And then what happened?
-
Two months later,
16 people broke the four-minute mile.
-
The things that we have in our head
that we think are impossible
-
are often just milestones
waiting to be accomplished
-
if we can push those limits a bit,
-
and I think this starts with probably
your physical body and fitness
-
more than anything,
because we can control that.
-
If you don't think you can run a mile,
-
you show yourself
you can run a mile or two,
-
or a marathon, or lose five pounds,
or whatever it is,
-
you realize that confidence compounds
-
and can be transferred
into the rest of your world.
-
And I've actually gotten into the habit
of this a little bit with my friends.
-
We have this little group.
We go on physical adventures,
-
and recently, I found myself
in a kind of precarious spot.
-
I'm terrified of deep, dark, blue water.
-
I don't know if anyone's ever had
that same fear
-
ever since they watched
Jaws 1, 2, 3 and 4 like six times
-
when I was a kid.
-
But anything above here, if it's murky,
I can already feel it right now.
-
I swear there's something in there.
-
Even if it's Lake Tahoe,
it's fresh water, totally unfounded fear,
-
ridiculous, but it's there.
-
Anyway, three years ago
I find myself on this tugboat
-
right down here in the San Francisco Bay.
-
It's a rainy, stormy, windy day,
and people are getting sick on the boat,
-
and I'm sitting there wearing a wetsuit,
and I'm 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 my guess is some people in this room
might have done that before.
-
I'm sitting there, and my buddy Jonathan,
who had talked me into it,
-
he comes up to me
and he could see the state I was in,
-
and he says, "Scott, hey man,
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,
just hop on one of the 20 kayaks.
-
Plus, if there's a shark attack,
why are they going to pick you
-
over the 80 people in the water?"
So thanks, that helps.
-
He's like, "But really,
just have fun with this. Good luck."
-
And he dives in, swims off. OK.
-
Turns out, the pep talk totally worked,
and I felt this total feeling of calm,
-
and I think it was because
Jonathan was 13 years old.
-
(Laughter)
-
And of the 80 people swimming that day,
-
65 of them were between
the ages of nine and 13.
-
Think how you would have approached
your world differently
-
if at nine years old you found out
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 would you have not given up on?
What would you have tried?
-
As I'm finishing this swim,
I get to Aquatic Park,
-
and I'm getting out of the water
-
and of course half the kids
are already finished,
-
so they're cheering me on
and they're all excited,
-
and I got total popsicle head,
if anyone's ever swam in the Bay,
-
and I'm trying to just thaw my face out,
and I'm watching people finish,
-
and I see this one kid,
something didn't look right,
-
and he's just flailing like this,
-
and he's barely able to sip some air
before he slams his head back down,
-
and I notice other parents
were watching too,
-
and I swear they were thinking
the same thing I was:
-
this is why you don't let nine-year-olds
swim from Alcatraz.
-
This was not fatigue.
-
All of a sudden, two parents
run up and grab him,
-
and they put him on their shoulders,
and they're dragging him like this,
-
totally limp,
-
and then all of a sudden
they walk a few more feet
-
and they plop him down in his wheelchair.
-
And he puts his fists up in the most
insane show of victory I've ever seen.
-
I can still feel the warmth
and the energy on this guy
-
when he made this accomplishment.
-
I had seen him earlier that day
in his wheelchair.
-
I just had no idea he was going to swim.
-
I mean, where is he
going to be in 20 years?
-
How many people told him he couldn't
do that, that he would die if tried that?
-
You prove people wrong,
you prove yourself wrong,
-
that you can make
little incremental pushes
-
of what you believe is possible.
-
You don't have to be
the fastest marathoner in the world,
-
just your own impossibilities,
to accomplish those,
-
and it starts with little bitty steps,
-
and the best way to do this
-
is to surround yourself
with passionate people.
-
The fastest things to do things
you don't think can be done
-
is to surround yourself
with people already doing them.
-
There's this quote by Jim Rohn and it says
-
"You are the average of the five people
you spend the most time with."
-
And there is no bigger lifehack
in the history of the world
-
from getting where you are today
to where you want to be
-
than the people you choose
to put in your corner.
-
They change everything,
and it's a proven fact.
-
In 1898, Norman Triplett did this study
with a bunch of cyclists,
-
and he would measure their times
around the track in a group,
-
and also individually,
-
and he found that every time the cyclists
in the group would cycle faster.
-
And it's been repeated
in all kinds of walks of life since then,
-
and it proves the same thing over again,
-
that the people around you matter,
and environment is everything,
-
but it's on you to control it,
because it can go both ways.
-
With 80 percent of people
who don't like the work they do,
-
that means most people around us,
not in this room, but everywhere else,
-
are encouraging complacency and keeping us
from pursuing the things that matter to us
-
so we have to manage those surroundings.
-
I found myself in this situation --
-
personal example, a couple years ago.
-
Has anyone ever had a hobby or a passion
they poured their heart and soul into,
-
unbelievable amount of time, and they
so badly want to call it a business,
-
but no one's paying attention
and it doesn't make a dime?
