Transcripts
1. Introduction: D half at one thing
in your life that you're really passionate about. If someone was to ask you about your passions and
your interests, would you know how
to answer them? Can you identify
things in your life that you thrive off doing? I've always felt that
people around me have this instinctive way of knowing what they
were interested in, what they wanted to do with
their lives even as a child. Like there's some sort
of natural process that I was missing and didn't
know how to go through. You might relate
to that and think, I'm still not sure
on my interests. You're not alone. I'm here to tell
you that you can uncover new passions at any age. My name is Emma and I run
plan inspire, create, which is all about
using planet and creativity to help people live happier and
healthier lives, whatever that means for them. A few years ago, I
wasn't doing that and my life look very,
very different. I had just left a career
as a social worker due to chronic health
difficulties and I felt really lost and I didn't
know what to do next. That was when I
really knew that I had to go on a journey of self-discovery to
figure out who I was and what my
interests really worth. Now, that might sound
really intimidating, but I want to share
that process with you because it's really
easy and accessible. In this class, you'll be
guided through a series of exercises with the help
of the class workbook, you'll discover what
might be holding you back from discovering
new interests. And you'll find
out what's behind the things you do enjoy and how to utilize that knowledge to expand your range of interests. If you're wondering if this
class for me, it's for you. If you're lost or
stuck like I was, and you're not sure
about your interests, but it's also for you if you have some idea about
your interests, what you're curious to know, if there's other things
out there that you might enjoy that you
don't even know about. Yeah, I'm so excited to be helping you discover
some untapped passions. So let's jump into the next lesson and I'll tell
you about a class project.
2. Class Project: This class has an
accompanying workbook which I encourage you
to go and download as each video in this
class will guide you through a different
exercise in the workbook. The workbook has
been designed to guide you through the
process step-by-step, of being able to identify
potential new interests. Being able to think
about what are there. Do you want to try all the way through to create
an action plan? Actually trying out
the interests and evaluate and how you
really feel about it. There are two exercises
that I really encourage you to upload
as your class project. Now the first one is the
interest tree exercise. This exercise will
involve you breaking down and discovering the
root of your enjoyment, and then branching
out to discover potential activities that
are linked with that route. Once you've uploaded
your own interests tree, I would really love it if
you could take the time to comment on three other
students interests trees to help them discover new
branches to their trees and come up with potential activities that they could try. I think that together
we can come up with a really great big bank of ideas and inspire each other
on things that could be of interest to us that we
never thought of before. The second exercise
I'd love for you to upload is the evaluation. So after you've
tried your activity, how did you get on with it? Further questions in the
workbook and let us know, how did it feel for you? Is there something you're
interested in trying again? Or are you going to
go back and refine your interests tree and think
about what to try next. I would love to
see and hear about your progress and to be
able to give you some tips. So once you've gone ahead
and downloaded the workbook, I recommend you find a
nice quiet coffee spot where you can focus on these
exercises are let's jump in.
