Adam Leipzig: "How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes" @ TEDxMalibu

As the academic year trickles away, our seniors are beginning to adopt moony faces.  Their heads fill with longings for the future, and they begin the arduous process of bidding Kildonan farewell...with not a small amount of sadness and loss.  For months they have concerned themselves with administrative tasks concerning post-Kildonan life:  filling out applications for colleges, internships, and scholarships, writing essays, securing financial aid packages and living conditions, etc.  But now, as the spring renders us daft, once more they embrace the stirrings that led them to this process in the first place.

To help them center themselves, we would like to offer the preceding TED Talk (@TED Talk).  Author, educator, CEO of Entertainment Media Partners, former senior executive at Walt Disney Pictures (@DisneyPictures), and supervisor of some 25 films, Adam Leipzig (@adamleipzig) reminds us that we should not wait to we actualize our passions.  Through a sequence resembling a guided meditation, he encourages us to cement our dreams by considering five questions:  (1) Who are you?, (2) What do you do?, (3) Who do you do it for?, (4) What do those people want or need?, and (5) How do those people transform as a result?

One of the most difficult things that happens when you meet people for the first time is they ask you this question:  'So what do you do?' And, if you're like some of us, that's a really challenging question sometimes.  Particularly if you're in these moments where you're between things, or you're feeling vulnerable, or it isn't defined.  Or what you seem to do isn't what you really do, or what you're paid to do isn't how you define yourself.  So when people ask you this question, 'So what do you do?,' ... here's what you do:  you just say the very last thing you called out.  How what you do changes the people you do it for.  For example, you might say, 'I give kids awesome dreams.' ... Or you might say, 'I help people look and feel their best.' ... Or you might say, 'I help people get great work into the world.' ... And then, that little snippet that you just said becomes your personal elevator pitch.

What did you think of Leipzig's presentation? Please post in the comments section below.