March 24, 2021 • 43 mins
What if I told you that you don't need to find your "one and only passion" to have a meaningful life? We spend so much time trying to find our passion and make the right choices for our future. What if we just made choices based on what we would like to do in the present moment?
In this episode of What Monkeys Do, I have invited Terri Trespicio, an award-winning writer, speaker and brand advisor. She is here to talk about why passion is overrated. Maybe all you need is a little bit of excitement in the moment.
TERRI TALKS ABOUT
- Why life is not about picking one passion
- Why life plans are useless. Tune in to the moment and make a choice based on what you want to do today. Remember, you are not supposed to do anything.
- How to use your stories to change the way you talk about yourself
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Morten Andersen (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
There are only a few thingswhich can get my heart to skip a
beat. I don't upset easily, butone of them was during a
(00:26):
personal development program Iwas on, I was asked to identify
my passion in life. And not onlythat, we were asked to stand up
and share our passions with therest of the class. And we took
turns, and the first people gotup and they shared their
passions. And they sounded socool that I had to change mine
in my head as I listened to theother people. And then when it
(00:48):
was my turn, I got up, I sharedmy passion, which frankly, I
hadn't thought about before thatday or after that day. Because
the passion I shared was anarrative I thought sounded
cool. But it really didn'tconnect with me emotionally. But
I'm told to find my passion.
Simon Sinek does these cooltalks where he says you have to
find your why. But I have toadmit I find it hard. I can say
(01:10):
things that I like to do, but mypassion in life, no clue. So
what should I do? Should I beable to articulate my passion in
life? Is it important? Or is itactually even better not trying
to find it? Well, let's find outin this episode of What Monkeys
Do. My guest today has a lot oftitles. I'm not sure any of them
(01:31):
do her justice on their own.
She's an award winning writer.
She's a speaker. She's a brandadvisor. She's also a stand up
comedian. And I will actuallyencourage you to go to YouTube
and check it out. It's reallyreally funny. She's given a
great TEDx talk called stopsearching for your passion. It
has more than 6 million viewstoday. To me, she's the person
(01:52):
who's full of stories and sheencourages other people to get
out there and share theirstories. Welcome to you, Terri
Trespicio.
Terri Trespicio (02:04):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me,Morten.
Morten Andersen (02:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to
this conversation. In thisepisode, we'll talk about well,
actually a lot of differentthings. But I want to start with
passion. Because you have saidthat passion is not a plan. It's
a feeling. You don't follow yourpassion, your passion follows
you. So maybe you can start offby telling us a little bit about
who you are, but also whyidentifying your passion may not
(02:30):
be the best thing to start offwith.
Terri Trespicio (02:33):
Well, you've done a really nice job of
introducing me. So I won't goback and repeat. But I'll just
say that I've always beensomeone who likes to write and
didn't know really what to dowith it, and follow it around
that skill to see where I mightapply it. I feel like I need to
preface this because people haveseen the TED Talk, they tend to
have an idea about me that isn'ttrue. And they might think, Oh,
she knew she must have knownwhat she was good at. And it was
(02:55):
like some kind of secret. Andshe figured it out. And that
could not be further from true.
nor was I always some kind ofconfident extrovert. I have
grown up basically afraid ofeverything insecure as anyone
could be doubting whether I'dever have a role in the world
didn't even apply to a job incollege because I thought who
would want me so and it didn'tmatter. It didn't matter that I
got good grades, it doesn'tmatter that you get good
(03:16):
feedback from people are, youdid well on this paper and this
writing contest. Just becauseyou love to do something, it
doesn't mean you know what to dowith your life. And that's okay.
Today I make my living. But youknow, quite frankly, more than I
made it up, I used to work as amagazine editor, I got laid off
in the magazine as editors do,and decided I didn't want to
work anywhere else, I didn'twant to have to go to a job, I
(03:38):
already wanted to be in my ownlittle lockdown. So I wanted to
stay home and work. And so Ifigured I had a bag of tools and
I and who needed what. So I havebeen making things up as I go
for the better part of a decadenow. I've been working for
myself for that long. And theway I describe what I do is
exactly that. I'm a writer, aspeaker, a consultant, and
(03:58):
advisor, someone who loves tocreate content that is
practical, and serves someone'sneed. So whether that means
someone who wants to launch abusiness or do a TED talk or
needs to help a team work bettertogether. To me, it all comes
back to the same thing. It'syour ability to articulate story
and message in a compelling way.
(04:20):
And so it is hard to categorize.
And also, I don't care. I thinkwe live in a culture where we're
supposed to have this perfectelevator pitch. And so when I'm
asked when I'm pressed, I say Ihelp people in companies change.
people and companies change theway they think about talk about
and communicate what they do. Nomatter what platform I am
platform and industry agnostic.
(04:42):
But usually people know whenthey hear me they go, we need to
talk to her. I can pull out andtease out what someone's trying
to say and articulate it in inwords in ways that sometimes
escape them. And so that's myskill. That's my skill and I use
it wherever I can. And however Ican because I bore easily. So
I'd like to try differentthings. But I want to back up to
(05:04):
something you said in the intro,which is that you were asked to
get up and announce yourpassion. And I just feel so
terrible that you were, maybeyou found that class helpful,
but I feel so terrible that youwere put in that position,
because that is my bone to pickwith Pat, because you were put
in a human situation where youEveryone was told, stand up and
say something cool that they'regoing for. And so you can bet
(05:26):
that anything that anyone saidin the room that day was mainly
to make themselves and othersfeel good about them. That's it.
You said to yourself, you said,I want to say something cool. So
I said that I have never saidbefore, the pressure to perform
in front of others in a way thatlook, you want people to like
you to feel that you're doingmeaningful work, we all want
that. But calling it a passionbeing like quick name, your
(05:47):
passion. Oh, God, having todefine yourself by a passion is
no better than having to defineyourself by a major. It's like,
hurry up and pick one. So I feelbad that you were put in that
position, because it just isn'thelpful. The only thing I was
thinking about, as the otherpeople were talking was I was
trying to rehearse my ownstories. I didn't actually hear
(06:09):
what the other people weresaying, Can you even tell me
what anyone else is passionateabout, as they were all
scripting, the perfect thing tosay? In fact, that's why in my
workshops and things, we don'tintroduce ourselves at all, we
meet each other on the page andin the work, and we'll talk
about that later. But the ideais that whenever we do that,
we're not listening to eachother. And listening is part of
how we make meaning. And ifwe're told to come up with a
(06:31):
script real quick, that's gonnabe hard.
Morten Andersen (06:34):
So the thing I have about passion is it sounds
like you have your life inorder, you know exactly what it
is that you're driving towards.
And and you almost have yourlife figure out when you make
these grand statements. And mostof the time, we're making it up
on the go, right. And alsopassion ism. I don't know it's a
huge word. I mean, you, it feelslike you, it's a little bit more
than things like that like todo, it seems like it's something
(06:55):
where you would really live anddie for this.
Terri Trespicio (06:59):
You're how I define passion, the way you
feel, when you're givingsomething your energy and
attention, and you feel itgiving back to you, when you are
give what feels good to bealigned with the thing when
you're giving your energy andattention. And you feel the
connection with the thing,right? hitting your head against
a wall. No one's passionateabout that, because the wall
doesn't give when you're doingsomething that feels good. And
(07:22):
you can tell it's appreciated,or it's earning your money or no
one's doing it, no one's payingattention to you or paying you
and you feel the activityfeeding you. That is a good
feeling. You know what else is agood feeling? Having a plate of
oysters put down in front of youlaughing with friends going for
a walk? There's lots of thingsthat we feel passion doing. And
(07:43):
you don't have to pick one andhave it tattooed on your face?
Morten Andersen (07:46):
Yes, I like parts of what I do in my job. I
like that a lot. I would I wouldactually even call it a passion.
But then if I get another job,I'm very sure that there'll be
things in that which will bedifferent that I'll be
passionate about. And then Am Ilying to myself? No, it's
probably just something thatthings are changing. You know,
from from moment to moment,
Terri Trespicio (08:06):
Morten, you're also probably one of the happier
people on the planet. Becauseyou told me before we started
recording that you worked infinance, and that you said, You
know, I know, I'm supposed tosay I hated that job. But I
really loved it. The people whohave the most passionate lives,
find passion everywhere theyare. Because any job any of us
has right now my job didn'texist 20 years ago, let alone
(08:28):
200 years ago. But if I wereborn 200 years ago, was that
before passion existed? No, ofcourse not, I would have been
doing something else. And Iwould have found something I
loved about it. So that's whythis idea that we have to pick
one who came up with that nothelpful.
Morten Andersen (08:42):
I have a 15 year old daughter in Denmark
here. That means that she's atthe end of her middle school,
and she has to pick a highschool and the high schools here
they have different academicfocus. So she has to find out
which ones to pick. So one canbe a business High School, one
could be language focused HighSchool, one can be more focused
(09:06):
on biotech or technologyfocused, high school. So what
she is asked to do is she'sasked to write down what she
wants to be in life. And she isasked to write down her passion,
as well. And actually, this issomething she's graded on. And
she has to hand this in beforeshe can she can make her
application for the high school.
The funny thing is that youwould think that that would set
(09:26):
her free that that would helpher choose what she wants to do.
But what it actually does isparalyze us. It creates a sense
of Oh my god, do I need to knowall of that right now. And what
that has done is that she'safraid of making a choice.
Terri Trespicio (09:41):
Of course, of course, this is terrible. Where
do you live Copenhagen? The hellis wrong with people there?
First of all, that's tradingschool training and for people
who are going into a trade itdoes help if you're, if that's a
different way of looking ateducation, right? That's a
specific way and for placeswhere Hey, you get to pick from
one of these three trades, youbetter pick one and go with it.
(10:03):
The fact is, if she spun a wheeland picked one, and it would be
probably just as successful inthe end, because it's her
mentality going into what she'lllearn from that. I wish I could
sit down with her and a cup ofhot chocolate and say, Honey,
what are you willing to shareher name? Yes. Louisa. Louisa,
(10:24):
listen to me. You don't have toknow what you're gonna do or be
those of us who were over 40don't know over 50 are unsure.