3. Reset Your Beliefs: Now before we jump in and do the first exercise in
the workbook itself, I wanted to talk to you about
resetting your beliefs. Now, once we get to adulthood, we can tend to have very
fixed ideas on what we are and what we're not
who we are and who were not. What we're good at, what we're not good at. And we don't often stop to wonder where those
messages have come from. We just take them as fact. So in my instance, I grew up always believing that I wasn't a creative
person at all. I consider myself a
very logical person. And those are the kinds of
activities that I carried out. I would certainly never have thought of doing
anything artistic, which baffles me now. But I vividly remember being told at school that
my artwork was terrible and that this wasn't going to be an
area where I excelled. And I really took that on
board from a very young age. And to me that was
a fact I never tried to pursue
anything creative. It wasn't until a couple
of years ago when I was experiencing physical or
mental health difficulties, I've been through a big burnout and I had seen some stuff on corona of the
therapeutic benefits of doing kind of artsy
creative things. And I decided I was gonna give
it a go for that purpose, knowing that I
would be bad at it, but that didn't matter. Now, I absolutely
fell in love with it. And I have come to the opinion that I'm
not bad at it at all. But I really took those
messages on board and it became a fact to me that
that wasn't something that I should spend my time doing
because I wasn't good at it. Now since that time, I spoken to my mom about it
and she said, oh, well, yeah. When you were young child
before you went to school, it's all you used
to do painting, drawing, you loved it. You are always doing
things like that? I have no memory of
that whatsoever. My earliest memory is just being told that it was
something that I was bad at and giving it up. But now I am in a
position where being creative is actually an
integral part of my life. As part of my business. I illustrate, I designed my
own products and I never, ever thought that I would
be in this position. And the only reason
that I am is it took me challenging those
beliefs about myself and just opening myself
up to the possibility of trying things that I
believed worked for me. Now, it may be that
if I tried it in the past at another
time in my life, I wouldn't have
enjoyed it so much. I think there's
something about also knowing that as we
move through our life, we change on our
interests change. And it may be that you've tried something in the past and it
hasn't quite hit for you, but now might be
that perfect time. Maybe your mentality is
a little bit different. Maybe your skill set is
a little bit different. Maybe you've got more patients than you might have had before. That's definitely
the case to me. So if you find yourself immediately saying to
yourself, oh, well, I know that I
wouldn't be good at X or I know that why isn't for me? Just maybe take a
second to stop and think where those
beliefs have come from. Is it something you've
tried recently and that has come from
your kind of trial and error and experience and your opinions or has
it been influenced by those wider factors and
other people in your life? And it may be that you want
to give it another go. So I encourage you to go into this class with an open mind. Be prepared to maybe
revisit things you've tried before and to challenge some of your beliefs
about yourself. Now one final thing I want
to add before we dive in is that there is a temptation
to think about lincoln, your new interests
to make him money. So you want to find that one thing that you're
really passionate about and make a career of it so that
you can spend your day to day life doing something
that you really enjoy. And I think that that's an
immense amount of pressure to put on things at this stage. And I also think that it limits your ability to go into
things with an open mind because you might discount
things that you really enjoy because you can't immediately see a way to make
money from them. Now it might be
that in the future, this is a step you can take. But I would say
when you're trying to discover new interests, try and focus on just developing the interest for the sake
of enjoyment on its own. Because that's the
clearest way to evaluate whether or not it works for you and you enjoy it without those financial elements
Cloud in your view. Join me for the
next lesson where we are going to be
starting to look within and discover a range
of factors related to your past and potential
future interests.
4. Look Within: This lesson is all
about starting to look within and get to know yourself and
discover clues about what your potential
interests might be. This lesson links with
the first exercise in the class workbook, which you can download below if you haven't downloaded
it already. And it consists
of three pages of journal prompts and there's a space to fill in your answers. Journaling is
something that I've found huge benefit
from in my life. I feel like it really
allows a space for you to think more deeply about
yourself and your life. And by getting your
thoughts down on paper, it can help you make
sense of those thoughts. Start to organize them, draw no conclusions
from them and see things you'd
never seen before. And it can be great
for stress relief, mental health, and just
all around well-being. I think this is a really
great exercise to start with and look for what
information we already know. The other thing I love about journaling is that it's
a space just for you. There's no pressure to share
this with anyone else. I won't be asking
you to upload it to the project area and it allows
you to be truly honest. So something that can
influence our interests on what we're willing to try is often other
people's opinions. So when you're answering
these questions, try and just have a little
check in with yourself. Are these my opinions
or have they been a little bit
influenced by other people, whether it's people
in your life, society more generally,
sometimes people are worried about what might be seen as
a kind of strange interest. It's not a cool
interest as such. But what fills us with joy
is what fills us with joy. And I guarantee you there are other people out there
who are just as in love with the same interests when you rarely find your passion and making those connections is another great benefit of
