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

it possible to have more than one Element? Of course it is. You have many aptitudes and your Element may evolve over time as your talents mature and your interests change.

For our purposes here, there are two ways in which formal education often gets in the way of finding your Element. The first is that most systems of education operate on a very narrow view of aptitudes. The second is that they often disregard the different ways in which individuals actually learn.

finding your Element involves three processes.

You live as we all do in two worlds.

The reason Dr. Schwartz examines family history so carefully is that he sees family background as fundamental to a person’s outlook on career.

you may need to challenge ideas about yourself that you and others have come to take for granted.

Of course, you cannot do everything. Part of the purpose of meditating and reflecting is to identify the experiences that matter most for you and find out how to make them possible.

fact, many—perhaps a majority—of people move in completely different directions once they cast off from college and set sail in the world. Most graduates then discover that they are actually interested in other things.

But the process itself is based on three elemental principles that apply to everyone.

When you’re in your Element, your sense of time changes. If you’re doing something that you love, an hour can feel like five minutes; if you are doing something that you do not, five minutes can feel like an hour.