Trust Your Intuition to Be the Hero of Your Story, Says Steven Spielberg
Earlier this year, Steven Spielberg gave a speech in front of Harvard’s senior year. In it, the acclaimed filmmaker describes one of the keys to being the hero of your own story: listening to your intuition.
As Spielberg describes, your mind often describes what you should do. You have to get a safe job, you have to avoid problems, you have to follow all the rules. However, your intuition will tell you what you can do. He then tells the story of how he dropped out of college in his sophomore year to take a job at Universal Studios. The rest of us know the story from there:
The first 25 years of our life are taught to listen to other people’s voices. Parents and professors fill our heads with wisdom and information, and then employers and mentors take their place and explain how the world really works. And usually these authoritative voices make sense, but sometimes doubt begins to creep into our heads and hearts, and even when we think: “I don’t really see the world like that,” it’s easier to disagree and disagree …
Hear this voice that tells you what you can do. Nothing will define your character like this. Because as soon as I tuned in to my intuition, some projects began to draw me into them, while I turned my back on others.
It takes time to develop a solid intuition, so if you’re still young and don’t know how to develop on your own, don’t worry. However, your education and experience are designed to help you start making decisions for yourself and trust your intuition. If you want to be the hero of your own story, and not a minor character in someone else’s, you have to reach a point where you can listen to that intuition.
Director Steven Spielberg speaking | Harvard University via Muse