Did you know that cities have personalities?? That in some cities you can feel at home, comfortable, like you fit in, while in other cities you can feel out of step with everyone else, like you are in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or that for some people, living in the middle of a big city makes them feel energized, like they feed off of the energy there, while for others the same environment makes them feel overwhelmed, like they are living in the middle of chaos and can’t find any calm.
Richard Florida, and urban economist, wrote a book a few years ago called Who’s Your City?, where he wrote about the personality of cities — how each city has a unique ‘personality’ that can either energize creative individuals, or can suck the creativity right out of you. Cities can affect your happiness level, your motivation, your ability to work, and a whole bunch of other psychological, sociological and economic factors. More information on this theory can be found on the page Does Your Environment Suit Your Personality?
Richard Florida’s basic theory of the personality of cities can be applied to any environment — rural, small town, beachfront community, co-housing community, etc.
Choosing the right environment for your personality is crucial to your designing and living your authentic life.
I grew up in the center of Toronto but moved to a very small town when I got married and couldn’t figure out why I was having difficulty fitting in. It felt like everyone else was part of a story that I just didn’t understand. This was well before I had read Richard Florida’s book and realized that there had been a personality conflict between myself and my environment.
The following worksheet can help you evaluate your environment: Your Environment
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
20 years from now, what will you regret not having done?? If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to make that bucket list and begin checking of each item as you complete it.
First item on my bucket list is to make my bucket list .….…… √ — completed, now on to item number two
If you could spend your time doing anything you wanted to, what activities would you be filling your days with??
We often get these images of what we perceive our ideal life should look like. Maybe you have just come back from an ideal vacation and dream about retiring to the location that you have just returned from. Or you are stuck in the middle of rush hour traffic that is going nowhere fast, with car horn’s blasting impatiently while your lungs fill with exhaust fumes and you start day dreaming about living in the middle of the country somewhere where all you can hear are birds twittering and cows mooing in lush green pastures.…..
For some people these dreams become reality that inexplicably turns into a living nightmare.
What often happens is that we become so enraptured by the dream that we don’t look at what the day to day reality of that lifestyle holds.
Activities that once were important and enjoyable parts of our lifestyle disappear without a trace with nothing comparable to replace them with. While we thought that living in the country was what we wanted, we might not realize how important having access to a local cafe or to the theater or to boutiques or to our friends and family really is to us. We tend to take activities that we do on a day to day basis for granted and don’t really know important they are to us until we no longer have access to them.
When I moved to New Zealand, I thought living there would be fantastic — after all, it was New Zealand and we were moving to Wellington. It was only after we got there with all of our worldly goods did I realize how many activities that I regularly participated in, were no longer available to me. The luster and excitement of moving to New Zealand quickly faded simply because I hadn’t been properly prepared beforehand.
In speaking with others, I have discovered that my experiences with New Zealand are not unique — locations that make ideal summer vacation locations aren’t quite so appealing during the off season, or vice versa. My in-laws used to live in the South of France, in Provence near Nice, and found that every summer they had to leave the area to escape the overwhelming number of tourists who flock there every July and August. Friends of mine fond the exact opposite — in their area of France summer is the best time of year because of all of the products and activities that are available because of the tourists. Off-season finds the products and activities they enjoyed during the summer (and was a major factor for them in their decision to move to the area) disappear, changing the whole personality of the area to one they are not so pleased with.
The following worksheet was developed to help you identify what activities are important to you, and that would affect the quality of your life if they were not available to you. Knowing this can help you determine where you want to live.
The Desired Activities Worksheet is a .pdf file and is available for download here →→→→ Desired Activities
The fifth factor to consider when designing your Authentic Life is the exploration of your past life and work experiences.
Past life and work experiences focuses on accessing areas in your life that you have experience in, and combining these experiences with your talents and skills to help design your Authentic Life. For example, if you traveled a lot for business, and traveling is something you enjoy doing, then you could look at ways to incorporate traveling into your life.
The experiences that you identify don’t have to involve activities that you are highly skilled at. They do, however, need to involve activities that you enjoy doing. Even though we have a talent for specific activities, experience can often show us that these activities are ones that we don’t necessarily want to design our lives around. On the other hand, our experiences can identify activities that we really enjoy doing, despite the fact that we don’t yet have the skills and talents to excel at these activities.
The exercise for exploring this key element is fairly straight forward:
Make a list of all the life and work experiences you have had that you are either very proud of (are there specific successes you have had, or things you have accomplished in your life that you are proud of?), or that you really enjoyed doing. These could be related to leisure activities, work activities, volunteer activities, etc.
For each experience/activity identify if this is something you would pursue to earn an income from, or if it is something you would do as a volunteer, or something you would like to do as a hobby.
