The School of Greatness - 840 Find Your Area of Destiny

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

WHAT TURNS YOUR CRANK? We often define ourselves by what job we do. I’m an accountant. I’m a teacher. I work in finance. But maybe we’re thinking about our careers in the wrong parameters. Instead of finding a job, we should be trying to find a way to feel excited and fulfilled every day. If you wake up with dread, you feel like you’re in a suit that’s too small, or you’re uninspired, you’re probably not in the right place. So how do we figure out what we’re meant to do? It’s not easy. But it’s worth trying to figure out. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Suzy Welch where she shares how to find your “Area of Destiny.” Suzy Welch is a business journalist, TV commentator, and public speaker. A popular Today Show and CNBC contributor, Suzy is the author of the New York Times bestseller 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, a guide to values-driven decision making. With her husband, Jack Welch, Suzy founded the Jack Welch Management Institute, ranked as one of the top online MBA programs in the world by Princeton Review and CEO Magazine. In This Episode You Will Learn: About the sermon that gave Suzy the idea of the “Area of Destiny” (2:30) The two types of “Super Highways” (3:30) How to find what you’re uniquely good at (4:00)

This is 5-Minute Friday! Very excited about today's guest. Had a lovely time connecting and interviewing Susie Welsh. And for those that don't know who Susie is, she's a former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, is a work-life columnist for O, the Oprah Magazine. She's a co-author with her husband, Jack Welsh, of the New York Times bestselling book called Winning and the Welsh Way, which

published in Businessweek Magazine and internationally by the New York Times Syndicate. She is involved in several nonprofit organizations dealing with education, homelessness, and animal rights, and she is a mother of four children. The answer that we give to this question is, it revolves around this concept called area of destiny. And we urge people to do the really hard work, the really hard analysis of figuring out what their area of destiny is, and then going there. Just not think about jobs and to not think about industries really as much

as to think about area of destiny. So just to explain that concept, the idea of area of destiny, we first came to it five or six years ago. We were a church and a pastor named Terry Smith was visiting our church. He actually runs a church called Life Christian Church in West Orange, New Jersey, Terry Smith. And he was preaching about living the abundant life. And he mentioned this term, area of destiny, which we immediately started to, in our minds, start to think about the business applications of it. And he talked about the abundant life existing at the intersection of what you're uniquely good at and what you love doing. And so let's just step back from that for a minute and just talk about it. So everybody is uniquely good at something, okay? Even though it may not feel like that on

some days, but you're uniquely good at something. A person can be uniquely good at making strangers feel welcome or solving very complex math problems with two variables if there's such a thing. Or say in my case, I've always been sort of good at taking complex sort of academic concepts and boiling them down into very regular vernacular. So I mean everybody is sort of uniquely good. And by uniquely good, I mean you're not the best person in the world, but you're better than the vast majority of people at something. Okay. And then if you think about that sort of superhighway, what you're uniquely good at, and then take the other superhighway, which is what you love doing. Is it being with other people? Is it talking? Is it watching TV? Is it walking alone on a beach? Is it reading? Is it traveling? Okay.

If you think about your calendar over the past month, what were the things that you were doing that just turned your crank, right? And you intersect that, what you're uniquely good at and what you love doing. It creates this beautiful, rich, emotional and intellectual real estate that is this area of destiny. Okay. And if you can, I get there. I mean, everyone can. I mean, I've talked about air of destiny in front of, at this point, tens of thousands

of people. And I mean, I love to look at the faces in the audience as people suddenly realize, oh, yeah, well, I'm nowhere near my area of destiny, but I sure as heck know where I know where it is. And so if you're just coming out of college or if you're floating around and if you feel like you're in a suit that's too small or you just can't breathe or you just hate the day, okay? You got to just sit down and think about what your destiny is. And sometimes when I say it's hard work, you need to ask people, what am I uniquely

good at? Or if you think you know what you're uniquely good at, you need to go ask people, am I uniquely good at this? And you need to just determine that. Then you start thinking about jobs and industries. That's the beginning. That's the beginning. Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips

for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.