Gosh, what a great opportunitiesis this is what she's dealing
with, to pick one that interestsher today. Because what is high
school? I assume it's four yearsthere. And that means Yeah, a
lot of people have jobs for 10years that they decide to leave
(10:45):
and do something different. Sothe fact is, she does not have
to choose what she has to do ischoose for right now. What would
think of it as what would youlike to learn first? Now, I
don't know too many 14 year oldswho would be like, Oh my god,
no, definitely bioengineering.
That's where I'm going. But theymight have a natural proclivity.
Someone might really hatelanguage, and they know they
want to go in sciences. Maybepeople know that. Weird does she
(11:06):
feel and this is where I wouldjudge if I were all of a sudden
a 15 year old and Copenhagen ina panic, I would want myself to
say to me, I would want someoneto tell me, honey, what what
feels exciting to you to learnright now? What could you start
with that you could then buildon for later? Because it'll
never serve you wrong to knowbusiness and will never serve
(11:27):
you wrong to know languages? Youare not limited? It's just your
first step.
Morten Andersen (11:33):
Yes. But I guess her situation is not that
different from let's say, if youwant to go to university, again,
you want to pick the right areathat you want to study or even
after university, you want tothink about which first job
should I pick? And jobs exist?
How do we know? And I guess mypoint is that you're trying to
if you're trying to think toofar ahead, in terms of what is
(11:54):
my passion, and where do I wantto end up and so on, that can
actually paralyze you.
Terri Trespicio (12:01):
It is paralyzing. It's paralyzing to
you and me, and it's absolutelystultifying for a 15 year old.
This book, I don't know if youwould want to read this book.
But one book that I that isworth mentioning, I've been
reading it is as it's not a newbook, it's called Stumbling on
Happiness by Dan Gilbert, right?
He said, we're reallynotoriously bad at predicting
what we will want in the future,the best thing you can do, and
(12:22):
he doesn't say this, I'm sayingthis is to focus on what you'll
do now. Because guess what, whenI was an English major, I didn't
know that content producer was aword. It was a job. It wasn't,
it wasn't in the 90s. It didn'texist to later. And so you can
pick a job? How limiting andinside the box, is that better
to say? What do I get excitedabout when I sit down to do my
(12:44):
language homework, or I sit downto study bioengineering? What do
I get excited about? Where do Ifeel energy? Where do you feel
yourself come alive, follow thatstudy that in high school, then
go on to study that in college,but rather than reverse engineer
and worry about what job?
There's plenty of people whostudied accounting, who go on to
be entrepreneurs, there's plentypeople who study business who
want to be novelists, it doesn'tmatter. The job should not be
(13:08):
something to think about. It'swhere could I tap and cultivate
my skills today? My skills andinterest? So I know what to do
later when I get there. Yes.
Morten Andersen (13:19):
Okay. So and by the way, that book by Dan
Gilbert is one of my all timefavorites, so well written,
essentially, when we're makingchoices, we're trying to predict
what our future self would likeus to choose, right? And because
we're so bad at understandingwhat our future self would like
to have, our choices that wemake are actually pretty poor.
(13:40):
What you're saying is that usingpassion as a long term, you
know, Northstar may not actuallybe the right measure to make the
right choice. But instead justtrying to think figure out, what
do you like doing now? What'syour energy? What do you think
is quite cool? Where's yourinterest? And then go with that
and see where that takes you?
Terri Trespicio (13:58):
Where do you feel like it would be fun,
literally, affinity and gut andlike, what would be cool to
learn? I mean, I think at 15,you do know whether you're more
drawn to bioengineering orlanguage. And Either way, it's
not the last time you touchthose things. There's plenty of
people who could go on to studythat. But yeah, it's it's really
backwards to think of it thatway. More than I don't know what
(14:20):
I'll be doing five years fromnow. And I'm well over 40. So
the excitement should be that wecontinue to discover, you know,
that's like, it's like goinginto a lamp store. I'm going to
buy a lamp and telling them thatyou want electricity and you
only want the best electricity.
They'll go we don't sellelectricity. We sell lamps. You
think the lamp and you plug itin. I have I have selected a
whole handful of lamps in myapartment. They all go on. It's
(14:42):
a matter of what lamps I had. DoI sit there and wonder about all
the lamps I could have had no Ihave light in my apartment.
That's what matters. So wemistake lamp for electricity all
the time. We bring the passionto what we do. There is no right
job. There. There's no rightanswer, you might do what I do
in bail on the whole system andmake it up, I made my job up.
(15:03):
And you can if you want, or youcan be very happy inside of a
wonderful organization, or workfor 20 of them. So I think we
have no idea. And so I reallyhope that anyone who feels
stuck, whether they're 15, or50, realizes that this Easter
egg idea that you're gonna gohunt down the secret passion is
really not the way to look atyour life.
Morten Andersen (15:27):
Yes, you are in the middle of writing your your
first book, as I understand itis called stop searching for
your passion, is that correct?
Terri Trespicio (15:36):
We actually are playing with a new title and
nothing is finalized. What I cantell you is the book is due out
in January 2022, from Simon andSchuster, and the name that I
want to call it now is UnfollowYour Passion, which is a name
that I think will be snappy andfun, and also kind of
counterintuitive, which is whatI wanted. The idea is that I
make a bit of an argument forwhy this isn't the way to look
(15:59):
at it, which plenty of otherauthors have, and a different
way of approaching a differentthing. So rather than going Oh,
how do I choose my passion? Howdo you get what you really want,
which is to create a life ofmeaning. It's not actually about
picking a passionate at all. Andin the book, I walked through
the different ways that wouldchange the lens through which
you see your life so that youcan actually enjoy what you're
(16:21):
doing and what you might donext.
Morten Andersen (16:23):
I'm really interested in that. So I want to
unfold that. But maybe juststart with, why is following
your passion. Why would that notbe the right place to start?
Terri Trespicio (16:32):
Well, to me, it's like when people say, oh,
what do you wanna do with yourlife, I don't know why you
should follow your passion justisn't helpful. I'm very critical
and leery of facile advice.
Advice. I hear people giving allthe time that they just repeat,
because it sounds good. Followyour passion, you'll never work
again, really, because prettysure that even people who love
what they do look at Seth Godinsays, we all have to do some
emotional labor. That's the workwe don't feel like doing even
(16:55):
when we do what we love. Andactually in researching the book
I came across and this was avery widely publicized study out
of Stanford, Carol Dweck, and afew of her cohorts who found
that people who had an idea thatpassions are fixed, that I'm
born with a set of them, likeI'm born with a set DNA or
something, that the theyseparated students into people
(17:16):
who believe passions were fixed,and people who didn't believe
that. And when we put themthrough a whole battery of
tests, and what they found wasthat the people who believed
passions were fixed, theybelieved that they once they
found that passion, they wouldnever procrastinate, they'd be
endlessly motivated, and theywould never give up. And that it
would be easy. And that meantthat the people who actually
(17:37):
believed that passions werefixed were more likely to
abandon an interest when itbecame hard. That does not bode
well for people who want tocultivate something that is not
easy. And really anything worthdoing will be quote, hard
writing, I love writing. It'snot easy. It there's a part of
it, that's hard publishing abook is hard, I can tell you
(17:58):
that this is not the easiestthing I've ever done. But it's
worthwhile. And so the idea thatif you believe passions are
fixed, you're going to suffersome shortcomings in your life
that aren't again helpful orproductive.
Morten Andersen (18:14):
And it's actually interesting because
what is it that that passionpromise will what it promise is
that that will keep youmotivated that will keep your
spirit high, that will make iteasier you write and and what is
interesting about duac obviouslyis the focus on on the fixed and
the and and the non fixedmindset but also that that is
(18:35):
applied to passion isn't it's areally interesting
Terri Trespicio (18:38):
Yes, it built on her work around intelligence
as intelligence fixer as it wasbuilding on uncertainly the
foundation of her work. But youcan see that the promise of Oh,
I'll never it'll be easy. Whomade up that lie? Because it is
not true or fair to lead peopleto think that doesn't deliver
any more than, well, if I makeyou the best meal of your life,
(19:02):
meal, you'll never be hungryagain. Well, part of the human
condition is that we will bebored, lonely, sad, will also be
passionate, excited, sleepy. Aword like we're gonna go through
all the feelings. But chasingone feeling is not the way to
build a life of meaning.
Fantastic.
Morten Andersen (19:31):
I just want to unfold what you said about what
you want to say in your book. Soone thing is to try to start by
saying, well, it's not actuallythe purpose. What do you suggest
instead? I was I was reallyinterested in that.
Terri Trespicio (19:43):
And this is my guess my first book interview.
Like the book isn't even saidget off. There are two things
that go together here. Becausepeople in job interviews will
often say Where do you seeyourself in five years? What do
you think you're going to dolater, and we all know that
blah, blah, blah, and I've beenfine. I was resistant to that in
my 20s. I'm resistant to it.
Now. Two things have helped. Oneis for a few years I took
(20:03):
improvisational theater classesimprov, and I learned so much I
am I like doing it. It's fun.
It's playing right? It's a wayto play I'd never good imagined
I would be an improviser for aliving. I mean, no. But you
learn incredible skill there.
And what you learn is that youactually have everything you
need to make great decisions inthe moment. What improv does is
(20:24):
strip away everything else sothat it's just you in the moment
with no script, no expectation,and where do you go to. And it
revealed to me a lot of what mygo to responses reactions were.