finding your interests. So try and carve
out some time for you with no
distractions to really be honest with yourself
and look within and answer these questions to
the best of your ability. Now the last three questions on the journal prompt sheets are actually a bit of
a practical exercise. So what I would like you
to do is actually do a little bit with some of the
other people in your life. It'd be great if you
could ask a few people. And there are three
questions that I'd like you to ask them. And this can be a little
bit uncomfortable for us. Sometimes we might squirm
when asking these questions, but I think this feedback is great and other people can give you a really
different perspective that you might not have seen. So I would love for you
to ask, what am I good? Now? You might not
necessarily agree, but that might be you being
critical on yourself. I want you to really
try and listen to other people's opinions
and take that on board. So what am I good at? What would you come to me
for advice on that might really show areas of
scale within yourself, but you might have overlooked. And what did I use to be
interested in as a child? So you might be like me, you might have had a
previous interests that you'd completely
forgotten about. If there isn't someone, you can ask about this, perhaps there might be clues and family photos or
videos, for example. Maybe you are always the person behind the camera that you loved documenting and taking
pictures of everyone else. There can be lots of
clues we can find in kind of old family memories
of things that we really used to enjoy before
there was the pressures of adult life influenced and
changed those decisions. So try and ask a few people
and make some notes on those. And then when you've finished
answering the questions, it would be great if
you could just spend a little bit of time
reading back through them and thinking about
whether it prompts any initial thoughts for you on things that you might like
to try in the future. Then come back and join me for the next lesson
where we will start to break down what might be the root of your enjoyment.
I'll see you there.
5. The Root of Your Enjoyment: In the last lesson,
we started to identify things that you may
have enjoyed in the past, and you may have found
some clues as to what you might enjoy
in the future. And now for this lesson, we're going to discover what is at the root of your enjoyment. So I want you to think
about an activity that you identified you have
enjoyed in the past. If you're really
struggling to find an activity that you've
enjoyed previously, think about something that
you think you might enjoy. Now you may have an activity that you've enjoyed in the past, but you don't enjoy
so much anymore. I think it's still okay
to use that because we want to find out
what lies beneath it. And so by doing that, you can get to the root of
your enjoyment and think about link to activities that you
might want to try instead. Within the class workbook, you'll find the activity, the route of enjoyment. And there's a space
for you to write your activity above the root. And then all around the
bottom where the roots are. I want you to come
up with ideas. Have a brainstorm about
things that lie beneath that, the different components
that could be reasons why people
enjoy that activity. There will be lots. So I'm going to run
through an example for you so you can get an idea
of what I mean by this. So one common activity
that people might have enjoyed as a child is
playing video games. Now it might be that
they may or may not have an interest
in doing that anymore. But they used to love
playing video games. And they might have thought that video games was their passion. But we need to look
closer than that. Video games were actually just the vehicle used to
deliver that passion. That passion was something else that was lying underneath. So if we take this
example of video games, there are lots of different
elements of playing a video game that could actually be what your
true passion is. For example, it could be the competitive nature
of playing video games. You could love that competition, the competitive
edge, trying to beat other people and be
the best at something. It could purely be
competition with yourself learning something and trying to get better at it each time, trying to get a higher
score than you did before. It could be the story
element of the game. It could be that you love
getting lost in a story. That you love exploring
fictional worlds, creating and building fictional worlds are
fictional characters. It could be the
community element, either playing games with
other people socially, or being part of
a community with a shared interest and passion. Depending on the type of game, it could be learning
patterns and sequences. It could be the
risk-taking elements of games that are so many things. It could be for your activity
that you identified. I want you to try and think about all these
different types of things that are elements of
completing the activity. Try and explore it
as much as you can. Try not to judge the things that are coming out
on the brainstorm. Just explore it with
curiosity and think about all the different types of things that make
up this activity. And then take some time
to look at that and see which of those
resonate with you. You could repeat this exercise for a couple of
activities you know, you've enjoyed and
see if there are any common links between
them that might give a clue to what the root of your
enjoyment might be if you find the same thing coming across
different activities. And this might be activities that you never would
have linked previously, but you realize they do
have some similar elements. For example, you
might have enjoyed being on the debate
team and being in a dance group
and hadn't really considered that they both involve working as
part of a team. And when you think about it, that's something
you really enjoy. You really want to be getting to the root of why you
enjoy something, not just the activity itself. Because from this, we can
explore a whole range of new potential interests that are waiting
to be discovered. And that is exactly
what we're gonna do in the next lesson. Once you've had time to
complete this exercise and you've identified what you think the root of your
enjoyment might be. Come back and I'll
show you how to branch out and discover
potential new interests that could be waiting for you.