-
OK, I was there for four years trying
to build this Live Your Legend movement
-
to help people do work that they genuinely
cared about and that inspired them,
-
and I was doing all I could,
-
and there were only
three people paying attention,
-
and they're all right there:
my mother, father, and my wife, Chelsea.
-
Thank you guys for the support.
-
(Applause)
-
And this is how badly I wanted it,
it grew at zero percent for four years,
-
and I was about to shut it down,
-
and right about then,
-
I moved to San Francisco and started
to meet some pretty interesting people
-
who had these crazy
lifestyles of adventure,
-
of businesses and websites and blogs
-
that surrounded their passions
and helped people in a meaningful way.
-
And one of my friends,
now, he has a family of eight,
-
and he supports his whole family
-
with a blog that he
writes for twice a week.
-
They just came back from a month
in Europe, all of them together.
-
This blew my mind.
How does this even exist?
-
And I got unbelievably inspired
by seeing this,
-
and instead of shutting it down,
I decided, let's take it seriously.
-
And I did everything I could
to spend my time,
-
every waking hour possible
trying to hound these guys,
-
hanging out and having beers
and workouts, whatever it was,
-
and after four years of zero growth,
-
within six months
of hanging around these people,
-
the community at Live Your Legend
grew by 10 times.
-
In another 12 months,
it grew by 160 times,
-
and today over 30,000 people
from 158 countries
-
use our career and connection tools
on a monthly basis.
-
And those people have made up
that community of passionate folks
-
who inspired that possibility
that I dreamed of
-
for Live Your Legend so many years back.
-
The people change everything,
and this is why --
-
You know, you ask what was going on.
-
Well, for four years,
I knew nobody in this space,
-
and I didn't even know it existed,
that people could do this stuff,
-
that you could have movements like this,
-
and then I'm over here in San Francisco,
and everyone around me was doing it.
-
It became normal, so my thinking went
from how could I possibly do this
-
to how could I possibly not,
-
and right then, when that happens,
that switch goes on in your head,
-
it ripples across your whole 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 surroundings.
-
That's it, and that's why I love
being around this whole group of people,
-
why I go to every TED event I can,
-
and watch them on my iPad
on the way to work, whatever it is,
-
because this is the group of people
that inspires possibility.
-
We have a whole day
to spend together and plenty more.
-
To sum things up,
in terms of these three pillars,
-
they all have one thing in common
more than anything else.
-
They are 100 percent in our control.
-
No one can tell you
you can't learn about yourself.
-
No one can tell you
you can't push your limits
-
and learn your own impossible
and push that.
-
No one can tell you you can't
surround yourself with inspiring people
-
or get away from the people
who bring you down.
-
You can't control a recession.
-
You can't control getting fired
or getting in a car accident.
-
Most things are totally out of our hands.
-
These three things are totally on us,
-
and they can change our whole world
if we decide to do something about it.
-
And the thing is, it's starting to happen
on a widespread level.
-
I just read in Forbes, the US Government
reported for the first time
-
in a month where more people
had quit their jobs
-
than had been laid off.
-
They thought this was an anomaly,
but it's happened three months straight.
-
In a time where people claim
it's kind of a tough environment,
-
people are giving a middle finger
to this scripted life,
-
the things that people
say you're supposed to do,
-
in exchange for things that matter to them
and do the things that inspire them.
-
And the thing is, people
are waking up to this possibility,
-
that really the only thing that limits
possibility now is imagination.
-
That's not a cliche anymore.
-
I don't care what it is that you're into,
what passion, what hobby.
-
If you're into knitting, you can find
someone who is killing it knitting,
-
and you can learn from them. It's wild.
-
And that's what this whole day is about,
to learn from the folks speaking,
-
and we profile these people
on Live Your Legend every day,
-
because when ordinary people
are doing the extraordinary,
-
and we can be around that,
-
it becomes normal.
-
And this isn't about being Gandhi
or Steve Jobs, doing something crazy.
-
It's just about doing something
that matters to you,
-
and makes 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 mattered to him,
-
he couldn't not do,
-
and he has this quote
that I absolutely live by.
-
"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
-
then they fight you, then you win."
-
Everything was impossible
until somebody did it.
-
You can either hang around the people
who tell you it can't be done
-
and tell you you're stupid for trying,
-
or surround yourself with the people
who inspire possibility,
-
the people who are in this room.
-
Because I see it as our responsibility
to show the world
-
that what's seen as impossible
can become the new normal.
-
And that's already starting to happen.
-
First, do the things that inspire us,
-
so we can inspire other people
to do the things that inspire them.
-
But we can't find that
-
unless we know what we're looking for.
-
We have to do our work on ourself,
-
be intentional about that,
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 the innovation be like?
How would you treat the people around you?
-
Things would start to change.
-
And as we finish up,
I have just one question to ask you guys,
-
and I think it's the only
question that matters,
-
and it's, what is the work
you can't not do?
-
Discover that, live it,
-
not just for you,
but for everybody around you,
-
because that is what starts
to change the world.
-
What is the work you can't not do?
-
Thank you guys.
-
(Applause)