And I found that in order tomake a scene interesting, I
would pick a fight with someone,oh, guess what I do in my real
life. So like, I learned somethings there. But I also learned
that it can give me so much ithighlighted for me, I was
(20:47):
already good at thinking on myfeet. It showed me how I'm doing
that and how to do it, in thatwhat you bring to a moment is
going to be so much moreimportant than what you had
memorized before. And that goeshand in hand with my other
thing, which is abandoning theidea of plans. Do we have to
plan to have some plans in placeas a former financial
(21:08):
professional, you know, weshould have a plan in place in
case. But the planning is averb, we do it all the time,
it's fine. But being overlyattached to plans. That's
trouble. because things changeall the time. Things are that
are out of our control, all of2020 was unplanned. And we saw
what did what were some of usable to bring to the moment and
(21:30):
what people really were not ableto cope at all and why and all
of those things, a millionreasons we won't go into. But
being able to be tuned in to themoment and learn the skills of
improvising, which I drew a lotfrom the book Improv Wisdom by
Patricia Madson, which I love.
She takes the the principles ofimprov and shows you how to
apply them to your real life.
And it was I use that a lot inthe book also did quote from Dan
(21:52):
Gilbert a lot in Stumbling onHappiness, about understanding
our tendency to plan and how itcan be a bit of a crutch, if
you're like, but I'm passionateabout training dolphins and I, I
wanted to drain dolphins and nowI got married and we're moving
to the desert, there's nodolphins that like this idea
that I was supposed to be thisis trouble, too. So those are
(22:14):
two of the things I would saywould be how can we be in the
moment where we are and discoverwhat's pleasurable and exciting
about giving in that moment, Ifind passion wherever I go,
because I bring it with me is togo, it's to go, I bring it to
whatever. That's why it doesn'tmatter. If I'm working with a
financial firm on their website,or with a speaker on her TED
(22:35):
talk. I get excited about thoseideas. I like doing that with
people. That's the job. That'swhy it's hard to sum up because
it changes based on the asset.
But that's the same anyone. Sodiscovering what gives you
pleasure.
Morten Andersen (22:49):
So if I was to do that exercise now, and I'm
probably doing it completelywrong, then I'll be thinking
about what have I been doing,you know, in the past, what have
I liked about it, and so on. ButI probably wouldn't break the
barrier of thinking outside ofthe box, because it would be
hard for me to imagine wouldthat be pleasurable or not? So I
could imagine that I could getstuck fairly easy in in things
(23:11):
that I have done in the past,essentially, and but fail to it.
So for instance, I've nevertrained dolphins, I don't know
if that would make you pleasureor not right? So but I have a
hard time imagining that aswell. So that would not be part
of the idea of what could be anoption for me.
Terri Trespicio (23:28):
You're not trained offensively neither am I
but but when you said you werein finance, you studied the
market and how money behaves.
And then you went and became apsychologist. That's not a path
most people take. But when youlook at your life, and what was
interesting to you, you couldhave left that and become a yoga
teacher if you want to. But no,you went and became a
psychologist. Because why youwatched money behave. You
(23:49):
watched how people behavedaround money, and then you
wanted to expand it beyondmoney. I mean, I'm writing your
bio here. It's not necessarilywhat you told me. But it's not a
big jump to see how you would beinterested in what makes people
make decisions. When you justwatch people make decisions
around the most important assetof their lives for years.
There's a very clear path but noone goes well, first, I'll be in
it but you know, a financialperson, then I'll be as I
(24:11):
called, that planning would makeno sense. It's Twyla Tharp says
your life five years from nowwill change based on the people
you meet and the books you read.
That book changed my life thecreative habit, I just love it.
So I features prominently intomy book. But can you look back
and and even now not even lookback that far? Look back like
(24:33):
yesterday, look back five hoursago? When are you doing
something when you were at yourbest, and you catch yourself in
a moment of genius, and be like,wow, oh, that was so fun. I
wonder what was it about thatthat I loved and look at what's
working rather than I hated thatjob because that person was a
jerk and I hated this. I hatethis. If you just focus on
everything you hate. Now you gota pile of stuff you hate now
(24:54):
what? And that leads into thisapproach that I use to help.
People access story, which goesright into what we're talking
about. What is the connectionthere? Okay, so yeah, I lead
workshops around story andideas. And for writers for non
writers, I have been trained inthis particular approach to
(25:14):
creative generation to writingthat is a tool that anyone can
use. And it's called thegateless method, I did not
invent it. I, it's a very smallcommunity of people. It was
created by a woman named SuzanneKingsbury, who was a novelist,
best selling novelist and adevelopmental editor. She's very
much in publishing. And there'sshe did it, she created it to
(25:36):
help writers get past blocks.
And how she did it was studiedthe intersection of Zen
Buddhism, neuroscience, wherewhere are people when they're in
fight or flight? How are peoplewhen they're at their creative
height? What's happening with,you know, with people who are
really incredibly cool scoreincredibly high on creativity
test? What are how are theyaccessing that part of your
(25:56):
brain? Because we all have thesame brain. So that means if
someone who's a genius canaccess that part of their brain,
so can I. And so this methodspecifically uses the page, okay
uses writing as opposed tosculpture or watercolor, or P
knuckle, it using page so thatwe can practice and get thoughts
out of our minds and onto thepage without fear of being
(26:20):
criticized?
Morten Andersen (26:23):
And can you describe that that process? How
would that would work?
Terri Trespicio (26:26):
Yeah, so all good people in a room on zoom, I
do it virtually, I have avirtual program where we join up
twice a week live and writetogether, what how it works, the
traditional approach is that weget everyone into their relaxed,
you kind of take a minute tobring everyone into the space,
get them into their bodies, notjust their heads. And then you
(26:48):
give them a prompt, we giveeveryone in that room a prompt
as a prompt, okay? So I want youto think about a time when you
kept going, could have beenanything could have been you,
you kind of thought you had touse the bathroom, but you kept
driving anyway, it could havebeen the time you you kept going
even though it was a rough timewhen you were having a rough
pregnancy can be anything butwhat we do is we prime your
(27:10):
imagination and your memory, werelax all of those. This is not
a technical term using oursynapses, I don't know, relax
the parts of your brain thattend to tighten up when we're
asked to say our passion infront of a room. Opposite. You
are, instead of announcinganything, you sit there with the
page, and I say I'm going togive you 10 minutes, 15 minutes,
20 minutes. And I'm going totell you this, and I obviously
(27:31):
more time that we have nowexplained to them how this will
work. I give them a prompt, andI say start writing. And for the
next 10 minutes, they don'tworry about anything. They just
write memory, what comes upsensory details. Could be a list
could be fragments, you writewrite, write, write, write with
no thought about what peoplethink. Then we take turns and
(27:51):
read what we wrote, which soundsterrifying, because you just
wrote a thing on the spot, andit wasn't edited and whatever.
It's not an essay contest. Thisis the group listening to what
just sprung out of your brainunbidden. Right? And so you read
that to the other people, youread it to the group. And what
happens is, there are rules inthis room, we do not ask
(28:13):
questions of the work, we do notcriticize the work, we do not
judge the work. I don't go morethan that. I don't understand
what you meant with your father.
Was he a good guy or a bad guy?
No. In fact, you read your workmore than than the rest of us
talk about the work. And wedon't talk to you at all, you
get to be relaxed. The idea isto relax and let you receive
positive feedback. And we onlytalk about what's working. It's
(28:35):
not flattery, we don't go morethan such a great guy. What a
nice story. What a great writer,we say, I love that moment where
the rain is freezing on thewindshield. And he doesn't know
whether he should stay or leave.
That was a powerful moment. Ilove how he used alliteration
here, we only point out what'sworking on the page, it'll blow
your mind blows our mind becausewe can't believe that we came up
(28:56):
with stuff in such a shortperiod. What that does for you
more than as the writer is, itfeels so good that you start to
retrain your brain to no longerassociate feedback with
criticism. It allows you to seeyour work in a new way. And be
like, Wow, I didn't even realizeI was doing that for us. We get
something out of it by trainingour brains to look for what's
(29:17):
working. Because if we can seeit working in your work, we will
see it in our own. It's what'scalled training the reticular
activating system, which allowsus to see patterns and to see
what's working and you know whatthat is because your psychology.
This changes how people a seetheir work, but also each other.
So at first I thought well, Ilucked out with the best group
of people in the room. Now,every room of people in this
(29:39):
kind of workshop ends up beingthe best people in the room
because no one's picking on eachother. No one is making someone
feel bad. And so we are leftfeeling you know, you go Okay,
well what if there's somethingwrong with what they wrote?
Well, no one's expected to beperfect at the first draft. The
idea is if we don't shove youthrough the door of that person
prompted free yourself to do it,you would never have come up
(30:02):
with it. And so what this does,and by the way, I've done it
with a roomful of financialadvisors who did not sign up for
a writing workshop. They werethere to learn about their own
brand of leadership. And whathappened is I gave them a prompt
that had to do with that, butthey didn't realize that. And
then they wrote, and then theyread their stories. And this
was, let's be honest, a group of99% white males over 50. And
they were writing about theirchildhoods. They had distinct,
(30:26):
palpable tactile memories oftheir fathers of school of the
moment, they learned to ski ofthe moment their house was on
fire, things that happened thatthey hadn't thought about in a
while. And let me tell you,there wasn't a dry eye in the
room. And it was shocking. Andthey go, what was that? What was
that black magic. And I said, Noone's ever validated your
(30:46):
creative work, no one's evergiven you a place to say it. And
what happened is, I be an expertfeedback person, I saw, this is
where my own consultant comesin. I said, this is the kind of
leader you are because of whatyou just showed us, this is what
you build your thing on. Butthey had never seen themselves
that way before. So to tie thisup, the point is, everyone has a
story. Everyone wants to beheard, we do not give ourselves
(31:10):
a chance to be really heard. Weonly give ourselves a chance to
write comments on posts.
Morten Andersen (31:18):
And it's there's a lot of things that's
really interesting in whatyou're saying. One thing is, of
course, the idea of stories. Andyou know, from TED Talks as
well, that, you know, the thetalks, which which connects with
a personal story, and you cantell if this is a story that is
made up for a speech or the ifthis is truly authentic story,
those are the best speeches. Andthat's when you listen, and you
(31:39):
also do that well in in your ownpresentation. A second thing
that this makes me think is ourconversation with Jim law. We I
heard it, it was fantastic. Inthe end, I asked him So of all
of the professionals that youhave worked with over the years,
and he's worked mainly withathletes, but also professional
CEOs, the ones that sort ofdeveloped the most and the ones
(32:02):
who became truly professionals.
