How to find and do work you love | Scott Dinsmore (part 2), Career Near Me

How to find and do work you love | Scott Dinsmore (part 2), Career Near Me

LiveYourLegend and the group that we’ve built wouldn’t exist if I didn’t have this compass to identify Wow this is something I want to pursue and make a difference with. If we don’t know what we are looking for, we are never going to find it. But once we have this framework – this compass, then we move on to what’s next. That’s not me up there — But doing the impossible and pushing our limits, because there are 2 reasons why people don’t do things: one is because they tell themselves they can’t do them and the other is people around them tell them, they can’t do. Either way we start to believe it. Either we give up or we never start in the first place.

Everything was impossible until somebody did it. Every invention, every new thing in the world people thought were crazy at first. Roger Bannister in the 4-minute mile it was a physical impossibility to break the 4 minute mile in a footrace. So Roger Bannister stood up and did it.

Now what happened. 2 months later, like 16 people broke the 4-minule mile. The things that we have in our head that we think are impossible, are often just milestones waiting to get accomplished if we can push those limits a little bit. I think it starts with your physical body and physical fitness more than anything as we can control that. You show yourself, you don’t think you can run a mile, you show yourself you can run a mile or two even like a marathoner, lose 5 pounds, whatever it is… you realize that can be transferred – that confidence compounds can be transferred into the rest of your world.

I’ve actually gotten into the habit of this little bit. With my friends, we have little group, we kind of go on physical adventures Recently, I found myself in kind of precarious spot. I’m terrified of deep dark blue water. I don’t know if anyone has ever had that same fear ever since they watched Jaws 1,2,3,4 like six-times, when I was a kid, but anything above here if it’s murky… I can already feel it right now… I swear there’s something in there. Even it’s late toho, it’s fresh water… totally unfounded fear, ridiculous but it’s there.

Anyway, 3 years ago I found myself on this tugboat right down here in San Francisco Bay. It’s a rainy, stormy, windy day and people are getting sick on the boat and I’m sitting there wearing a wetsuit. And I’m looking out the window and pure terror and thinking about to swim to my dad and trying to swim across the Golden Gate. My guess is some people in this room might have done it before. I’m sitting there and my buddy Jonathan talking me into it. He comes up to me and he could see that state I was in. He comes up: Scott, hey man, what’s the worst I can have it? You’re wearing a wetsuit, you’re not going to sink and if you can’t make it, just topple on one of the 20 kayaks plus if there’s a shark attack, why are they going to pick you over the 80 people that are in the water? – Thanks, that helps. No really… just have fun with this. He said, Good luck and he dives in and swims off. Ok. It turns out that pep talk totally worked and I felt this total feeling of calm.

I think it was because Jonathan was 13 years old. And of the 80 people swimming that day 65 of them were between ages of 9 and 13. Think for a second how you would approach your world differently that 9-years-old you found out – you could swim 1.5 mile in 56°F water from — in San Francisco. What would you say yes to? What would you have not given up on? What would you have tried?

As I’m finishing the swim, I get to aquatic park and getting out of the water and of course half of the kids already finished so they cheered me on and were all excited and I got total pots go head, if anyone has ever swim in the Bay and I’m trying to just – saw my face out and I’m watching people finish. And I see this one kid something didn’t look right. He was just flaying like this and he’s barely sip some air before slam his head back down. And I noticed other parents were watching too and I swear they were thinking the same thing I was: This is why you don’t let 9-year-old swim from Alcatraz. I mean, this was not fatigue. Also two parents run and they grab him and put him on their shoulders and drag him like this… and I mean, totally limp… and all of a sudden they walk up from their feet and they plod him down in his wheelchair. And he puts his fist up in the most insane show of victory I’ve ever seen. I could still feel the warmth and the energy on this guy when he made his accomplishment. I had seen him earlier that day in his wheelchair, I had no idea that he was going to swim.

Where he’s going to be in 20 years? How many people have told him he could not do that that he’d die to try that? He proved people wrong, you prove yourself wrong that you can make these little incremental pushes of what you believe is possible for yourself. You don’t have to be fastest marathoner…. just your own impossibility… to accomplish those. It’s sort of little bity steps and the best way to do this is to surround yourself with passionate people. The fastest way to do things you don’t thinking it can be done, is to surround yourself with people already doing that. There is a quote by Jim Rohn [1930-2009], and he says, You are the average of the 5 people, you spend most time with. There is no bigger life hack in history of the world from getting where you are today to where you want to be than the people you choose to put in your corner. They change everything and it’s a proven fact.

