Best of 2015: A Journey to the Crossroads of Should and Must with Elle Luna
The Unmistakable Creative Podcast
Srinivas Rao
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2015
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elle Luna shares her journey to the crossroads of should and must in this best of 2015 episode.
Highlights:
- A recurring dream that served as a sign for a calling
- Why the crossroads should and must appears over and over again
- How getting rejected from every law school changed Elle’s life
- Learning to trust the intelligence that lies beyond ourselves
- Opening the floodgates of creativity through collaboration
- Looking to peers as our mirrors when things don’t go according to plan
- Lessons in life from working at IDEO
- The power of optimism and curiosity
- Why a team, community and support are essential to our success
- Learning to remove the “shoulds” of our lives
- Getting in touch with our inner psychic world
- Why vulnerability is a good indicator that you are on to something
- Learning to reframe what your idea of success is
- How following “must” becomes a gift to other people
QUOTES
1+1 Adds Up to Infinity (Click to Tweet)
Often times the best way to get to must is to understand should first. (Click to Tweet)
Nowhere is the essence of must more purely exhibited than when we’re kids. (Click to Tweet)
The vulnerability piece is a really good indicator that you’re onto something. (Click to Tweet)
Resources
The Crossorads Should and Must (Medium Essay)
The Crossroads of Should and Must (Book)
Elle Luna is a designer, painter and writer. She also runs a textile venture, the Bulan Project., a collaboration with master batik artists in Bali, and has previously worked at international design firm IDEO and with teams to build Mailbox’s iPhone App, redesign Uber’s iPhone App and scale the storytelling platform Medium. You can follow her on twitter @elleluna.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I remember on launch day it was February of 2013 I was sitting at my desk we launched |
| 0:05.0 | mailbox we had a waiting list of almost a million people waiting for our app and I |
| 0:10.7 | there and then saw this what I now call the crossroads of should and must. |
| 0:17.3 | It was this moment where I could see my entire design career and the startup career. I'd worked on the Uber app. |
| 0:25.0 | I'm sure most people are familiar with Uber. |
| 0:28.0 | I and worked at all these amazing startups |
| 0:31.0 | and I'd done all this stuff that all had led me to this |
| 0:34.3 | amazing point of launching this product but I had no idea what any of that had to do |
| 0:38.5 | with my dream of painting in a white room. And I think that's really the gist of where I am in my journey and the story that I'm sharing |
| 0:48.0 | is that this crossroads of should and must arrives in all of our lives over and over again all the time in big and small ways. |
| 0:55.9 | And I mean like let's look at that day right? |
| 0:58.9 | Peak of a startup and also this kind of fledgling bizarre expression of wanting to paint. |
| 1:06.6 | Those worlds were both equally appealing, but they were totally different and standing |
| 1:11.1 | right there between those two paths I had to choose I couldn't |
| 1:14.9 | keep it up I couldn't do both and I looked at my finances I saw that I could |
| 1:19.0 | buy myself some time to give it a go and and I just I went in all in two feet into painting and |
| 1:26.7 | that's what's led me here to today I guess that was three years ago now. |
| 1:30.1 | I'm Sreeny Rao and this is the unmistakable Creative |
| 1:37.0 | podcast where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most |
| 1:40.4 | innovative and creative minds who started movements, built thriving businesses, |
| 1:44.7 | written best-selling books, and created insanely interesting art. |
| 1:47.8 | For more, check out our 500 episode archive at unmistakable Creative.com. This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats |
... |
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