Was there any one thing thatthey had in common, and he said
they did journaling? The wrotedown about their experiences and
learnings and feelings aroundthose experiences and learnings.
Those were the ones that trulychanged the most Did he say what
the reason for that was he wasvery much about getting it out
learning from your own mistakesor your experiences. But it
(32:25):
needed to come out on a piece ofpaper, essentially. And he's a
big pen and paper person. And Ijust I was very inspired by
that. Because we have all ofthese gadgets, we try to look at
videos and all of the time butbut writing things down actually
is a is a huge creative process.
And I think what you justmentioned there, creating your
(32:47):
story, but actually doing it inthat environment. using that
method is a really inspiring wayof doing your transformation.
Terri Trespicio (32:55):
I've seen it and I've experienced it, I
wouldn't have my book withoutthat process. Because when
people try to talk aboutsomething, they get blocked.
It's because that critic loomsso large, but it's really
refreshing to hear Jim Loehrtalking about that, because it
has so much to do with how weintegrate experience, and what
we understand about what we'vedone, not just where we went
(33:15):
wrong, right? That's a differentthing. But there's there's also
that act of expression. Twomistakes we've made in the
world. Well, there's many, many,but two that come to mind are co
opting massage for the spaindustry. That was too bad
because it made it too expensiveand made it hard to get. And so
Not everyone gets to experiencethat because it made it sound
like it was a luxury thing. Sothere's a thing around massage.
(33:36):
And the same with writing, wehave decided that it's something
that only a few people do and dowell, and the people who author
books and all that. Andactually, it is a tool available
to all of us. And we were taughtearly on with a lot of red ink
that we were bad at it. And it'sunfortunate because if you deny
yourself that tool, you aredenying yourself one of your
most powerful tools ofintegration, expression, healing
(34:00):
and growth.
Morten Andersen (34:09):
It sounds like what you're saying is, don't
focus so much about what yourpassion in life is. But try to
find your stories and identifyyour stories and get them out
Terri Trespicio (34:18):
Feel for meaning through the stories this
house through memory throughunderstanding what's been
exciting for you and what movesyou try and name a passion isn't
going to change your life thenif anything, it will make it
more feel more constricted.
Morten Andersen (34:30):
Yes. Is this something that would be useful
for everybody? And what kind ofstories should we be looking
for?
Terri Trespicio (34:37):
And well see, there you go. I'm gonna stop you
right there because you justsaid, What story should we be
looking for? Then again, thatsets us up to be like, should we
find the right one or the wrongone? The question isn't that a
story is the answer either thereis no one key. But understanding
how you feel about things. Idon't know if Ron said it, and
I'll say it. We don't know whatwe think until we write it down.
(34:59):
We Don't know what's all in ourhead till we get it out and
really look at it. So makingwriting a practice is not to
collect and curate your beststories, that's great if you're
editing a collection. But that'snot that's asset minded. I'm
talking about making writing apractice to free yourself up and
to allow stories to emerge tofind the connections in your
own, the skein of your own life,which is completely unique from
(35:22):
anyone else's, all thosethreads, all those ways that
things connect, we kind of haveto understand that if we need to
find the meaning in that it'snever going to come from
outside. So yes, I mean, onething I will share, that is
something that people can cantry is that I have a very short
booklet that is just like a freething to explain how to start to
(35:43):
see your own stories andcreativity differently. You
know, Bernie Brown says, There'sno such thing as creative
people, just people who use it,and people who don't, it is a
muscle. So I put together a verylittle like booklet called Five
Ways to unlock your creativegenius. And that idea is that
everyone has it. What does everycompany say? They want Oh,
innovation. Everyone wants newideas. No one says they just
(36:06):
want someone to do exactly thesame thing as it did five years
ago. If you don't tap into thatinnovation and those ideas, how
will you know what you want todo next?
Morten Andersen (36:14):
Yes. So if one of the listeners is sold on the
idea, and basically use thegateless writing method, or any
kind of method really to try tocome up with some stories. Now,
she or he has a number of ofstories. What is the next step
after that?
Terri Trespicio (36:31):
Well, it depends. Your next step might be
to write stories so that youknow what jobs to look for and
what not to look for, or whetheryou should leave your company.
There are two tracks here, ifyou're talking about someone who
wants to write, that's onething, I'm talking about writing
as a tool for anyone. I'd sayeven even if you want to give a
talk somewhere, every talkstarts on the page, not on the
(36:51):
stage. But for people who wantto do something they want to
share what they've created. Theidea that you have to publish a
book and that that's the onlyway you're a writer could not be
further from true. I'm reading abook now. But I'm closing in on
50. And like, I still callmyself a writer my whole life, I
already was that. There's somany ways to share what you do.
(37:15):
So much so that if someone cameup with the idea of writing a
book now, Hey, I know, why don'twe write 300 pages, go through
all of the editing, printed ondead trees and try to get stores
to sell it. People would saythat's a very bad idea. That
only exists because we didn'thave what we have now. So sure,
you can do a book, you can alsopublish stuff yourself. You can
(37:37):
have a blog, you could write upideas and do videos on every and
any platform, you can createcourses, you can create
mastermind type groups where youall get together, use the page
to guide what would be fun foryou. Because for a lot of people
sitting in a room writing a 300page manuscript is their idea of
hell. It is a writer's idea ofhell, sometimes, it might be
(37:58):
that you just like writing withyour friends, it might be that
you love to come up with ideasfor things and see if you can
sell them or maybe you'll trustand up comedy together write
jokes. My point is, even if youdon't join me in a workshop, but
of course, I welcome you to dothat. If you have a group of
people you like to create with,or shall I say, find people you
(38:19):
like to create with who are notout to fix you? Who's your
critics carefully, becausepeople who try to help you will
tell you, oh, well, that's notlet me fix this. And you should
do this. And you should do that.
Those people are not helpful.
You want people who just helpyou create and generate so you
can finally get something onpage because otherwise you'll
just feel like paralyzed justlike your daughter trying to
pick her high school, right? SoI think pick your people very
(38:42):
carefully. If you're reading abook that starts to make you
feel bad about all of it, stopreading that book, only consume
the things that keep you going.
My favorite books are the onesthat I have to stop reading
because they get me so excited.
I have to go write something.
Those are the books to abandon.
Morten Andersen (38:57):
There might be some people who are thinking
well, I my life is not it's notvery interesting stuff.
Terri Trespicio (39:02):
Like there's no such thing as an interesting
topic or not interesting topic.
everyone's life is interesting.
Why do we read books aboutpeople who have jobs that might
not be sound exciting? Why do weyou know, love to read a tell
all by a bellhop in a hotel,right? Like, the idea is,
interest comes from meaning themeaning you find and the way we
(39:23):
connect with other people. Soyou I don't have an exciting
life like nothing major everhappened to me that is so
extraordinary. You don't haveto, that is not what makes
content worth sharing. It's howmuch do other people connect
with you, if you can find anaudience.
Morten Andersen (39:38):
So in terms of passion, you know, that's not
the right place to start. Italso can lock you or maybe even,
you know, paralyze you Instead,try to create stories and find
meaning in those through thosestories. And that will tell you
what it is that you enjoy life.
enjoy doing a lot of what youshould stay away from and That
will help you create greatchoices in your life is that
Terri Trespicio (40:03):
yes, but also don't stay away from passion.
I'm just saying, don't think youhave to pick out you have to
wear for the rest of your life.
I only will like gravitatetoward things that feel good for
me to do because I have theluxury of doing that I get to
pick out for myself. But can youfind something exciting and fun
that you'd like to learn nomatter what job you're in.
Because people go, I want tofind my passion or I have to get
a job, you can find something.
(40:25):
So in fact, I would say don'tput passion in the backseat.
Make sure you bring it with you.
No matter what you're doing.
Where can you find that you'regood at something. Because when
you master something passioncomes invited along, enjoy it.
But realize it's not the onlyemotion you're meant to feel.
Morten Andersen (40:40):
That's a great place to end this conversation.
Terri, thanks a lot for takingthe time to speak with me. I
really, really enjoyed that. Iwill look forward to your book
and early next year. And untilthen I can just tell listeners
that they can go to yourwebsite, there's actually a lot.
It's a great blog there. Butit's also, as you say, a free
(41:00):
download. Please go and checkout your your several TED Talks,
which are really good. So thanksa lot for taking the time to
speak with me.
Terri Trespicio (41:09):
Thank you.
Morten Andersen (41:16):
What a great interview, Terri is a fantastic
inspiration. And I took threethings away from my talk with
her. One, stop searching foryour passion. the working title
for her upcoming book isactually unfollow your passion.
But what Terri is telling us isthat we should move away from
how do I find my passion,because that's not helping us at
(41:38):
all. Because we don't follow ourpassion. Our passion follows us.
That means that when we dosomething meaningful, something
we love, then we'll find ourpassion, not by sitting down in
front of a piece of paper andmaking it up beforehand. That
way is more likely to paralyzeus, rather than setting us free.
(42:00):
To find your extraordinarymoments. Tara defines passion as
the way you feel when you givesomething your energy and
attention and you feel it givingit back to you. And a good way
to do that is to identifymoments in your life when you
are in flow, when time justflies when you're having fun.
(42:21):
What are you doing at thatmoment? Are there any patterns
in those moments? Are there somethings that you do more often in
those moments, perhaps peopleyou're with or things that you
do? Those extraordinary momentswill lead you to understand what
your passion is. And finally,number three, find your stories
(42:42):
and articulate them in acompelling way. Terri is a
writer and she helps people findtheir stories. So he uses a
method called gateless writingmethod to help people get their
stories out of their head andout of their bodies and onto a
piece of paper. And through thatprocess. You will unlock your
(43:02):
creative genius as Terry Colesaid, and through those stories,
you'll find your extraordinarymoments. Terri is a great
speaker and has made two TEDxtalks that I will encourage you
to see and listen to. One iscalled Stop Searching for your
Passion which has currently morethan 6 million views and with
good reason. So enjoy them.