6. Let's Branch Out: In the last lesson, you will have found
what you suspect to be the root of
your enjoyment. Or you might have identified more than one thing
which is great. And in this exercise we are
going to branch out and brainstorm different
activities that you can try that I'll
link to this route, this lesson links with the interests tree
exercise in your workbook. So if you flip to that
page of the workbook, you have a space
right at the bottom, underneath the root to write
the root of your enjoyment. Now you might want to
explore more than one. I'd suggest just doing
them on separate sheets. Try and focus on one at a time, but doing multiple is great. So once you've put your
passion at the root, all around the branches, you want to brainstorm ideas of activities which
contain this element. They might seem really far related from the initial
activity came up with. And that's okay. Sometimes people have what seem really wide and
varied interests, but there's usually
a common thread running throughout them. And that is how we
are going to use the route to come up
with a whole list of activities that could be a potential passion that we
haven't even discovered yet. So take some time to
brainstorm ideas. Again, I'll give
you an example to give you an idea
of how this works. So if we carry on our
video game example from the last lesson, I'm going to say, for example, that the root of enjoyment for this person is getting
lost in a fictional world, having that escape from reality. So I would write that on the route and then
around the branches, brainstorm other activities
that I can think of that also involve getting
lost in fictional worlds. So this might include
things like reading. It might include
particular genres like fantasy, for example. Or it might be that for you, It's kinda of any
fictional world. Could include things like
role-playing and reenactments. So something that you
would do more in person. It might involve other types
of games like Dungeons and Dragons for example,
role-playing games. It might be that you enjoy coming up with
those worlds yourself. So something like
writing stories. Maybe it doesn't have to be
a fictional world as such, but a reality that's
different from your own. So it might be that you would enjoy something like
guided meditation. It might be that you would enjoy traveling and experiencing
different cultures. It's taking you out of
your day to day and helping you to experience
something completely different. So anything that
involves exploring in a different
environment to your own. So out in nature, for example, you might enjoy something like an escape room where
you are thrust into a story and a world
where you have to play your part to uncover
the mysteries in there. There are a whole bunch of wide range and
interests that stem from this concept of escaping reality and getting lost
in a different world. From that, we can
come up with things that feel a far cry
from video games. But that might be
something that you end up enjoying even more. So once you've done this, you will have a list of potential activities that
you can consider trying. And I would really
encourage you to upload your interests tree
to the project gallery. Once you've done
this, comment on three other students
interests trees, and try and give them an idea for a new branch to their tree. So together we can expand
our ideas and come up with a really great bank of ideas of activities
for people to try. Once you've done
that, come back for the next lesson where we'll decide which interests to try. And I'll help you come up with an action plan on
how to do that.
