Write on Wednesday-Hidden Talents

How many people spend their entire lifetime headed in the wrong direction, without ever uncovering their greatest talents and potential.  Could you be one of them?

Dancing With the Stars is one of my "guilty pleasure" tv shows, and while I love the dancing, and the costumes, and the adrenaline rush watching these performances, what I adore about the show is seeing people discover a hidden talent.  Not the people who stumble through each week doing schtick performances, or those whose football, basketball, soap opera, reality show star fan base keeps them in the competition - the people who have never done a musical or theatrical or athletic thing in their lives, and all of a sudden demonstrate a remarkable talent for dancing.

Yeah, there are some of those.

Brooke Burke, this year's new co-host, was one.  A few seasons ago when she showed up on the dance floor, she had nothing to her (dancing) credit except modeling experience.  She was a mom, albeit a strikingly beautiful and graceful one, with small children running around her feet at home. But when she stepped onto the floor each week, she was a vision in elegance, grace, and beauty.  She seemed born to dance, as if this natural talent were just lying dormant within he, waiting for a chance to be released from its bondage.

Just thinking about that gives me shivers.  Could it be that lying within every one of us is some stupendous, unknown talent, something we could be so amazingly good at doing, yet we have no idea it's there?

If only someone could figure out how to unleash everyone's hidden talents, they would be a millionaire, wouldn't they?

So how does one go about discovering this buried treasure?  In a book I just read, one of the characters decided on her 60th birthday to "try one new thing every year for the rest of her life."  Although you'd likely have some rather excruciatingly ego deflating experiences, you might just unearth a hidden talent.

You could take some aptitude testing, try and see what the statisticians could turn up in the way of hidden talents.

I wish I had the answer - for me, and for anyone else out there who's ever wondered what talents might be hidden within them.  For now, all I can do it be open to new experiences and wherever they might take me.

Maybe some wonderful talent will emerge.

Hidden Talents

Mark Twain once described  a man who died and met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.  Knowing that Saint Peter was very wise, the man asked a question that he had wondered about throughout his life. He said, "Saint Peter, I have been interested in military history for many years.  Who was the greatest general of all time?"

Saint Peter quickly responded.  "Oh, that's a simple question.  It's that man right over there."

"You must be mistaken," responded the man, now very perplexed.  "I knew that man on earth, and he was just a common laborer."

"That's right my friend," assured Saint Peter.  "He would have been the greatest general of all time, if he had ben a general."  from StrengthsFinder 2.0, by Tom Rath

How many people spend their entire lifetime headed in the wrong direction, without ever uncovering their greatest talents and potential.  Could you be one of them?

Write about

Hidden Talents

Harmony

You look for areas of agreement.  In your view there is little to be gained from conflict and friction, so you seek to hold them to a minimum.  When you know that the people around you hold differing views, you try to find the common ground.  You can't quite believe how much time is wasted by people trying to impose their views on others.  Wouldn't we all be more productive if we kept our opinions in check and looked for consensus and support?  When others are sounding off about their goals, their claims, their fervently held opinions, you hold your peace.  When others strike out in a direction, you will willingly, in the service of harmony, modify your own objectives to merge with theirs (as long as their basic values do not clash with yours.)  In your view we are all in the same boat, and we  need this boat to get where we're going.  It is a good boat.  There is no need to rock it just to show that you can.

Harmony was at the top of my list of strengths, as identified by the StrengthsFinder assessment I wrote about a while back.  The assessment, which takes about 30 minutes to complete, identifies five talents, defined as a natural way of thinking, feeling, or behaving.   When we identify our top five talents and invest the time to develop them, they can turn into a strength, or the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance.

Reading the description associated with harmony, I nearly laughed out loud.  That is exactly me.  And although I recognize myself in every sentence of that description, and am fully aware that harmony is important vital for me to be happy, I would probably not have considered that a talent or potential strength.  In today's world, it sometimes feels as if we're encouraged to be adversarial rather than conciliatory, taught to "make waves" in order to be really successful.   The person who favors peace and harmony is sometimes considered weak and ineffectual, while the person who behaves like the proverbial squeaky wheel will get the "grease."

The StrengthsFinder philosophy allows me to turn that preconception on its head and look at what I once saw as a weakness in a different light.  Because I value consensus and agreement, I work well with other people.  I can be effective in creating a positive environment which leads to greater productivity and satisfaction.  Because I'm open to different perspectives, I can learn more efficient ways to do things. 

Remember that commercial campaign for Coca Cola back in the 70's with the iconic theme song..."I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony..."  

I loved that so much - and now I know why.  It's my  theme song too.

"People who are especially talented in Harmony look for consensus.  They don't enjoy conflict; rather they seek areas of agreement."   

Don't you wish everybody did?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOEU87SBTU]

Living With Poetry

In my meanderings though blog-land, I've happened to cross paths with Grete, whose beautiful blog (To Live A Poem) has inspired me to reconnect with some of my favorite poets.  Grete's focus excites me, because she's not simply reading poems for pleasure, nor is she dissecting them word for word to study symbols and rhythmic patterns...she's living the poem, wrapping it around her life and using it to gain insight into her self and the world around her. So I took up the challenge to live some of my favorite poems, and where better to begin than with Mary Oliver, and the poem I've typed out onto a small card and carried tucked away in my wallet for the past two years.  Each morning lately, as I've gone out to walk the dogs, I've written one stanza out and memorized it, repeating the words as I watch the world spring into life after the cold of winter.

When I am among the trees

Especially the willows and the honey locusts

Equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines

They give off such hints of gladness

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

These early days of spring the tiniest of blossoms have barely sprung from their buds, and the sky appears to be filled with a fine, green mist, the "hints of gladness" which will emerge in full leaf just a few weeks from now.  I feel that hopefulness in my own life these days~ a spring in my step as I walk onto the front porch, bathed in early morning sunlight. There is such hope in all this, such promise, that I can't help but feel saved from the dark days through which I've walked in recent months.

I am so distant from the hope of myself

In which I have goodness and discernment

And never hurry through the world

But walk slowly, and bow often.

Because all too often I am so distant from the hope of myself, feel light years away from ever being the woman I want to be, from even knowing who that woman is.  Because all too often, all I do is hurry through the world, from one obligation to the next, never able walk slowly, or acknowledge the simple goodness and beauty around or within me.

Around me the trees stir in their leave

and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say

And you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.

Such wisdom among the trees, such simple and perfect counsel, this mission of ours in the world..."to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."  To find that place where we fit - where the work that we do, the life that we live, is filled with people and things and activities that we love. 

So my morning walks this month have become a time to dwell within the poem, to live and breathe it while I move purposefully through the brisk morning air, to let the words mull and simmer in my brain and enliven my thoughts and spirit for the day.

To live a poem...

Brave Beauties

How can it be, when it's only April, that these have popped open in all their splendor?   As much as I love them, and all the other blossoming, burgeoning signs of new life everywhere, I'm afraid -  frightened that winter is not yet done with us, will roar through these flat plains one more time and slap down all this brave beauty.

I hope, hope, hope that I'm wrong, that it's just my usual fear and foreboding, the old familiar mistrust that nothing good will stay.

Because  anything as brave and bright as these beauties should be allowed to shine, shouldn't they?

What's shining in your neighborhood these days?