Remain curious as you connect your passion, purpose, and pursuits.
What might you be denying? What is your true self?
What is your true identity and what is a mask?
Where is the thin place that may help you gain perspective?

~~~~~

This past week I reviewed a chapter for a forthcoming book on transformational leadership and community development.  Midway through the piece, I found this quote attributed to physicist Richard Feynman:

Place your focus on what you want to do rather than what you want to be.

I thought of:

• The students who have difficulty choosing a major. OR they enter college pushed by someone else’s vision of what they should be. They come to college looking to be a certain something (doctor, nurse, teacher, writer, entrepreneur, or …) and along the way to their degrees they get tripped up by what they really want to do.

• Former colleagues who made a switch from faculty ranks to be an administrator and found out that was not what they had a passion to do.

• Committees I wanted to be a part of and eventually determined it was not what I wanted to do.

Feynman’s quote may be a reminder that on our way to settling on what we want to be it would healthy to examine if that end result leads to what we want to do with our lives. True, at times, we don’t have a clear understanding of what a to be will require us to do. But it is a nudge to keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open to what is connecting with our souls as we invest our life energy in a project, relationship, or career.

The to be maybe the title. The to do is the purpose.

Remain curious as you connect your passion, purpose, and pursuits. What might you be denying? What is your true self? What is your true identity and what is a mask? Where is the thin place that may help you gain perspective?

~~~~~

Video recommendation for the week:

Parker Palmer speaks about The Divided Life.

~~~~~

Make it a great week and HTRB has needed.

You will find my latest book, Roxie Looks for Purpose Beyond the Biscuit, in
eBook ($2.99) and paperback ($9.99) format. Click here.

My dog Roxie gets top billing on the author page for this work. Without her, there would be no story.  Please, check out her blog.

And you can still order:

• Community as a Safe Place to Land (2019, print and e-book). Available on Amazon. More information (including seven free podcast episodes that spotlight the seven core values highlighted in the book) at the above link.
• Stories about Teaching: No Need to be an Island (2017, print and e-book). Available on Amazon. One college’s new faculty onboarding program uses the scenarios in this book. Contact me if you and your team are interested in doing the same. The accompanying videos (see the link above) would serve to stimulate community-building conversations at the beginning of a meeting.

My podcasts (all 50 episodes) can be found here.

You will find more about me at www.stevepiscitelli.com.

©2021. Steve Piscitelli
The Growth and Resilience Network®