Live Your Legend - RIP Scott Dinsmore
For my drive to work today, I decided to listen to a new podcast and it turned out to be The Good Life Project hosted by Jonathan Fields. The episode I chose was a tribute to Scott Dinsmore, the founder of a website and personal development program called Live Your Legend, who died of an accident while hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro 9 days ago. Jonathan and Scott were good friends, and Jonathan spoke a few words about how tragic the loss was, and then played an old interview he conducted with Scott for the rest of the episode. It was a really engaging, enlightening conversation about how Live Your Legend was started, and it resonated with me because it dealt with the question that everyone should be asking themselves but often avoid: Am I living my personal legend and passion?
The idea behind Scott's website was a framework for people to create a life and career doing what they love. So many people slog through jobs they hate, and accept it as reality without taking any steps to change it. Instead of dealing with the difficult questions of finding their "why", uncovering their passion, and finding the intersection of what their passions and their strengths, they distract themselves with TV, social media, alcohol, etc.
What Scott talked about in the interview was that it took years of self-discovery and a failed blog to get to where he was at, with a viral TED video, a global community of Live Your Legend members, and a successful business doing what he loved. During his self-discovery period, he realized that he both enjoyed and was good at prodding his friends about their passions and motivating them to pursue them. But he didn't know he could create a career from this, until he attended a conference and met people like him who were successfully doing this, making a living pursuing their passion while positively impacting lives. One of these people was Leo Babauta, founder of zenhabits.com, who opened his eyes to what was possible. He noted that this perspective shift changed what he thought was possible, and now it wasn't a question of why he should make his passion his career, but how and when it would happen. Scott learned from this experience that not only was creating a career from his passion possible, but it was also his responsibility to make it happen, and ultimately live out his personal legend and make a difference in peoples' lives.
I came away inspired by Scott's story, with a elevated perspective of what's possible, of what it takes to live your passion, and also a reminder of how ephemeral and fragile life can be. The key things I learned were:
1. Do the difficult work of self-discovery and confront the core question of your purpose for living in order to find your passion. It could take years, but it will be time well spent if you can start moving the needle towards who you really are and what you want to do with your life.
2. Surround yourself with the right people. In the podcast, they talked about Jim Rohn's famous quote: "You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with" and it really hit home that you have to choose your friends wisely and make sure that they're challenging you, keeping you accountable, and opening your perspective about what's possible.
3. Once you find your passion, work hard to create a life and career around it, and embrace the uncertain, imperfect journey. Scott's website and global community didn't happen immediately; it took several years to learn his passion and then several more to make it a reality. He pushed through the ups and downs, driven by his joy and excitement at making his dream come true, and learned to see mistakes, uncertainty, and complexities as learning opportunities and steps in the right direction.
Scott believed that when people do what they love, their energy and the way they interact with the world changes for the better, creating a positive ripple effect around them. With more people doing what they love, there would be more joy being spread, ultimately making the world a better place. I agree with this sentiment, and I believe that Scott made the world a better place with the way he lived his life and shared his passion and gifts with the world. RIP Scott Dinsmore.
You can listen to the full podcast here: http://www.goodlifeproject.com/scott-dinsmore-tribute/?t=radio
