The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

"What I hope you will find here is a new way of looking at your own potential and the potential of those around you.""The Element: How finding your passion changes everything" by Sir Ken Robinson is a book on passion, creativity, and, most importantly, education. In this book, he tells you how different people ranging from Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Meg Ryan (the actress), Paul Samuelson (the economist), Paolo Coelho (The Alchemist.. sorry, the writer) found their passion, their Element. His contention is that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct and typical hierachical and standardised education squandered them.Sir Ken Robinson works in education and he caught eyes of millions in his all-time favourite talk in the TED conference in 2005. You might want to take a look at the 20 minutes talk before reading the book. I have found his talk tremendously inspirational and my review might be biased. But I would encourage you to also be biased and inspired by this intelligent and witty thinker.Contents(every chapter is filled with amazing stories of different amazing people in the world. In this briefing, I could not list all or even half of them) (I also copy (plagiarise) lots of words from the book and I hope it did not terribly violate the copyright!)Chapter One: The ElementThe chapter starts with Gillian Lynne and Matt Groening who were hopeless at school but ending up giving pleasure to millions around the world because they found their Element - "the place where the things you love to do and the things you are good at come together." Sir Ken Robinson explained that the Element has two main features and two conditions aptitude (I get it), passion (I love it), attitude (I want it), opportunity (Where is it?).Chapter Two: Think DifferentlyWe take things for granted. When asked how many senses we possess; people normally answer five or six. That is taking things for granted. Psychologists and scientists assert that there are four more. Likewise, when we talk about intelligence, people often refer it to IQ. That is taking things for granted. Sir Ken Robinson tells us that three features of intelligence are that it is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. And we should rather ask "How are you intelligent?" than "How intelligent are you?"Chapter Three: Beyond ImaginingThis chapter starts with three myths of creativity. One myth is that only special people are creative. Another myth is that creativity is about special activities like the arts, design, or advertising. The third myth is that people are either creative or not. Sir Ken said they are all not true. He wrote how imagination is different from creativity and how we should develop both. There are also stories of George Harrison (The Beatles) and how he and Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne created a wonderful album and how an American physicist, Richard Faynman won a Nobel Prize.Chapter Four: In the Zone"To be in the zone is to be in the deep heart of the Element." "...it transforms our experience of the Element. We become focused and intent. We live the moment. We become lost in the experience and perform at our peak." The Zone is the place or time where we feel the true sense of freedom and authenticity. Sir Ken Robinson wrote that we are often confined in boxes like the MBTI personality test that group people into sixteen personality types. "My guess is that sixteen personality types might be a bit of an underestimate. My personal estimate would be closer to six billion."Chapter Five: Finding Your TribeThe chapter starts with Meg Ryan and how she met different people who gradually shape her Element. "Being a part of this tribe brings her to the Element." People trying to find their Element need a place to discover themselves. Sir Ken talked about two distinct ideas; "domain" (the sorts of activities and disciplines people are engaged in) and "field" (the other people who are engaged in it). He also told us the difference between the tribe and the crowd.Chapter Six: What Will They Think?The three circles of constraint which are the barriers to finding the Element are personal, social, and cultural. In this chapter, he wrote about the disabled artist who would not give in to his disadvantage, the story of Paolo Coelho and his family, the Huffington Post (one of the most popular blogs) founder, and Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture who grew up in Iraq.Chapter Seven: Do You Feel Lucky?Attitude plays an important role in finding your Element. People who find their Element often say they are lucky despite difficulties and unfortunate circumstances. Sir Ken Robinson wrote about himself when he was very young and caught polio when he was four. He wrote about an accidentally blind John Wilson who played a crucial role in curing blindness for millions in Africa. According to the study of the psychologist Richard Wiseman, lucky people tend to maximise chance opportunities; they tend to be very effective at listening to their intuition; they tend to expect to be lucky; and they have an attitude that allows them to turn bad luck to good.Chapter Eight: Somebody Help MeMost people who found their Element often have mentors who help them. The important lesson from this chapter is that mentors have four significant roles, recognition, encouragement, facilitating, and stretching.Chapter Nine: Is It Too Late?"Lady Di could be bicycling nude down the street giving this book away, and no one would read it." was the comment Susan Jeffers received from a publisher directing at her book "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" before it had been sold millions of copies. And she only started writing properly into her forties. People's life expectancy has risen in the past century and although we cannot be a gold medalist in Olympics when we are sixty but Sir Ken Robinson wrote about lots of successful people who found their Element later in their lives. "One of the fundamental precepts of the Element is that we need to reconnect with ourselves and to see ourselves holistically."Chapter Ten: For Love or MoneyNot all those who find their Element have to be professionals. Sir Ken Robinson shows us the new way of looking at amateur. The word derives from the Latin word amator, "which means lovers, devoted friend, or someone who is in avid pursuit of an objective." In this chapter, you will find lots of people who find their Element as an amateur; they do not do it for a living, just the love of it. Sir Ken tells us the difference between leisure and recreation. While leisure offers a respite, a passive break from the challenges of the day, "recreation carries a more active tone - literally of re-creating ourselves."Chapter Eleven: Making the GradeSir Ken Robinson focuses on education in this chapter and the most renown example would be Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin. The problem with an education system is the hirarchy of disciplines (subjects) in schools and the other is that conformity has a higher value than diversity. There are more college graduates now than ever and degrees worth less