Passionate Opportunities

This week I have had to learn a difficult lesson on my educational journey.  I have been very fortunate so far to have instructors that care about their role as an instructor and care about my success.   This semester, I have ended up with an absent instructor and I haven't known how to deal with that.  It's been frustrating and discouraging and left me questioning several choices.  I finally had to come to the conclusion that I can't change his level of involvement but I can definitely change what I get out of the class.  I might have to spend extra time with a tutor, Kahn Academy, YouTube, and Google, but I will learn the information in this class.  While it's disappointing, I wont let this one teacher undermine my educational path.  This has also made me appreciate even more the excellent teachers I have had so far. 

Here are a few things I learned from this week's material:

"How Do You Find Your Passion & How Do You Pursue It?"  Randy Komisar

Two things stood out to me from this video.  The first was, "Rather than thinking about the passion, allow yourself to think about a portfolio of passions."  I have often struggled to find my passion in life.  But now I can look at myself as having a true portfolio of passions, because there are a lot of things that I love and am good at.   The second thing that stood out was to "Marry your portfolio of passions with the opportunities in front of you."  Now I will consider my passions a portfolio of passionate opportunities!

"A Hero's Journey" Jeff Sandefer

I really enjoyed watching this talk and came away with some great insights. 

What does a Hero's Journey mean?  It means:

• Living every moment of your life like it matters.
• Seeing struggles as adventures.
• Seeing setbacks as lessons.
• It isn't the prize at the end but how the hero is changed in the journey.  

At the end of life, only three questions will matter.

1. Have I contributed something meaningful?
2. Am I a good person?
3. Who did I love and who loved me?

In the quest to find your true mission in life, I liked his suggestion to ask five people what you do you better than anybody else.  Sometimes we forget that others observe us and can offer us insight that we might not be able to see.  I also liked his reminder to have good ethical guardrails and to surround ourselves with people of character. 

One thing he said that really stood out to me was, "Failure seen in reverse will make you stronger."  Last week I had to make a list of fears and make contingencies to face those fears if they were realized.  I think it's easy to allow our fear of failure to keep us from trying.  But jumping in and risking failure definitely provides us with the opportunities to grow and become stronger.  While I would never wish for failure, I know that I can overcome it and end up stronger because of it.