For each experience/activity identify if this is something you currently have the skills to do, or if this is something you would like to develop your skills and talents in, or if this is something you have no interest in developing your skills and talents in.
You should end up with a list that looks something like the one below.
From this list, you can now identify past life and work experiences that you have an interest in either incorporating into your life, or in developing your skills and talents in.
The next step is to gather all this information you have been collecting from the exercises associated with the first 5 key elements together so that you can begin designing your Authentic Life.
The next post will focus on Key Element Number 6: Desired Activities and will draw on the information you have collected to help you identify the types of activities you want to incorporate into your new Authentic Life.
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The next key element in designing an authentic life is to explore the talents and skills that you have developed over the years, and to identify the talents and skills that you would like to develop over the next few years.
There is a bit of controversy surrounding talents and skills. On the one hand there are those who believe that we are born with natural talents and skills, and these are what we should be identifying and designing our authentic life around.
Source: Smithsonian, Flickr, Creative Commons
Supporters of this belief advocate that when individuals uncover their natural skills and talents then they should participate in activities that they are authentically passionate about. One way to know if the talent or skill is natural is to explore the activities that you used to enjoy as a child. If you still enjoy doing these activities, then the skills and talents associated with these activities are natural.
The problem I find with this belief is that, as a child, I didn’t necessarily participate in many activities. To this day there are still activities that I am drawn to but that I have no experience with, like sailing or horseback riding. These are the activities that I will learn the skills for and, hopefully, develop some talent for over the next few years.
I tend to subscribe to the belief that talents and skills can be learned and developed as we age and have access to more experiences. My preferred method in dealing with my talents and skills is to be aware of what activities draw my attention and then try them out. I constantly monitor what activities, etc., draw my attention when I am out and about, when I am visiting with friends, when I am watching TV, or reading magazines, or wandering through book stores, etc. By making a list of these activities, etc., I can explore my interest in them. If I can maintain a fairly high level of interest for more than a fleeting second — well, maybe a month or two — then I decide whether I want to develop my skills in that area.
Maybe my interest is drawn and held by natural talents, I don’t know. What I do know is that for me, my interest needs to be there first otherwise I won’t make the effort to develop the skill.
Creating a list of our talents and skills doesn’t always provide us with insight into activities that that we would want to include in our authentic lives or develop into a business. Most people have skills and talents that they don’t necessarily want to use on a regular basis. For example, I might be have a great talent for washing dishes, or trapping dust bunnies, or catching and removing spiders from the livingroom, but I wouldn’t want to spend my life doing any of those.
How do you know which talents and skills are ones you should be investing your time and effort into?
One exercise you can do is to the following:
make a list of every thing you have done in the past that you have really enjoyed doing. Things that have made time disappear, where you lose track of the time, of your whereabouts, etc, while you are doing this activity. These are talents and skills that you already know you have.
make another list of everything you have always wanted to do, or try, but have not yet managed to do so. You know the kinds of things — the “If I knew I could not fail I would .….….….….….….….” activities. Go to the local book store to see what kinds of how-to books draw your attention. Look through the continuing education classes offered in your area. Add anything and everything that you can think of that attracts your attention. Then eliminate anything that is impossible to do (like time-travel, etc). From what is left on the list. make a short list of the top ten easiest activities you would like to try, and then try them. See if you like like them. Discard any activity that you don’t like actually doing. Keep going through your list of possibilities until you have narrowed it down to your top ten activities.
combine the two lists above and see if any patterns emerge. Are there certain types of things that you prefer over others (e.g. sports over crafts)?
once you have identified patterns regarding the talents and skills that you have a preference for, identify several activities that use those talents and skills and begin incorporating them into our life.
if there are activities that already have the talents and skills for, then begin incorporating them into your current lifestyle.
if there are activities that you are keenly interested in, but you haven’t yet developed the skills and talents for them, then begin developing the skills and talents for these activities.
This short video from Barbara Sher provides her perspective on the connection between our natural talents and participating in activities that we really enjoy doing:
Barbara Sher Creating Your New Life:
Recent studies have shown that talents and skills in pretty much anything can be learned, regardless of a person’s age - as long as there are no physical or psychological problems that prevent the development of the specific skill or talent. Playing the piano, learning a second language, becoming computer literate, developing an enterprise, belly dancing — whatever you have an interest in you can develop a skill or a talent for. The only compromise that aging has is that it slows the speed at which talents and skills can be learned and developed.
What skills and talents do you have that you want to incorporate into your Authentic Life? What skills and talents would you like to develop so you can also incorporate them into your Authentic Life?
The next post will explore the 5th Key Element, Life and Work Experiences.
