What was I born to do?

Throughout this course, so far we have studied creating a vision of our future self.  This has included examining our childhood dreams, the goals we have for our future, and the core values that we want to embody.  Each of these components are crucial for setting our own personal course to who we want to become. I am fully on board with this line of thinking.  It resonates with me and I embrace it whole heartedly.  But there is still a big looming question mark to this plan that I just haven't figured out yet.  What was I born to do?

In the video segment, "Do What You Love," Tom Kelley talks about a time when he heard Jim Collins lecture concerning a Venn diagram that had as the three intersecting circles: 

What are you good at?

What were you born to do?

What will people pay you for?

Mr. Kelley related that people usually have a pretty good handle on knowing what they're good at and market research is really helpful to know what kinds of things people will pay you for, but finding out what you were born to do is much harder.  Boy howdy. In all my pondering, praying, dreaming, goal setting, path setting, and planning, I have yet to identify this concept. The problem is that unless I can, all the other stuff won't hit the nail on the head for helping me build a happy and fulfilled life.

Luckily for me, Mr. Kelley also related that Jim Collins had a suggestion for how to find what you were born to do. He suggested keeping a lab notebook on yourself; a journal where you specifically jot down what it was that you were doing when you were really enjoying yourself, when you were in your flow.  Apparently Jim Collins had kept such a notebook about himself for over two years in which he discovered that he consistently marked down that he was happiest when he was teaching and when we was working with complex systems that had lots of moving parts.  This led him to discover that he was born to teach about systems and he did that for Stanford University. 

Genius!  Why haven't I thought of that?  Journaling is such an excellent way to learn about yourself and examine your own thoughts as they grow over time.  Unfortunately, it's not something that I have been very consistent with in my life so far, but that's ok.  It just means that I've now discovered my next steppingstone goal in my pathway to becoming my best self. I'm going to make a short journal entry every day examining what I did that day that brought me joy. I'll review it every Sunday until I can see a pattern emerge that shows me what I was born to do. I'm pretty excited about this! It's about time I figured this out and I know without a doubt that it will be the key to answering many of the questions that I've agonized over the last few years.  So thanks Mr. Kelley and Mr. Collins. It's discovery time!