Until next time, take care
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
There are only a few thingswhich can get my heart to skip a
beat. I don't upset easily, butone of them was during a
(00:26):
personal development program Iwas on, I was asked to identify
my passion in life. And not onlythat, we were asked to stand up
and share our passions with therest of the class. And we took
turns, and the first people gotup and they shared their
passions. And they sounded socool that I had to change mine
in my head as I listened to theother people. And then when it
(00:48):
was my turn, I got up, I sharedmy passion, which frankly, I
hadn't thought about before thatday or after that day. Because
the passion I shared was anarrative I thought sounded
cool. But it really didn'tconnect with me emotionally. But
I'm told to find my passion.
Simon Sinek does these cooltalks where he says you have to
find your why. But I have toadmit I find it hard. I can say
(01:10):
things that I like to do, but mypassion in life, no clue. So
what should I do? Should I beable to articulate my passion in
life? Is it important? Or is itactually even better not trying
to find it? Well, let's find outin this episode of What Monkeys
Do. My guest today has a lot oftitles. I'm not sure any of them
(01:31):
do her justice on their own.
She's an award winning writer.
She's a speaker. She's a brandadvisor. She's also a stand up
comedian. And I will actuallyencourage you to go to YouTube
and check it out. It's reallyreally funny. She's given a
great TEDx talk called stopsearching for your passion. It
has more than 6 million viewstoday. To me, she's the person
(01:52):
who's full of stories and sheencourages other people to get
out there and share theirstories. Welcome to you, Terri
Trespicio.
Terri Trespicio (02:04):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me,Morten.
Morten Andersen (02:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to
this conversation. In thisepisode, we'll talk about well,
actually a lot of differentthings. But I want to start with
passion. Because you have saidthat passion is not a plan. It's
a feeling. You don't follow yourpassion, your passion follows
you. So maybe you can start offby telling us a little bit about
who you are, but also whyidentifying your passion may not
(02:30):
be the best thing to start offwith.
Terri Trespicio (02:33):
Well, you've done a really nice job of
introducing me. So I won't goback and repeat. But I'll just
say that I've always beensomeone who likes to write and
didn't know really what to dowith it, and follow it around
that skill to see where I mightapply it. I feel like I need to
preface this because people haveseen the TED Talk, they tend to
have an idea about me that isn'ttrue. And they might think, Oh,
she knew she must have knownwhat she was good at. And it was
(02:55):
like some kind of secret. Andshe figured it out. And that
could not be further from true.
nor was I always some kind ofconfident extrovert. I have
grown up basically afraid ofeverything insecure as anyone
could be doubting whether I'dever have a role in the world
didn't even apply to a job incollege because I thought who
would want me so and it didn'tmatter. It didn't matter that I
got good grades, it doesn'tmatter that you get good
(03:16):
feedback from people are, youdid well on this paper and this
writing contest. Just becauseyou love to do something, it
doesn't mean you know what to dowith your life. And that's okay.
Today I make my living. But youknow, quite frankly, more than I
made it up, I used to work as amagazine editor, I got laid off
in the magazine as editors do,and decided I didn't want to
work anywhere else, I didn'twant to have to go to a job, I
(03:38):
already wanted to be in my ownlittle lockdown. So I wanted to
stay home and work. And so Ifigured I had a bag of tools and
I and who needed what. So I havebeen making things up as I go
for the better part of a decadenow. I've been working for
myself for that long. And theway I describe what I do is
exactly that. I'm a writer, aspeaker, a consultant, and
(03:58):
advisor, someone who loves tocreate content that is
practical, and serves someone'sneed. So whether that means
someone who wants to launch abusiness or do a TED talk or
needs to help a team work bettertogether. To me, it all comes
back to the same thing. It'syour ability to articulate story
and message in a compelling way.
(04:20):
And so it is hard to categorize.
And also, I don't care. I thinkwe live in a culture where we're
supposed to have this perfectelevator pitch. And so when I'm
asked when I'm pressed, I say Ihelp people in companies change.
people and companies change theway they think about talk about
and communicate what they do. Nomatter what platform I am
platform and industry agnostic.
(04:42):
But usually people know whenthey hear me they go, we need to
talk to her. I can pull out andtease out what someone's trying
to say and articulate it in inwords in ways that sometimes
escape them. And so that's myskill. That's my skill and I use
it wherever I can. And however Ican because I bore easily. So
I'd like to try differentthings. But I want to back up to
(05:04):
something you said in the intro,which is that you were asked to
get up and announce yourpassion. And I just feel so
terrible that you were, maybeyou found that class helpful,
but I feel so terrible that youwere put in that position,
because that is my bone to pickwith Pat, because you were put
in a human situation where youEveryone was told, stand up and
say something cool that they'regoing for. And so you can bet
(05:26):
that anything that anyone saidin the room that day was mainly
to make themselves and othersfeel good about them. That's it.
You said to yourself, you said,I want to say something cool. So
I said that I have never saidbefore, the pressure to perform
in front of others in a way thatlook, you want people to like
you to feel that you're doingmeaningful work, we all want
that. But calling it a passionbeing like quick name, your
(05:47):
passion. Oh, God, having todefine yourself by a passion is
no better than having to defineyourself by a major. It's like,
hurry up and pick one. So I feelbad that you were put in that
position, because it just isn'thelpful. The only thing I was
thinking about, as the otherpeople were talking was I was
trying to rehearse my ownstories. I didn't actually hear
(06:09):
what the other people weresaying, Can you even tell me
what anyone else is passionateabout, as they were all
scripting, the perfect thing tosay? In fact, that's why in my
workshops and things, we don'tintroduce ourselves at all, we
meet each other on the page andin the work, and we'll talk
about that later. But the ideais that whenever we do that,
we're not listening to eachother. And listening is part of
how we make meaning. And ifwe're told to come up with a
(06:31):
script real quick, that's gonnabe hard.
Morten Andersen (06:34):
So the thing I have about passion is it sounds
like you have your life inorder, you know exactly what it
is that you're driving towards.
And and you almost have yourlife figure out when you make
these grand statements. And mostof the time, we're making it up
on the go, right. And alsopassion ism. I don't know it's a
huge word. I mean, you, it feelslike you, it's a little bit more
than things like that like todo, it seems like it's something
(06:55):
where you would really live anddie for this.
Terri Trespicio (06:59):
You're how I define passion, the way you
feel, when you're givingsomething your energy and
attention, and you feel itgiving back to you, when you are
give what feels good to bealigned with the thing when
you're giving your energy andattention. And you feel the
connection with the thing,right? hitting your head against
a wall. No one's passionateabout that, because the wall
doesn't give when you're doingsomething that feels good. And
(07:22):
you can tell it's appreciated,or it's earning your money or no
one's doing it, no one's payingattention to you or paying you
and you feel the activityfeeding you. That is a good
feeling. You know what else is agood feeling? Having a plate of
oysters put down in front of youlaughing with friends going for
a walk? There's lots of thingsthat we feel passion doing. And
(07:43):
you don't have to pick one andhave it tattooed on your face?
Morten Andersen (07:46):
Yes, I like parts of what I do in my job. I
like that a lot. I would I wouldactually even call it a passion.
But then if I get another job,I'm very sure that there'll be
things in that which will bedifferent that I'll be
passionate about. And then Am Ilying to myself? No, it's
probably just something thatthings are changing. You know,
from from moment to moment,
Terri Trespicio (08:06):
Morten, you're also probably one of the happier
people on the planet. Becauseyou told me before we started
recording that you worked infinance, and that you said, You
know, I know, I'm supposed tosay I hated that job. But I
really loved it. The people whohave the most passionate lives,
find passion everywhere theyare. Because any job any of us
has right now my job didn'texist 20 years ago, let alone
(08:28):
200 years ago. But if I wereborn 200 years ago, was that
before passion existed? No, ofcourse not, I would have been
doing something else. And Iwould have found something I
loved about it. So that's whythis idea that we have to pick
one who came up with that nothelpful.
Morten Andersen (08:42):
I have a 15 year old daughter in Denmark
here. That means that she's atthe end of her middle school,
and she has to pick a highschool and the high schools here
they have different academicfocus. So she has to find out
which ones to pick. So one canbe a business High School, one
could be language focused HighSchool, one can be more focused
(09:06):
on biotech or technologyfocused, high school. So what
she is asked to do is she'sasked to write down what she
wants to be in life. And she isasked to write down her passion,
as well. And actually, this issomething she's graded on. And
she has to hand this in beforeshe can she can make her
application for the high school.
The funny thing is that youwould think that that would set
(09:26):
her free that that would helpher choose what she wants to do.
But what it actually does isparalyze us. It creates a sense
of Oh my god, do I need to knowall of that right now. And what
that has done is that she'safraid of making a choice.
Terri Trespicio (09:41):
Of course, of course, this is terrible. Where
do you live Copenhagen? The hellis wrong with people there?
First of all, that's tradingschool training and for people
who are going into a trade itdoes help if you're, if that's a
different way of looking ateducation, right? That's a
specific way and for placeswhere Hey, you get to pick from
one of these three trades, youbetter pick one and go with it.
(10:03):
The fact is, if she spun a wheeland picked one, and it would be
probably just as successful inthe end, because it's her
mentality going into what she'lllearn from that. I wish I could
sit down with her and a cup ofhot chocolate and say, Honey,
what are you willing to shareher name? Yes. Louisa. Louisa,
(10:24):
listen to me. You don't have toknow what you're gonna do or be
those of us who were over 40don't know over 50 are unsure.