In 1898 Norman Triplett did this study with a bunch of cyclists. He measured their times around the track in a group and also individually. And he found that every time the cyclists in the group, it cycled faster. It’s been repeated in all kinds of walks of life since then and it prooves the same thing over and over again: The people around you matter and environment is everything. But it’s on you to control it, because it can go both ways.

I was doing all I could and there were only 3 people paying attention and they are all right there: my mother, father and my wife Chelsea. Thank you guys for the support – and it grew by 0% for 4 years and I was about to shut it down. And right about then I moved to San Francisco and started meeting some pretty interesting people that these crazy lifestyles, who had venture businesses and websites and blogs that surrounded their passions and help people in a meaningful way.

One of my friends, now he has a family of 8 and he supports his whole family with a blog that he writes toward twice a week. He just came back from a month in Europe, all of them together. It sort of blew my mind, how does this even exist? And I got unbelievably inspired by seeing this. And instead of shutting it down, I decided let’s take it seriously.

I did everything I could to spend my time around like every waking hour possible trying to — these guys with hanging out and having beers and work outs… whatever it was. After 4 years of zero growth, in 6 months of hanging around these people the community LifeYourLegend grew by 10 times and in another 12 months it grew by 160 times. And today over 30000 people from 158 countries use our career and connection tools on a monthly basis. And those people have made up that community of passionate folks who inspire that possibility that they had dream of from LiveYourLegend so many years back.

The people change everything. And this is why… notice what was going on – for 4 years, I knew nobody in this space. And I didn’t even know they existed… that people could do this stuff. You could have movement like this. And then all of a sudden I’m over in San Francisco and everyone around me is doing it. It became normal.

So my thinking went from how could I possibly do this? to how could I possibly not? Right then, when that happens, that switch goes on in your head it ripples across your whole world. Without even trying your standards go from here to here. You don’t need to change your goals or anything, you just need to change your surroundings. That’s it. And that’s why I love being around this whole group of people, why I go to every TED event I can, watch them on my iPad on the way to work wherever it is, because this is the group of people that inspires possibility. We have a whole day to spend together and plenty more.

Something’s up in terms of what we…. these 3 pillars: They all have one thing in common, more than anything else that are 100% in our control. No one can tell you, you can’t learn about yourself. No one can tell you, you can’t push your limits and learn your own impossible and push that. No one can tell you, you can’t surround yourself with inspiring people or get away from the people who bring you down.

You can’t control recession, you can’t control getting fired or getting a car accident… most things are totally out of our hands. These 3 things are totally on us. And they can change our whole world if we decide to do something about it. These things starting to happen on a widespread level I just read in Forbes: the US government reported for the first time, in a month where more people had quit their jobs than had been laid off. I thought it was an anomaly but it’s happened 3 months straight. In a time when people claim it’s kind of tough environment, people are pretty much giving middle finger to this scripted life, the things that people say you’re supposed to do in exchange for things that matter to them and do the things that inspire them.

And the thing is people waking up to the possibility that really the only thing that limits possibility now, is imagination. It’s not a cliché anymore. I don’t care what it is that you’re into, what passion, what hobby, if you are into median, you can find someone who is killing it and you can learn from them. It’s wild. And that’s what this whole day is about to learn from the folks speaking and — LiveYourLegend everyday. Because it shows people, when ordinary people are doing extraordinary, we can be around that, it becomes normal.

This isn’t about being Gandhi or Steve Jobs or something crazy. It’s just about doing something that matters to YOU and makes impact that only you can make. As we’re speaking of Gandhi: He was a recovering lawyer as I’ve heard that term. And he was called due to a greater cause. Something mattered to him, he could not do. And he has this quote that I absolutely live by: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.

Everything was impossible until somebody did it. You can either hang around the people who tell you it can’t be done and tell you’re stupid for trying or surround yourself with the people who inspire possibility, the people, who are in this room. Because I see it as our responsibility to show the world that what’s seen as impossible can become that new normal. That’s already starting to happen.

First, do the things that inspire us, so we can inspire other people to do the things that inspire them. But we can’t find that unless we know what we are looking for. We have to do our work on ourselves, be intentional about that, make those discoveries. Because I imagine a world, where 80% of people love the work they do. What would that look like..? What would the innovation be like? How would you treat people around you? Things would start to change.

As we finish off, I just have one question to ask you guys, and it’s the only question that matters. And it’s: What is the work you cannot do? Discover that, live it, not just for you, but for everybody around you. Because that is what starts to change the world. What is the work you cannot do?

Thank you, guys.