7. Creating an Action Plan: In the last lesson, we brainstormed a whole range of new potential
interests for you to try. And in this lesson,
you're going to decide wanted to try and create an action plan to get you from that idea of
thinking about it, to actually carrying it out and trying it
for the first time. Or trying to again, if it's something that you've
tried in the past. Now the first step is
obviously going to be deciding which of these
interests you're going to try. And it's up to you how
you make this decision. And there may be
different factors that influence this decision. So it might be that
there's one that really jumps out at
you from the page that really intrigues
you and you think I'm really interested in
giving that one a go, or there could be other financial or
practical implications that influence that decision. It may be that
something's there just aren't the availability
in your local area. And that might take a
little bit of research, but have a little think about what is practical
for you to try. But something that interests you and you really
want to give it a go. Now it's okay if the thought
makes you feel nervous. If it feels outside your
comfort zone, it well, it's going to because it's
something new and trying new things and
stepping outside of our comfort zone can be
a scary thing to do. But I know you came
to this class because you have a desire
to try new things. And by putting together
this action plan, it's going to help
you take things one step at a time to help deal with that overwhelm so that
you can work up to trying this new activity and see what it
feels like for you. Once you've chosen an activity, the first thing
you're going to do is to brainstorm all of the steps that you
think you need to take to be able to
do this activity. There is a space to do
this in the workbook. And I want you to make
sure that you're breaking things down into
individual steps. So here we're thinking
about all the steps you need to take from finding
out about the activity, may be researching
what's involved. Whether you need any
equipment for it, whether it's something
you would go to, intercalate, organised
environment and you need to know times, prices, locations,
that kind of thing. How would you get there? How would it fit
with your schedule? Is it something
practically you can do? Are there any
requirements for you to take part in this activity? Do you need any
particular skills, equipment, clothing,
whatever it might be. So we're talking about all
of that initial research, then it might be that there
are other practical things you need to arrange such
as childcare transport, how you're going to
get there on the day. All of those kinds of things, write down everything
you can think of. It doesn't matter
about the order it comes out of your
brain at this point, just get it all down onto
paper in the brainstorm area. Now an action plan is far
better and far more effective. If you can break it down
into the individual steps. You wouldn't want to
see something like complete research
on the action plan. You want to break it down
into the things that you really need
to find out about so that you can be
sure that you're fully prepared before the
activity itself. So research time, boss times
where to buy paintbrushes. I don't know all the things
that you might need. Makes sure that
you've written them down in individual steps. So once you've done that, you want to go ahead
and put them in order the order that you would need to complete them in to
get from a to B. And you can then write this on your action plan and
try and set yourself some realistic deadlines by
the side of these activities so that you can make
sure that you're taking steps in the
right direction. And that trying this activity
is something that you're working towards and that
it doesn't just drift. And you find that you'd never actually got around
to try in it. Then once you have your list of actions with your deadlines, set yourself some reminders, however it is you do that. So if you use a planner, may be you've got
reminders on your phone. Maybe you've got a calendar up on your fridge
or whatever it is, try and make a note of those deadlines and things
that you said you were gonna do by a certain date in the places you're
going to see them. And it's going to prompt you
to do it so that you can make sure that you are taking
steps towards doing this. Because what we don't want to do is to identify a
potential interests, to get excited about it, and then it ends
up drifted out of focus because other
things, takeover, we want to keep that momentum
and makes sure that you get the opportunity to try something that you
might really love. Now, something that
can be easy to do is to get stuck at
the research phase. And I know I'm guilty
of this all the time. You want to find out as much information as you
can about an activity, you want to maybe
watch videos of others doing it so you know
what to expect. You want to research
all the different possible ways you do it. But eventually you
have to move out of that research phase and
give it a go yourself. It's the only way you're
going to know how it feels to you because it
might be something that someone else
absolutely loves. But unless you dive
in and give it a go, you won't know if it gives
you that same feeling. Now something else I
can say is that if you're getting ready to
try something different, be prepared to maybe have a little bit of
judgment from others. They might be surprised to
hear you're trying something that they never would
have considered that you'd tried before. And that's okay. People react to change
in different ways. And especially when they
see people doing things that they wouldn't have
expected that they would do. Doesn't mean there's
anything wrong with you giving new things ago. This is all about
you try new things and figuring out what
you think of them. So all you need
to do now is take that first step on
your action plan. It might feel overwhelming, but all you need
to do is work down that list one step at a time. And when you break
things down like this, it can feel much more achievable
and manageable for you. So take them one step
at a time until you get to the point where
you try your activity. I really hope it
goes well for you. But regardless of what
you feel about it, there is lots to be
learned from that. I want you to come back and
join me for the next lesson, which will be about
evaluating your experience.
