In her TEDxSanFrancisco talk, Justine Musk, Canadian author and the first wife of Elon Musk, shares what makes wounded people tell better stories to create change in the world. Justine explains that it is their willingness to bare their souls, to stay open to go through the wounds and shame, along with their obsession to suffer willingly in the pursuit of their passion for achieving mastery. 

 “Find your passion” is trendy advice these days. Still, most people find it hard to follow, mainly because they confuse ‘finding your passion’ with ‘finding your bliss’. In contrast, ‘passion’ originally means ‘suffering’, voluntary and willful suffering. “Passion has its own logic. It’s called repetition compulsion…The desire pulls us out of ourselves towards what we need to learn in order to become whole”, Justine explains. 

Justine believes that the wounded souls who end up visionaries that change the world achieve this mastery by living the true essence of the word ‘victim’. Today, the word ‘victim’ is surrounded by shame, as in the weak and broken person. Justine again takes us back to the original meaning of the word ‘victim’, which means ‘sacrifice to God’. She encourages us to think of victims as those who have been to the other world and back, and now have stories to tell; stories from the wounds buried deep down in their soul; stories so good that bridge the gap between their worlds and the worlds of other people to creates this community that opens up our world to create change.

To watch the Ted Talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVGoWvZMFzo

Feature Image: Kellepics, On Pixabay, Creative Commons