Dr. Michelle Chappel, a Princeton-trained cognitive psychologist, left her professorship to become a rock star after realizing her academic success masked her true gift for music. She played piano effortlessly at four but never pursued it because her parents didn't provide one. She shares seven questions to help you uncover gifts you may have buried since childhood.
Chapters
I begged my parents for a piano and they never got one. They never noticed that I could do this, and so I forgot all about it.
At 4 years old, she would walk into people's homes, play the piano as if she was trained for it.
I remember it felt like being in a room full of light.
And then for 15 years, she forgot all about it. She got a PhD from Princeton, and one afternoon while she was sitting in a class on music perception, It all came back to her.
I had outscored everyone, all the graduate students, all the professors, and even a dean who had studied classical violin for 20 years.
And here's the part that should worry you. The thing you're great at might not be the gift that you were born with.
That isn't really who he was. That wasn't his true gift. It's just the role that he needed to play growing up.
Michelle has a PhD from Princeton in cognitive psychology, and then one day she She left it all, her professorship, to pursue a career and become a rock star. Yes, her friends thought, her colleagues thought that she'd gone mad, and even her mother doubted her.
It's not like the world necessarily applauds you when you follow your own particular path.
But she actually became an award-winning rock star, and she has these 7 questions that help you identify the gifts that you've left behind. And I answered all of those 7 questions on camera and discovered something I had buried 12 years old.
You feel like you belong being who you are rather than having to hide who you are to belong.
In our conversation today, we talk about why as children we bury the gifts that we've been given, how to de-identify between the roles that you have and the gifts you were born with, and the 7 questions that will help you identify what you left behind. And if you're really good at the work that you do right now and are freaking bored out of it, then this one will hit you hard. Let's dive in.
