In our pragmatic culture we think of obsession as pathological, but from Dante’s Inferno to the Taj Mahal artists have used romantic obsession to achieve creative greatness. Our pursuit of the Beloved inspires us to transform ourselves, persist through difficulty and conquer fear. There’s a saying: Show me who you love, and I’ll show you who you are. To find your passion -- your personal genius – you need to identify your Beloved: an ideal, cause or group who will not just show you who you are, but who you could be.

Justine J. Musk is a Canadian author, and the first wife of entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk is author of the contemporary fantasy novel BloodAngel. Her second book, Uninvited, was released in 2007, and is an unrelated work intended for young adult readers. A sequel to BloodAngel, Lord of Bones, was released in 2008. Musk is one of the first people to ever use a site like Pinterest to plan out a novel.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx