Before you try to figure out what you love, take some time to follow up on what you like. Instead of seeking a big epiphany about what you want to do for your entire life, make a small effort to explore a few things that seem interesting to you right now. Commitment isn’t the starting point for creating your life. Curiosity is.
Tag: passion
Make Waves
If you love running, for instance, and you’re struggling to get back into a steady routine, don’t make it an all or nothing enterprise by pressuring yourself to run five miles right out of the gate.
Your Feelings Are Not the Enemy
Feelings are not demons to be exorcised. They’re muses to be channeled. When it comes to so-called “negative” feelings, I prefer the aikido method: Redirect the energy instead of resisting it.
Unschooling Has No “Last Day”
For unschoolers, learning is woven into the continuous, year-round, natural process of living. It is not separated into certain subject silos or reserved for a specified number of hours or days. It is not orchestrated by a linear, sequential curriculum determining how, when, and in what ways a human will learn. It is not pre-determined. It is not forced.
Women Aren’t Especially Empathetic
I had a student years ago that was active, playful, distracting, had a short attention span, liked to roughhouse, was an independent thinker and lacked reverence for authority. However, he was incredibly non-malicious and friendly. The teachers and parents (mostly women) in the organization strongly disliked this child.
Encouragement as Bad as Discouragement
In our society, we commonly and appropriately demonize discouragement because we see it as someone interjecting themselves into this exploration. Discouragement is a tool to distort the exploration of a child in favor of the insecurities and self-interest of the discourager. It is a means of the adult trying to live through their child. Discouragement is someone trying to tip and distort the scales within the ecosystem of a child’s discovery process. The last paragraph also perfectly describes the problems of encouragement.
The Voluntaryist Ethnicity
As my family has traveled the country and met or stayed with other voluntaryists and unschoolers, I can’t help but notice certain general customs among people and families of this kind. Without putting anybody in a box or limiting how it is expressed or experienced, here is the voluntaryist ethnicity as I’ve seen it.
Why Unschoolers Grow Up to Be Entrepreneurs
Almost by definition, entrepreneurs are creative thinkers and experimental doers. They reject the status quo and devise new approaches and better inventions. They are risk-takers and dreamers, valuing ingenuity over convention. They get things done. It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that many unschoolers become entrepreneurs.
The Law of the Instrument
What is your favorite tool? Is it so familiar or compelling that you are tempted to employ it in all contexts? The law of the instrument illustrates this tendency.
You Don’t Need to Make a Career out of Everything You Love
The people who tell you to “do what you love” have always been right. After all, what’s the alternative? Refusing to do what you love? Where you’ll go wrong, however, is if you make the mistake of equating “do what you love” with “find a way to get paid for every single thing you love or else you’re wasting your time.” Whatever you do, don’t do that.