Gosh, what a great opportunitiesis this is what she's dealing
with, to pick one that interestsher today. Because what is high
school? I assume it's four yearsthere. And that means Yeah, a
lot of people have jobs for 10years that they decide to leave
(10:45):
and do something different. Sothe fact is, she does not have
to choose what she has to do ischoose for right now. What would
think of it as what would youlike to learn first? Now, I
don't know too many 14 year oldswho would be like, Oh my god,
no, definitely bioengineering.
That's where I'm going. But theymight have a natural proclivity.
Someone might really hatelanguage, and they know they
want to go in sciences. Maybepeople know that. Weird does she
(11:06):
feel and this is where I wouldjudge if I were all of a sudden
a 15 year old and Copenhagen ina panic, I would want myself to
say to me, I would want someoneto tell me, honey, what what
feels exciting to you to learnright now? What could you start
with that you could then buildon for later? Because it'll
never serve you wrong to knowbusiness and will never serve
(11:27):
you wrong to know languages? Youare not limited? It's just your
first step.
Morten Andersen (11:33):
Yes. But I guess her situation is not that
different from let's say, if youwant to go to university, again,
you want to pick the right areathat you want to study or even
after university, you want tothink about which first job
should I pick? And jobs exist?
How do we know? And I guess mypoint is that you're trying to
if you're trying to think toofar ahead, in terms of what is
(11:54):
my passion, and where do I wantto end up and so on, that can
actually paralyze you.
Terri Trespicio (12:01):
It is paralyzing. It's paralyzing to
you and me, and it's absolutelystultifying for a 15 year old.
This book, I don't know if youwould want to read this book.
But one book that I that isworth mentioning, I've been
reading it is as it's not a newbook, it's called Stumbling on
Happiness by Dan Gilbert, right?
He said, we're reallynotoriously bad at predicting
what we will want in the future,the best thing you can do, and
(12:22):
he doesn't say this, I'm sayingthis is to focus on what you'll
do now. Because guess what, whenI was an English major, I didn't
know that content producer was aword. It was a job. It wasn't,
it wasn't in the 90s. It didn'texist to later. And so you can
pick a job? How limiting andinside the box, is that better
to say? What do I get excitedabout when I sit down to do my
(12:44):
language homework, or I sit downto study bioengineering? What do
I get excited about? Where do Ifeel energy? Where do you feel
yourself come alive, follow thatstudy that in high school, then
go on to study that in college,but rather than reverse engineer
and worry about what job?
There's plenty of people whostudied accounting, who go on to
be entrepreneurs, there's plentypeople who study business who
want to be novelists, it doesn'tmatter. The job should not be
(13:08):
something to think about. It'swhere could I tap and cultivate
my skills today? My skills andinterest? So I know what to do
later when I get there. Yes.
Morten Andersen (13:19):
Okay. So and by the way, that book by Dan
Gilbert is one of my all timefavorites, so well written,
essentially, when we're makingchoices, we're trying to predict
what our future self would likeus to choose, right? And because
we're so bad at understandingwhat our future self would like
to have, our choices that wemake are actually pretty poor.
(13:40):
What you're saying is that usingpassion as a long term, you
know, Northstar may not actuallybe the right measure to make the
right choice. But instead justtrying to think figure out, what
do you like doing now? What'syour energy? What do you think
is quite cool? Where's yourinterest? And then go with that
and see where that takes you?
Terri Trespicio (13:58):
Where do you feel like it would be fun,
literally, affinity and gut andlike, what would be cool to
learn? I mean, I think at 15,you do know whether you're more
drawn to bioengineering orlanguage. And Either way, it's
not the last time you touchthose things. There's plenty of
people who could go on to studythat. But yeah, it's it's really
backwards to think of it thatway. More than I don't know what
(14:20):
I'll be doing five years fromnow. And I'm well over 40. So
the excitement should be that wecontinue to discover, you know,
that's like, it's like goinginto a lamp store. I'm going to
buy a lamp and telling them thatyou want electricity and you
only want the best electricity.
They'll go we don't sellelectricity. We sell lamps. You
think the lamp and you plug itin. I have I have selected a
whole handful of lamps in myapartment. They all go on. It's
(14:42):
a matter of what lamps I had. DoI sit there and wonder about all
the lamps I could have had no Ihave light in my apartment.
That's what matters. So wemistake lamp for electricity all
the time. We bring the passionto what we do. There is no right
job. There. There's no rightanswer, you might do what I do
in bail on the whole system andmake it up, I made my job up.
(15:03):
And you can if you want, or youcan be very happy inside of a
wonderful organization, or workfor 20 of them. So I think we
have no idea. And so I reallyhope that anyone who feels
stuck, whether they're 15, or50, realizes that this Easter
egg idea that you're gonna gohunt down the secret passion is
really not the way to look atyour life.
Morten Andersen (15:27):
Yes, you are in the middle of writing your your
first book, as I understand itis called stop searching for
your passion, is that correct?
Terri Trespicio (15:36):
We actually are playing with a new title and
nothing is finalized. What I cantell you is the book is due out
in January 2022, from Simon andSchuster, and the name that I
want to call it now is UnfollowYour Passion, which is a name
that I think will be snappy andfun, and also kind of
counterintuitive, which is whatI wanted. The idea is that I
make a bit of an argument forwhy this isn't the way to look
(15:59):
at it, which plenty of otherauthors have, and a different
way of approaching a differentthing. So rather than going Oh,
how do I choose my passion? Howdo you get what you really want,
which is to create a life ofmeaning. It's not actually about
picking a passionate at all. Andin the book, I walked through
the different ways that wouldchange the lens through which
you see your life so that youcan actually enjoy what you're
(16:21):
doing and what you might donext.
Morten Andersen (16:23):
I'm really interested in that. So I want to
unfold that. But maybe juststart with, why is following
your passion. Why would that notbe the right place to start?
Terri Trespicio (16:32):
Well, to me, it's like when people say, oh,
what do you wanna do with yourlife, I don't know why you
should follow your passion justisn't helpful. I'm very critical
and leery of facile advice.
Advice. I hear people giving allthe time that they just repeat,
because it sounds good. Followyour passion, you'll never work
again, really, because prettysure that even people who love
what they do look at Seth Godinsays, we all have to do some
emotional labor. That's the workwe don't feel like doing even
(16:55):
when we do what we love. Andactually in researching the book
I came across and this was avery widely publicized study out
of Stanford, Carol Dweck, and afew of her cohorts who found
that people who had an idea thatpassions are fixed, that I'm
born with a set of them, likeI'm born with a set DNA or
something, that the theyseparated students into people
(17:16):
who believe passions were fixed,and people who didn't believe
that. And when we put themthrough a whole battery of
tests, and what they found wasthat the people who believed
passions were fixed, theybelieved that they once they
found that passion, they wouldnever procrastinate, they'd be
endlessly motivated, and theywould never give up. And that it
would be easy. And that meantthat the people who actually
(17:37):
believed that passions werefixed were more likely to
abandon an interest when itbecame hard. That does not bode
well for people who want tocultivate something that is not
easy. And really anything worthdoing will be quote, hard
writing, I love writing. It'snot easy. It there's a part of
it, that's hard publishing abook is hard, I can tell you
(17:58):
that this is not the easiestthing I've ever done. But it's
worthwhile. And so the idea thatif you believe passions are
fixed, you're going to suffersome shortcomings in your life
that aren't again helpful orproductive.
Morten Andersen (18:14):
And it's actually interesting because
what is it that that passionpromise will what it promise is
that that will keep youmotivated that will keep your
spirit high, that will make iteasier you write and and what is
interesting about duac obviouslyis the focus on on the fixed and
the and and the non fixedmindset but also that that is
(18:35):
applied to passion isn't it's areally interesting
Terri Trespicio (18:38):
Yes, it built on her work around intelligence
as intelligence fixer as it wasbuilding on uncertainly the
foundation of her work. But youcan see that the promise of Oh,
I'll never it'll be easy. Whomade up that lie? Because it is
not true or fair to lead peopleto think that doesn't deliver
any more than, well, if I makeyou the best meal of your life,
(19:02):
meal, you'll never be hungryagain. Well, part of the human
condition is that we will bebored, lonely, sad, will also be
passionate, excited, sleepy. Aword like we're gonna go through
all the feelings. But chasingone feeling is not the way to
build a life of meaning.
Fantastic.
Morten Andersen (19:31):
I just want to unfold what you said about what
you want to say in your book. Soone thing is to try to start by
saying, well, it's not actuallythe purpose. What do you suggest
instead? I was I was reallyinterested in that.
Terri Trespicio (19:43):
And this is my guess my first book interview.
Like the book isn't even saidget off. There are two things
that go together here. Becausepeople in job interviews will
often say Where do you seeyourself in five years? What do
you think you're going to dolater, and we all know that
blah, blah, blah, and I've beenfine. I was resistant to that in
my 20s. I'm resistant to it.
Now. Two things have helped. Oneis for a few years I took
(20:03):
improvisational theater classesimprov, and I learned so much I
am I like doing it. It's fun.
It's playing right? It's a wayto play I'd never good imagined
I would be an improviser for aliving. I mean, no. But you
learn incredible skill there.
And what you learn is that youactually have everything you
need to make great decisions inthe moment. What improv does is
(20:24):
strip away everything else sothat it's just you in the moment
with no script, no expectation,and where do you go to. And it
revealed to me a lot of what mygo to responses reactions were.
And I found that in order tomake a scene interesting, I
would pick a fight with someone,oh, guess what I do in my real
life. So like, I learned somethings there. But I also learned
that it can give me so much ithighlighted for me, I was
(20:47):
already good at thinking on myfeet. It showed me how I'm doing
that and how to do it, in thatwhat you bring to a moment is
going to be so much moreimportant than what you had
memorized before. And that goeshand in hand with my other
thing, which is abandoning theidea of plans. Do we have to
plan to have some plans in placeas a former financial
(21:08):
professional, you know, weshould have a plan in place in
case. But the planning is averb, we do it all the time,
it's fine. But being overlyattached to plans. That's
trouble. because things changeall the time. Things are that
are out of our control, all of2020 was unplanned. And we saw
what did what were some of usable to bring to the moment and
(21:30):
what people really were not ableto cope at all and why and all
of those things, a millionreasons we won't go into. But
being able to be tuned in to themoment and learn the skills of
improvising, which I drew a lotfrom the book Improv Wisdom by
Patricia Madson, which I love.