8. Evaluate Your Learning: You've tried your new activity. Firstly, I'm really
proud of you for trying something new and stepping
outside of your comfort zone. That's something
that people often don't give you credit
for when they should, you deserve a lot
of credit for that. It's not an easy thing to do. So I'm going to say well
done, first of all, and now we really need to
reflect on the experience. And I think it's a step
that people often miss out, but it's a super important step. So I want you again to find
some nice quiet time with no distractions and flip to the exercise
in your workbook, which is evaluate your learning and work through those questions and think about how this
activity made you feel. What was it like? How did it feel in the moment? How is it felt since? Has it been something that
you've thought about since? And what have you
thought about it since? Or is it something that hasn't
really entered your mind? What feelings have
it left you with? Are you intrigued
by this activity? And you think, I'd like
to know more about this. I'd like to give it
a bit more of a try. Is it something you know, is definitely not for
you having tried it? And if so, why? What was it about that
activity that you didn't like? That can give you a lot of
clues to go back and adjust your interests tree and think about other
activities that you know, share that same element. So it's the opposite of
young root of enjoyment. You want to make sure you
avoid things that contain that same thing if you know
that it's really not for you. That can help you
narrow things down, make adjustments, and have a more tailored
plan for next time. Did the activity challenging? And what kind of
challenge was that? Was it too difficult? And you just made you want to
throw in the towel and say, I never want to do this again? Or was it the kind of
challenge that you want to take head-on and really sink your teeth into the
activity and saying, right, I'm going to
learn about this. I'm gonna get better at it. I'm going to improve
my skills and I'm going to take
on that challenge. Because That's a real
clue that if we get knocked back a bit
by something and we really want to get back
up and meet it head on. That it's something that's
really peak in our interest. Discovery what fulfills
you should feel fun and a passion should
be something that challenges you in a good way. So once you have completed the
questions in the workbook, I want you to think about
what you're going to do next. And you might want to use the action plan activity to create a list
of the next steps. So are you going to get ready
to try this activity again? Maybe you're going to
go back to a class and try again with something
that you took part in. Maybe you like the activity, but you didn't think that was the right environment for you. So you're going to try
doing it yourself at home or using an
online tutorial, or maybe try a different class. Maybe this activity
just isn't for you and you can cross it off your list of activities to try. It may have given you a clue as to other things you
might not enjoy, so that you can
narrow things down. You might want to complete a new interest tree with
this new knowledge. Or you might just
want to tweak it and think about which ones you'd remove and what kind of different things you would
like to try next instead. Then I would encourage you
to repeat the steps I've completed an action plan and
try and another activity. Once you've completed your
evaluation questions, I would love it
if you could take a picture and upload it
to the project gallery, sharing your experiences can really help to spur
other students on and know that it's okay to try new things regardless
of the outcome. And I would love
to see how you're getting on what you plan to do next and to provide you with some tips if you need them. And then come back
for the final lesson where I'll talk
about next steps.
9. Next Steps: I wanted to say a
huge congratulations on completing this class. You've really taken the
time to look inside yourself and consider
the things you enjoy, and stepped outside
your comfort zone to try something new, which is no easy thing to do. Having completed this class and having the workbook
that accompanies it, you now have a
framework that you can use time and time again to discover potential new
interests that you didn't even expect you're
betraying in the future. Remember that our interests change throughout our
lives just as we do. Come back periodically, even if you've
discovered something you enjoy and redo
these exercises to think about new things that you might enjoy
in the future. This framework rarely works
like a cycle where once you've evaluated how it felt
to complete an activity, you can loop back around and
adjust your interests tree. Think about new things
you want to try. What you want to try next
if you haven't found the one and create
an action plan, try it, evaluate your
learning, and so on. And so it's a really
useful framework, but you can use for
lots of things, but to really help you discover new interests in your life. If there's one thing that I hope you take away
from this class is that there is
always something new out there waiting
to be explored. And it might be
something that really, really gives you joy. Don't forget to upload
your interests trees and your evaluations to
the project gallery. And I would love it if you could leave a review
for this class to help others to find it and see if it might be something
they enjoy too. You can follow my
journey over on Instagram and YouTube are
planning, Inspire, create, and also pick up additional
tips on how planning and creativity could help you lead a happier and
healthier life. I really hope you enjoy this class and that I get to
connect with you again soon. Bye everyone.
Emma, Helping people live happier & healthier
