23 Dec Pushing The Limits Daily
Passion and love for what you do are the key elements of innovation. You need to know what would be capable of impassioning you to see where and how you can generate a greater impact, hence overcoming your own limits every day. This behavioral trait appears in many great leaders and innovators who pursue what is considered the impossible. However, 80% of people do not like what they do, as Scott Dinsmore explains in the TEDx Talk below, titled “How to find and do work you love”.
Finding people with real passion for their work is not easy. Scott Dinsmore, coach and founder of Live Your Legend, raises the issue in the talk that those with a true passion for what they do, it being a job or a hobby, can change the world and, of course, inspire others. In the video, three steps are proposed to achieve this:
- Define yourself (find your unique strengths, namely that in which you are naturally good; find your values, what sets you apart and allows you to make decision, and take advantage of your experiences to learn from what inspires you).
- Overcome your own limitations.
- Surround yourself with people who inspire possibility.
According to Scott Dinsmore, defining who you are in this way allows you to make an impact, in whatever subject matter, and overcome your own impossibilities because, as he says, “everything is impossible until someone does it”. But 80% of people are complaining, putting limits and persuading others that things do not matter or cannot be done, he says.
Nonetheless, there are also many inspiring examples of actions and people who go against this pragmatic world and show a complete passion for what they do (inside and outside the environment of innovation), helping change things. Recently, I read an interview in the Spanish daily El Mundo with Miguel Illescas, famed Spanish chess player and companies’ consultant, who posed a very inspiring case, that of fellow chess player Magnus Carlsen. He explained this:
“(… ) Carlsen’s message to the world is his game. ( … ) A few days ago, in Saint Louis, with stalemate, he was champion; he played a tough match against one of the world’s top two chess players. The position seemed stalemate, the other tried to deceive him for half an hour and finally offers stalemate. Carlsen looks at him and says now I cannot. And he gambles the title in the tournament, only for the whim of rejecting the stalemate, by the psychological fact of saying, Take note that you nor the rest of the world cannot have me fooling around on an equal position.
This is real passion for what he does and an amazing spirit of perfection.