What does it mean to live out of your sweet spot? As chance would have it, one night as I was YouTube surfing, I discovered Tift Merritt, an up and coming singer-songwriter who wrote a song called Sweet Spot. It starts off with this line, “Nothing fancy, nothing fake.” When you live from your sweet spot, you live authentically. You are not pretending to be someone you are not. That’s being fake. You are also not pretending to be more than what you are. That’s being fancy.
Tift starts off the second verse with, “The fire is steady and the beat is strong.” The fire of your passion burns steady. It is consistent. It is there every day. You don’t have to go looking for it. Your passion is what you think of doing while you are still lying in bed. It causes you to jump out of bed. And at the end of the day, you go to bed dreaming about it: “You don’t even have to hold on [to your passion] because it has got a hold on you.”
Okay. Enough from me. It’s time to listen for yourself. At the end of the chorus, Tift issues an invitation to you, “Are you coming too?” Are you going to live from your sweet spot too? Here’s Tift performing at Musicians@Google.
If you fast forward to minute 35:00 of that video, you can hear an interview with Tift. The interviewer prompts, “You must hear all kinds of things from fans who relate to your music…” Her response:
I think that making work and being a musician should really be the reward in and of itself… It is about making something of meaning and beauty and when that resonates with someone else you are just grateful that your work really means something.
Living and working out of your sweet spot is the reward. Whatever your combination of talent, passion, and calling is, you know you have discovered it when the process is meaningful to you and the result is meaningful to others. Your life and your work–your life’s work–makes a difference. And if you don’t show up, people feel that something is missing; they feel your absence.
Living from the sweet spot is not effortless. You do have to exert yourself. But it is joyful effort because you love what you do. As you continue to train, you get even better at what you do. You gain momentum. The journey becomes an upward spiral. You become a master at your craft. Your sweet spot is waiting for you: “Are you coming too?”
Resources: Get the MP3 for Sweet Spot here.