She takes the the principles ofimprov and shows you how to
apply them to your real life.
And it was I use that a lot inthe book also did quote from Dan
(21:52):
Gilbert a lot in Stumbling onHappiness, about understanding
our tendency to plan and how itcan be a bit of a crutch, if
you're like, but I'm passionateabout training dolphins and I, I
wanted to drain dolphins and nowI got married and we're moving
to the desert, there's nodolphins that like this idea
that I was supposed to be thisis trouble, too. So those are
(22:14):
two of the things I would saywould be how can we be in the
moment where we are and discoverwhat's pleasurable and exciting
about giving in that moment, Ifind passion wherever I go,
because I bring it with me is togo, it's to go, I bring it to
whatever. That's why it doesn'tmatter. If I'm working with a
financial firm on their website,or with a speaker on her TED
(22:35):
talk. I get excited about thoseideas. I like doing that with
people. That's the job. That'swhy it's hard to sum up because
it changes based on the asset.
But that's the same anyone. Sodiscovering what gives you
pleasure.
Morten Andersen (22:49):
So if I was to do that exercise now, and I'm
probably doing it completelywrong, then I'll be thinking
about what have I been doing,you know, in the past, what have
I liked about it, and so on. ButI probably wouldn't break the
barrier of thinking outside ofthe box, because it would be
hard for me to imagine wouldthat be pleasurable or not? So I
could imagine that I could getstuck fairly easy in in things
(23:11):
that I have done in the past,essentially, and but fail to it.
So for instance, I've nevertrained dolphins, I don't know
if that would make you pleasureor not right? So but I have a
hard time imagining that aswell. So that would not be part
of the idea of what could be anoption for me.
Terri Trespicio (23:28):
You're not trained offensively neither am I
but but when you said you werein finance, you studied the
market and how money behaves.
And then you went and became apsychologist. That's not a path
most people take. But when youlook at your life, and what was
interesting to you, you couldhave left that and become a yoga
teacher if you want to. But no,you went and became a
psychologist. Because why youwatched money behave. You
(23:49):
watched how people behavedaround money, and then you
wanted to expand it beyondmoney. I mean, I'm writing your
bio here. It's not necessarilywhat you told me. But it's not a
big jump to see how you would beinterested in what makes people
make decisions. When you justwatch people make decisions
around the most important assetof their lives for years.
There's a very clear path but noone goes well, first, I'll be in
it but you know, a financialperson, then I'll be as I
(24:11):
called, that planning would makeno sense. It's Twyla Tharp says
your life five years from nowwill change based on the people
you meet and the books you read.
That book changed my life thecreative habit, I just love it.
So I features prominently intomy book. But can you look back
and and even now not even lookback that far? Look back like
(24:33):
yesterday, look back five hoursago? When are you doing
something when you were at yourbest, and you catch yourself in
a moment of genius, and be like,wow, oh, that was so fun. I
wonder what was it about thatthat I loved and look at what's
working rather than I hated thatjob because that person was a
jerk and I hated this. I hatethis. If you just focus on
everything you hate. Now you gota pile of stuff you hate now
(24:54):
what? And that leads into thisapproach that I use to help.
People access story, which goesright into what we're talking
about. What is the connectionthere? Okay, so yeah, I lead
workshops around story andideas. And for writers for non
writers, I have been trained inthis particular approach to
(25:14):
creative generation to writingthat is a tool that anyone can
use. And it's called thegateless method, I did not
invent it. I, it's a very smallcommunity of people. It was
created by a woman named SuzanneKingsbury, who was a novelist,
best selling novelist and adevelopmental editor. She's very
much in publishing. And there'sshe did it, she created it to
(25:36):
help writers get past blocks.
And how she did it was studiedthe intersection of Zen
Buddhism, neuroscience, wherewhere are people when they're in
fight or flight? How are peoplewhen they're at their creative
height? What's happening with,you know, with people who are
really incredibly cool scoreincredibly high on creativity
test? What are how are theyaccessing that part of your
(25:56):
brain? Because we all have thesame brain. So that means if
someone who's a genius canaccess that part of their brain,
so can I. And so this methodspecifically uses the page, okay
uses writing as opposed tosculpture or watercolor, or P
knuckle, it using page so thatwe can practice and get thoughts
out of our minds and onto thepage without fear of being
(26:20):
criticized?
Morten Andersen (26:23):
And can you describe that that process? How
would that would work?
Terri Trespicio (26:26):
Yeah, so all good people in a room on zoom, I
do it virtually, I have avirtual program where we join up
twice a week live and writetogether, what how it works, the
traditional approach is that weget everyone into their relaxed,
you kind of take a minute tobring everyone into the space,
get them into their bodies, notjust their heads. And then you
(26:48):
give them a prompt, we giveeveryone in that room a prompt
as a prompt, okay? So I want youto think about a time when you
kept going, could have beenanything could have been you,
you kind of thought you had touse the bathroom, but you kept
driving anyway, it could havebeen the time you you kept going
even though it was a rough timewhen you were having a rough
pregnancy can be anything butwhat we do is we prime your
(27:10):
imagination and your memory, werelax all of those. This is not
a technical term using oursynapses, I don't know, relax
the parts of your brain thattend to tighten up when we're
asked to say our passion infront of a room. Opposite. You
are, instead of announcinganything, you sit there with the
page, and I say I'm going togive you 10 minutes, 15 minutes,
20 minutes. And I'm going totell you this, and I obviously
(27:31):
more time that we have nowexplained to them how this will
work. I give them a prompt, andI say start writing. And for the
next 10 minutes, they don'tworry about anything. They just
write memory, what comes upsensory details. Could be a list
could be fragments, you writewrite, write, write, write with
no thought about what peoplethink. Then we take turns and
(27:51):
read what we wrote, which soundsterrifying, because you just
wrote a thing on the spot, andit wasn't edited and whatever.
It's not an essay contest. Thisis the group listening to what
just sprung out of your brainunbidden. Right? And so you read
that to the other people, youread it to the group. And what
happens is, there are rules inthis room, we do not ask
(28:13):
questions of the work, we do notcriticize the work, we do not
judge the work. I don't go morethan that. I don't understand
what you meant with your father.
Was he a good guy or a bad guy?
No. In fact, you read your workmore than than the rest of us
talk about the work. And wedon't talk to you at all, you
get to be relaxed. The idea isto relax and let you receive
positive feedback. And we onlytalk about what's working. It's
(28:35):
not flattery, we don't go morethan such a great guy. What a
nice story. What a great writer,we say, I love that moment where
the rain is freezing on thewindshield. And he doesn't know
whether he should stay or leave.
That was a powerful moment. Ilove how he used alliteration
here, we only point out what'sworking on the page, it'll blow
your mind blows our mind becausewe can't believe that we came up
(28:56):
with stuff in such a shortperiod. What that does for you
more than as the writer is, itfeels so good that you start to
retrain your brain to no longerassociate feedback with
criticism. It allows you to seeyour work in a new way. And be
like, Wow, I didn't even realizeI was doing that for us. We get
something out of it by trainingour brains to look for what's
(29:17):
working. Because if we can seeit working in your work, we will
see it in our own. It's what'scalled training the reticular
activating system, which allowsus to see patterns and to see
what's working and you know whatthat is because your psychology.
This changes how people a seetheir work, but also each other.
So at first I thought well, Ilucked out with the best group
of people in the room. Now,every room of people in this
(29:39):
kind of workshop ends up beingthe best people in the room
because no one's picking on eachother. No one is making someone
feel bad. And so we are leftfeeling you know, you go Okay,
well what if there's somethingwrong with what they wrote?
Well, no one's expected to beperfect at the first draft. The
idea is if we don't shove youthrough the door of that person
prompted free yourself to do it,you would never have come up
(30:02):
with it. And so what this does,and by the way, I've done it
with a roomful of financialadvisors who did not sign up for
a writing workshop. They werethere to learn about their own
brand of leadership. And whathappened is I gave them a prompt
that had to do with that, butthey didn't realize that. And
then they wrote, and then theyread their stories. And this
was, let's be honest, a group of99% white males over 50. And
they were writing about theirchildhoods. They had distinct,
(30:26):
palpable tactile memories oftheir fathers of school of the
moment, they learned to ski ofthe moment their house was on
fire, things that happened thatthey hadn't thought about in a
while. And let me tell you,there wasn't a dry eye in the
room. And it was shocking. Andthey go, what was that? What was
that black magic. And I said, Noone's ever validated your
(30:46):
creative work, no one's evergiven you a place to say it. And
what happened is, I be an expertfeedback person, I saw, this is
where my own consultant comesin. I said, this is the kind of
leader you are because of whatyou just showed us, this is what
you build your thing on. Butthey had never seen themselves
that way before. So to tie thisup, the point is, everyone has a
story. Everyone wants to beheard, we do not give ourselves
(31:10):
a chance to be really heard. Weonly give ourselves a chance to
write comments on posts.
Morten Andersen (31:18):
And it's there's a lot of things that's
really interesting in whatyou're saying. One thing is, of
course, the idea of stories. Andyou know, from TED Talks as
well, that, you know, the thetalks, which which connects with
a personal story, and you cantell if this is a story that is
made up for a speech or the ifthis is truly authentic story,
those are the best speeches. Andthat's when you listen, and you
(31:39):
also do that well in in your ownpresentation. A second thing
that this makes me think is ourconversation with Jim law. We I
heard it, it was fantastic. Inthe end, I asked him So of all
of the professionals that youhave worked with over the years,
and he's worked mainly withathletes, but also professional
CEOs, the ones that sort ofdeveloped the most and the ones
(32:02):
who became truly professionals.
