Method Initiative – Here we go again!
Welp. I’m starting all over again with Joshua Spodek’s Initiative exercises from the very start. For the fourth time.
But I’m happy about it. And here’s why.
If you read Josh’s book on Method Initiative, there’s one thing he stresses: it’s not necessarily a book on entrepreneurship – it’s a book to help you find your passion – finding that thing that you live for and people want you for it, and if your passion leads to you building a business that succeeds, all the better.
One of the early chapters has, what feels like a pretty off-hand message (and I’m paraphrasing): “if at any point, you feel like your project just isn’t for you, be thankful – it means you now confidently know one more thing that is NOT your passion and you can move on to more things that might be. Go back and do the exercises again from the start.”
And it feels very hard to do: you want to ace these exercises in one go, start your new project and be loved and appreciated by crowds of people applauding you. To go back and start all over again feels like you failed. And I find myself telling myself “Great. In the billions of potential project ideas, I’ve eliminated ONE. Just one. I’m never going to find a project for me.”
But I’ve been through three rounds of the Initiative exercises, and every time, at about Exercise 5 or 6, I realize my heart just isn’t into it. And after three rounds of “failing”, I’ve come to learn what Josh is saying. By doing another round of Initiative exercises, I think about what new projects I would like to pursue, and I find it REALLY easy to eliminate projects that I know are not my passion. The only reason I know that? It’s because I had similar projects in past iterations and I realized it wasn’t for me. Now at one glance I go “Nope. This is one of those projects I’m not into.” I know it deep down. I feel it.
I realize I haven’t just eliminated ONE potential project…I’ve learned about a whole SET of projects that are not for me. And the projects that I end up making anew, are ones that I feel far more excited about than all my past ones.
If you’ve ever seen the book, you may have seen the cover: a spiral staircase. And if you’ve been to a certain famous museum in France, you may have seen a the glass pyramid with a a spiral staircase under it.
Recently, I had a chance to talk with Josh about it. (Josh, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this tidbit) And Josh said the reason he chose that cover was because the way he thought about the Initiative exercises and finding your passion to be like going up a spiral staircase inside of a pyramid: at the beginning, you’re at the bottom with thousands of possible projects that you might like. But as you climb the staircase and go around and around (restarting the Initiative exercises from the start, over and over), the walls close in around you – there are less choices because you’ve now eliminated all the ones you know you don’t like and you start to home in on the peak of the pyramid: the one project that you’re passionate about.
So at this point, I FEEL like I’m about halfway up the pyramid. My projects all feel so much more “for me” than any of my past projects. Each of my 5 project ideas this time around feel like projects I would truly enjoy doing. Who knows, maybe I’m at the top and one of these are “it.”
Do you know the only way to know that is? It’s to keep climbing the staircase. It’s to continue with the exercises and see if I fall in love with them more, or learn that these aren’t for me.
So here we go! Apologies to readers who have had to read many a Method Initiative reflection, but there are more coming. If any of you out there are looking to find your passion – a project to help people with your own unique skills and abilities that you love, you should try the exercises yourself.
Onward!
…Or rather…around and upward!
