Steven Spielberg – Listen to Your Intuition

Steven Spielberg shares his own story of self-discovery, and urges all of us to learn to listen to our intuition, so that it can lead us to who we really are.

Transcript:

I didn’t know who I was. How could I? How could any of us? For the first 25 years of our lives, we are trained to listen to voices that are not our own. Parents and professors fill our heads with wisdom and information, and then employers and mentors take their place and explain how this world really works. Usually these voices of authority make sense, but sometimes doubt starts to creep into our heads and into our hearts. Even when we think, ‘That’s not quite how I see the world,’ it’s kind of easier just to nod and agree with and go along. For awhile, I let that ‘Going along’ to find my character. I was repressing my own point-of-view because like in that Nelson song, everybody was talking at me so I couldn’t hear the echos of my mind.

“At first, the internal voice I needed to listen to was hardly audible and it was hardly noticeable, kind of like me in high school. Then I started paying more attention, and my intuition kicked in. I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience. They work in tandem, but here’s the distinction. Your conscience shouts “Here’s what you should do,” while your intuition whispers, “Here’s what you could do.” Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that.”