Was there any one thing thatthey had in common, and he said
they did journaling? The wrotedown about their experiences and
learnings and feelings aroundthose experiences and learnings.
Those were the ones that trulychanged the most Did he say what
the reason for that was he wasvery much about getting it out
learning from your own mistakesor your experiences. But it
(32:25):
needed to come out on a piece ofpaper, essentially. And he's a
big pen and paper person. And Ijust I was very inspired by
that. Because we have all ofthese gadgets, we try to look at
videos and all of the time butbut writing things down actually
is a is a huge creative process.
And I think what you justmentioned there, creating your
(32:47):
story, but actually doing it inthat environment. using that
method is a really inspiring wayof doing your transformation.
Terri Trespicio (32:55):
I've seen it and I've experienced it, I
wouldn't have my book withoutthat process. Because when
people try to talk aboutsomething, they get blocked.
It's because that critic loomsso large, but it's really
refreshing to hear Jim Loehrtalking about that, because it
has so much to do with how weintegrate experience, and what
we understand about what we'vedone, not just where we went
(33:15):
wrong, right? That's a differentthing. But there's there's also
that act of expression. Twomistakes we've made in the
world. Well, there's many, many,but two that come to mind are co
opting massage for the spaindustry. That was too bad
because it made it too expensiveand made it hard to get. And so
Not everyone gets to experiencethat because it made it sound
like it was a luxury thing. Sothere's a thing around massage.
(33:36):
And the same with writing, wehave decided that it's something
that only a few people do and dowell, and the people who author
books and all that. Andactually, it is a tool available
to all of us. And we were taughtearly on with a lot of red ink
that we were bad at it. And it'sunfortunate because if you deny
yourself that tool, you aredenying yourself one of your
most powerful tools ofintegration, expression, healing
(34:00):
and growth.
Morten Andersen (34:09):
It sounds like what you're saying is, don't
focus so much about what yourpassion in life is. But try to
find your stories and identifyyour stories and get them out
Terri Trespicio (34:18):
Feel for meaning through the stories this
house through memory throughunderstanding what's been
exciting for you and what movesyou try and name a passion isn't
going to change your life thenif anything, it will make it
more feel more constricted.
Morten Andersen (34:30):
Yes. Is this something that would be useful
for everybody? And what kind ofstories should we be looking
for?
Terri Trespicio (34:37):
And well see, there you go. I'm gonna stop you
right there because you justsaid, What story should we be
looking for? Then again, thatsets us up to be like, should we
find the right one or the wrongone? The question isn't that a
story is the answer either thereis no one key. But understanding
how you feel about things. Idon't know if Ron said it, and
I'll say it. We don't know whatwe think until we write it down.
(34:59):
We Don't know what's all in ourhead till we get it out and
really look at it. So makingwriting a practice is not to
collect and curate your beststories, that's great if you're
editing a collection. But that'snot that's asset minded. I'm
talking about making writing apractice to free yourself up and
to allow stories to emerge tofind the connections in your
own, the skein of your own life,which is completely unique from
(35:22):
anyone else's, all thosethreads, all those ways that
things connect, we kind of haveto understand that if we need to
find the meaning in that it'snever going to come from
outside. So yes, I mean, onething I will share, that is
something that people can cantry is that I have a very short
booklet that is just like a freething to explain how to start to
(35:43):
see your own stories andcreativity differently. You
know, Bernie Brown says, There'sno such thing as creative
people, just people who use it,and people who don't, it is a
muscle. So I put together a verylittle like booklet called Five
Ways to unlock your creativegenius. And that idea is that
everyone has it. What does everycompany say? They want Oh,
innovation. Everyone wants newideas. No one says they just
(36:06):
want someone to do exactly thesame thing as it did five years
ago. If you don't tap into thatinnovation and those ideas, how
will you know what you want todo next?
Morten Andersen (36:14):
Yes. So if one of the listeners is sold on the
idea, and basically use thegateless writing method, or any
kind of method really to try tocome up with some stories. Now,
she or he has a number of ofstories. What is the next step
after that?
Terri Trespicio (36:31):
Well, it depends. Your next step might be
to write stories so that youknow what jobs to look for and
what not to look for, or whetheryou should leave your company.
There are two tracks here, ifyou're talking about someone who
wants to write, that's onething, I'm talking about writing
as a tool for anyone. I'd sayeven even if you want to give a
talk somewhere, every talkstarts on the page, not on the
(36:51):
stage. But for people who wantto do something they want to
share what they've created. Theidea that you have to publish a
book and that that's the onlyway you're a writer could not be
further from true. I'm reading abook now. But I'm closing in on
50. And like, I still callmyself a writer my whole life, I
already was that. There's somany ways to share what you do.
(37:15):
So much so that if someone cameup with the idea of writing a
book now, Hey, I know, why don'twe write 300 pages, go through
all of the editing, printed ondead trees and try to get stores
to sell it. People would saythat's a very bad idea. That
only exists because we didn'thave what we have now. So sure,
you can do a book, you can alsopublish stuff yourself. You can
(37:37):
have a blog, you could write upideas and do videos on every and
any platform, you can createcourses, you can create
mastermind type groups where youall get together, use the page
to guide what would be fun foryou. Because for a lot of people
sitting in a room writing a 300page manuscript is their idea of
hell. It is a writer's idea ofhell, sometimes, it might be
(37:58):
that you just like writing withyour friends, it might be that
you love to come up with ideasfor things and see if you can
sell them or maybe you'll trustand up comedy together write
jokes. My point is, even if youdon't join me in a workshop, but
of course, I welcome you to dothat. If you have a group of
people you like to create with,or shall I say, find people you
(38:19):
like to create with who are notout to fix you? Who's your
critics carefully, becausepeople who try to help you will
tell you, oh, well, that's notlet me fix this. And you should
do this. And you should do that.
Those people are not helpful.
You want people who just helpyou create and generate so you
can finally get something onpage because otherwise you'll
just feel like paralyzed justlike your daughter trying to
pick her high school, right? SoI think pick your people very
(38:42):
carefully. If you're reading abook that starts to make you
feel bad about all of it, stopreading that book, only consume
the things that keep you going.
My favorite books are the onesthat I have to stop reading
because they get me so excited.
I have to go write something.
Those are the books to abandon.
Morten Andersen (38:57):
There might be some people who are thinking
well, I my life is not it's notvery interesting stuff.
Terri Trespicio (39:02):
Like there's no such thing as an interesting
topic or not interesting topic.
everyone's life is interesting.
Why do we read books aboutpeople who have jobs that might
not be sound exciting? Why do weyou know, love to read a tell
all by a bellhop in a hotel,right? Like, the idea is,
interest comes from meaning themeaning you find and the way we
(39:23):
connect with other people. Soyou I don't have an exciting
life like nothing major everhappened to me that is so
extraordinary. You don't haveto, that is not what makes
content worth sharing. It's howmuch do other people connect
with you, if you can find anaudience.
Morten Andersen (39:38):
So in terms of passion, you know, that's not
the right place to start. Italso can lock you or maybe even,
you know, paralyze you Instead,try to create stories and find
meaning in those through thosestories. And that will tell you
what it is that you enjoy life.
enjoy doing a lot of what youshould stay away from and That
will help you create greatchoices in your life is that
Terri Trespicio (40:03):
yes, but also don't stay away from passion.
I'm just saying, don't think youhave to pick out you have to
wear for the rest of your life.
I only will like gravitatetoward things that feel good for
me to do because I have theluxury of doing that I get to
pick out for myself. But can youfind something exciting and fun
that you'd like to learn nomatter what job you're in.
Because people go, I want tofind my passion or I have to get
a job, you can find something.
(40:25):
So in fact, I would say don'tput passion in the backseat.
Make sure you bring it with you.
No matter what you're doing.
Where can you find that you'regood at something. Because when
you master something passioncomes invited along, enjoy it.
But realize it's not the onlyemotion you're meant to feel.
Morten Andersen (40:40):
That's a great place to end this conversation.
Terri, thanks a lot for takingthe time to speak with me. I
really, really enjoyed that. Iwill look forward to your book
and early next year. And untilthen I can just tell listeners
that they can go to yourwebsite, there's actually a lot.
It's a great blog there. Butit's also, as you say, a free
(41:00):
download. Please go and checkout your your several TED Talks,
which are really good. So thanksa lot for taking the time to
speak with me.
Terri Trespicio (41:09):
Thank you.
Morten Andersen (41:16):
What a great interview, Terri is a fantastic
inspiration. And I took threethings away from my talk with
her. One, stop searching foryour passion. the working title
for her upcoming book isactually unfollow your passion.
But what Terri is telling us isthat we should move away from
how do I find my passion,because that's not helping us at
(41:38):
all. Because we don't follow ourpassion. Our passion follows us.
That means that when we dosomething meaningful, something
we love, then we'll find ourpassion, not by sitting down in
front of a piece of paper andmaking it up beforehand. That
way is more likely to paralyzeus, rather than setting us free.
(42:00):
To find your extraordinarymoments. Tara defines passion as
the way you feel when you givesomething your energy and
attention and you feel it givingit back to you. And a good way
to do that is to identifymoments in your life when you
are in flow, when time justflies when you're having fun.
(42:21):
What are you doing at thatmoment? Are there any patterns
in those moments? Are there somethings that you do more often in
those moments, perhaps peopleyou're with or things that you
do? Those extraordinary momentswill lead you to understand what
your passion is. And finally,number three, find your stories
(42:42):
and articulate them in acompelling way. Terri is a
writer and she helps people findtheir stories. So he uses a
method called gateless writingmethod to help people get their
stories out of their head andout of their bodies and onto a
piece of paper. And through thatprocess. You will unlock your
(43:02):
creative genius as Terry Colesaid, and through those stories,
you'll find your extraordinarymoments. Terri is a great
speaker and has made two TEDxtalks that I will encourage you
to see and listen to. One iscalled Stop Searching for your
Passion which has currently morethan 6 million views and with
good reason. So enjoy them.
Until next time, take care
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