Specifically what do you love?
I often ask participants in workshops to share something they could talk about for hours. (Sometimes I must add the caveat that I’m not inviting them to talk about it right now — just to name it for the rest of us! And if they struggle to think of an answer, it can help to mention that it may be the thing that makes their kids roll their eyes and say, “Don’t get them started on that!”)
Are you already thinking about how you’d answer that question?
A few things I notice every time:
- What we love is very specific. (Thank you to Marcus Buckingham for first drawing this to my attention in Love + Work)
- People light up. Even just describing in a few sentences their quirky obsessions, their energy shifts.
- My energy shifts too. Listening to people talk about what they love, even if it’s something I don’t know or care about at all, is one of my quirky, specific loves.
What if we shifted the timeframe and invited you to look back on your future? I’m reading Jane McGonigal’s book Imaginable. She is a futurist and game designer who recommends building your imagination skills by looking ten years ahead — it’s a timeframe that feels unhurried, during which almost anything can happen. So here we are in August 2036 — you’ve woken up very excited about something. What is it? What enjoyable obsession is filling your mind these days?
What might it look like to host this conversation with your team — to imagine collectively what your organization most loves doing ten years from now?
In The Gift of Restlessness (with thanks to Paul Hubert for the recommendation), Casey Tygrett suggests that our search for purpose can often be satisfied by paying close attention to what we love. How vivid is your picture of your “divine dream,” today and ten years out?