a couple of hundred dollars each a night. It was well worth our while to rehearse new fun music to play for our friends at college. Starting a band was rational.
When I wrapped up at Red Deer College, I started to work at the local branch of HMV Records. HMV was the “hip” record store in town. The staff acted as taste makers for the local music aficionados. My specialty was new hit music. Even though the majority of my time at the store was spent doing inventory to replenish stock, the perks and prestige of working at HMV were worth it. I spent my days hanging out with cool people and sold music to anyone who wanted it. Working at HMV was rational. Plus, I was still playing with The Mile High Club. I was enjoying a career in music with two income sources. Each day was fulfilling and exciting. I loved what I did, and I was good at it, too.
Around a year and a half later, I moved to Edmonton, Alberta. I eagerly began to look for the next steps in my career in music. I still worked for HMV, but now I was in a bigger store. It was fast-paced, and it moved twice the volume. One day, I heard that one of the major record labels was hiring a new rep for the Edmonton region. This made perfect sense as a next step for my career. A regular salary, an expense account, and a chance to sell music to ALL of the record stores seemed rational and, more importantly, fun. I applied for the position.
The branch manager for MCA was a man named Terry McArthur. I wrote out my thin résumé and added a handwritten cover letter that reflected who I thought I was at the time. I wrote, “I’m severely underqualified for this job, but I’m applying for it anyway. If you’re looking for someone who wants to learn, has a gleaming toothy smile and has personality to burn, invite me for an interview.” My cover letter was cocky but riveting; it was a desperate attempt to use charm to get my foot in the door.
Terry had never heard of me. He had a list of candidates already compiled when he was on his way from Calgary to Edmonton to conduct interviews. He rode in the passenger seat during the three-hour drive, so he could look over some notes and contact the people he wanted to interview. As a lark, and at the last minute, he decided to look at my application. My irreverent cover letter served its purpose. It grabbed his attention. He was intrigued. In a last-minute decision, he took out his mobile phone and dialed my number at home. Terry asked me to come for an interview.
The next day, I arrived at Terry’s hotel suite late in the afternoon. We shook hands at the door and Terry invited me to take a seat at the small round conference table in the suite’s common area. Terry was upfront about the fact that he didn’t have any intention of interviewing me. We chatted about music and the Edmonton scene. He quizzed me about business matters. I improvised the whole interview. At the end of the interview, he asked me, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I answered, “I’ll have your job.” We laughed out loud.
The interview went well. In fact, the interview was fun. I shook Terry’s hand one last time as I left, and thanked him for taking the chance to interview me. I was happy I made it as far as I did.
An hour later, my phone at home rang again. I picked it up to discover that it was Terry on the phone. He wanted to know if I would like to go grab a beer with him. He offered me the job.
At twenty-four years old, I had a job with an expense account, a car allowance, and an endless supply of any music I could ever want. I had concert tickets, T-shirts, posters, and access to the biggest music stars of the day. I had landed a dream job. On top of it all, I was also singing in a local eight-piece jazz band called The Jump Orchestra. My irrational music career was starting to be more rational.
I started to notice that a trend had begun: I was doing what I loved, and I was doing what I was good at. Focusing on those two inspiring aspects of my life made every day more fulfilling than the days on the survey crew. Every time I was ready for something new, all I needed to do was to find something that I loved to do and that I was good at. Music was my red-and-white-striped traffic pylon. It signaled me to follow in a meaningful direction. I focused on it. Each new experience in music felt worthwhile.
If you experience life as a meandering, drunken stumble that leads you forward, left and right, then backward, remain vigilant and keep a lookout for the signals in your life. They will provide you with direction.
They are easier to see if you know these two things: what do you love to do and what you are good at? Your answers are the first steps you’ll need to take to find your Ikigai.
Everybody Has Gifts
Everyone has special gifts. Your gifts are the actions that feel easiest for you to do. For some, that might be mathematics and problem solving. To others, it could mean arts and crafts. Are you good at sports but not at cooking? Focus on sports. Cooking is probably not your thing.
Your gifts are innate talents unique to you, but they might also seem irrational to explore. After all, if something is easy for you to do, then why would you choose to do it all the time? Society tells us that it’s better to fix our weaknesses instead of focusing on our strengths. Society is wrong.
According to studies conducted by Gallup through their CliftonStrengths service, your strengths can be amplified. When you put energy into developing your strengths, your growth is exponential. When you focus on trying to fix your weaknesses, your growth is slow, uninspired, and only modestly incremental. In other words, when you work on your strengths, you kick ass. When you focus on your weaknesses, you kick rocks.
The Clifton in CliftonStrengths is Don Clifton. When Don was a young man, he fought in the Second World War as a pilot. Don earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism in the face of the enemy. In addition to being a brave hero, Don had heart. After the war, he focused on the unexplored psychology of “what is right with people.” Up to then, psychology had been primarily focused on dealing with psychological problems, or what is wrong with people. Don saw the potential for psychology to be a more positive science, one that could be applicable to the general public.
Don began to study what people did to become successful in life. His goal was to learn whether successful people shared similarities in their approaches to life. Don and his colleagues developed rigorous studies to interview people and study the new science of success. Over time, Don saw patterns start to emerge. He arranged the patterns into themes and referred to them as strengths. In all, Don found that people have thirty-four strengths. Each person has a specific order in which the strengths fall. Your top strengths are the ones you will kick ass with.
Don Clifton is known today as a pioneer in helping others see the best in themselves. His strengths helped us see ours. The benefit of his groundbreaking research is that, when it’s applied, people have the ability to wake up each morning and live life with a focus on their strengths. Imagine doing what you’re good at every day.
When it comes to kicking ass, CliftonStrengths is in a category of its own. The CliftonStrengths StrengthsFinder 2.0 book is one of the best-selling nonfiction books in history. It’s helped over nineteen million people find and focus on their strengths. It’s helped millions discover one part of the Ikigai map: do what are good at.
