The late Sir Ken Robinson was one of my favourite TED speakers and a role model on combining humour with insights and wisdom about our behaviours and how to bring up children (and ourselves as Adults) to play to their and our element. Its invaluable – wherever you are, whatever you do, and no matter how old you are, if you’re searching for your Element, this book is for you.
Among the questions that this audio book answers are:
• How do I find out what my talents and passions are?
• What if I love something I’m not good at?
• What if I’m good at something I don’t love?
• What if I can’t make a living from my Element?
• How do I do help my children find their Element?
I love Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talks. This book is a compilation of his presentations on the subjects of human intelligence and creativity. He defines the Element as “the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion”. To find one’s Element, he suggests, one also needs to have the right attitude and actively seek the opportunities.
One of the key messages is that we should think of human intelligence as something much more than academic abilities. The list includes mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, kinaesthetic, interpersonal, and intra-personal (knowledge and understand of oneself). The three features of human intelligence are that they are diverse, dynamic, and distinct, which indicates that each person should seek to find his or her own unique Element.
Creativity, he defines, is applied imagination. It is “the process of having original ideas that have value”. It takes considerable amount of time to develop an idea, so in this sense, it is a process. It also requires a medium, in the sense that creativity can manifests itself in all kinds of human activities such as literature, maths, sciences, music, and dance. The last and perhaps the most important feature is that one has to develop skills associated with using that particular medium, being writing, calculating, experimenting, singing, or dancing. The corollary is that the teaching of creativity should go hand-in-hand with the development of skills in that medium.
If you want to be a great public speaker – watch Ken’s humility humility and humour in his three TED talks