now. More people who graduate in this generation could not find job because they need higher degree, the so-called academic inflation. In this chapter, Sir Ken tells us the new, alternative education system that might turn schools into, an analogy of, high quality customised restaurant rather than a fast food chain with standardised and unimaginative products....I'll compare this book to an ideal business book; a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience. Although this book is not purely business but it can be directly applied.Ease of Understanding: 9/10: This book is written in plain English and it is a really easy read. It is very harmonious and stories are weaved perfectly into the content of the chapters. Most stories are filled with conversations and clear points.Distinction: 8/10: We all know the power of passion and how it affects our lives. Apart from numerous stories from people whom Sir Ken Robinson encountered, there is a fundamental distinction in the book which is how conventional education system is hindering the creativity of children.Practicality: 5/10: There are two sides to view the book; one is that the author, Sir Ken Robinson, did not offer any sound and practical advice for readers to follow; the other view is that there is no specific guideline to reach your Element. He said that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. There are numerous kind of intelligence, linguistic, musical, mathematical, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intra-personal. Intelligence is dynamic; it does not follow a linear pattern. And it is distinctive; it is as unique as a fingerprint. Thus, it's yours to find.Credibility: 9/10: All the stories in the book are real, not fictional or theoretical. All the findings are either scientific or psychological findings. There is no reason not to believe him. The one point taken is that although his advices in education are exceptionally inspiring and true, we do not know the extent of it. Nobody knows if we follow the advice especially in education, how it may play out. It might be good but not as great as Sir Ken expected or it might be even better.Insight: 8/10: All the stories in the book are extraordinary and the book is a great compilation of great and inspiring stories. The psychological findings are sufficient and intriguing albeit not too deep.Reading Experience: 10/10: This is, by far, the most inspiring book I have read. From the introduction, regarding the stories in the book, "None of them have "perfect" lives. But all of them regularly experience moments that feel like perfection. Their stories are often fascinating." he continues "But this book isn't really about them. It's about you." So, if you read the book with an open mind, you will find a way to discover your Element. The range of people in the book is astonishingly diverse and I hope that one of them will trigger your imagination to reach your Element. I cannot praise it enough.Overall: 8.2/10: Am I biased? Probably. I am biased because Sir Ken Robinson gave a twenty minutes talk that changed the way I look at my life. I am biased because his book gave me inspiration that I look into the future with optimism and with passion. I am because that this book make me feel that "I" can pursue my dream with my creativity and intelligence. I am biased because this book tells me that my Element is there and it is for me to find it. So yes, I am biased in my review and I deeply hope that you will be biased like me and you will live the life you love. There is no one-size-fits-all but if any of my friends and family members want me to recommend a book on my shelf, they will fortunately get the same answer, The Element.

Many of us grew up believing that our IQ was an important, and unchangeable, measure of our intelligence. When not provided with our scores directly, we inferred them from how we managed in school. If we sailed through, we were comfortable with the notion that we were “bright”. Those of us who struggled and felt out of place in the highly structured environment often came away with a poor notion of our capacities in areas that seemed to matter – getting the right answer and proving how smart we were, as Sir Ken Robinson discusses in his animated speech to The Royal Society of Arts ([...]), and described with great compassion in this book, The Element.Happily, brain science has demonstrated that we can actually expand and refine our capacities throughout our lives. Intelligence is not a fixed quantity, and we have come to realize that IQ is only one measure of a specific type of intelligence, chiefly logical thinking and deductive reasoning. Humans are complex and evolving beings, with a huge variety of capacities, including linguistic, spatial, inter-and intra-personal, kinesthetic and musical, to name a few. As Sir Robinson points out in this book,The Element, the better question to ask is How Are You Intelligent? To find the answer, you need to know a good deal more than just your IQ score. You need to find your Element, the place where the things you love to do and the things you are good at come together.I loved school. To me, it was a haven of sanity and predictability. I understood what was asked of me and met those demands with relative ease. I had little difficulty sitting still, loved to delve deeply into information and presented a neat, organized appearance. Maybe you're like me and found your Element in the school environment. But perhaps you're much more like one of my children, who really struggled in school. She thrived on interruptions and bubbled with a rapid stream of new ideas and concepts. Homework and permission slips, if they made their appearance at all, were generally crumpled in the bottom of her backpack under a leaking juice box and a squashed lunch. Not surprisingly, she was described as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). She is very intelligent, but not in the way school systems are looking for. She sounded a lot like some of the children described in this book.In the era before Ritalin, children got a lot of exercise, usually unsupervised. We ran outside at recess and lunchtime, made snowmen in the winter, and in the warmer weather we played baseball, football, jumpsies, or skipped rope. We walked or biked everywhere. We didn’t have as many electronic gadgets to distract our attention. Classrooms were quieter, and the fidgetters knew they only had to hang in for another hour or so before they could get some relief.Knowing how we take action, how we are intelligent, and what we love to do is finding our Element. It’s an evolving process of assembling puzzle pieces and gathering clues. A life-changing epiphany followed by a complete life overhaul is not a requirement, although some people do experience it that way. More often, however, it comes through a gradual recognition of what feels right, what activities and environments allows us to feel most engaged and vital, and significantly, it’s not always what we do for paid work.Each of us is a complex and unique individual. Our question is to solve the mystery of who we are and where we are likely to flourish in the world. Let's each of us find Our Element.