Discovering your gifts
Every single event in our life, including every personality trait we have can teach us something if we let it. Life can be seen as either a series of crap and random nonsense that happens to us, or a life lived on purpose—driven by our consistent drive to connect with our deepest and truest version of our Self. That true Self is how you were created and WHY you were created. Unique, different, and most certainly on purpose.
Spiritual awakening, religious endeavors, enlightenment—call it what you will, but it all points to the same thing. Discovering the real You. And we each have certain traits, abilities, personalities, moods, and so forth that make us unique. And these traits are BOTH gifts AND hinderances. Let me explain.
Take the personality trait of anger for example. You get angry easily and vicious sometimes, thus hurting your self and others with your rage. Simultaneously however, you might not be able to see this, but it’s also high energy. You have an incredible ability to get super-charged, full of red hot energy, much like the sun. Passion, drive, ferocity that can lead groups and businesses to high levels of success. You don’t flounder in the abysmal dungeon of sadness and grief. Anger as you call it, is really your gift of red hot energy.
Now— that is a gift. The flip side is that anger causes high blood pressure, created inner turmoil, and can severely hurt others. Easily! And that is a hinderance. So it’s important to understand the difference, but also the relationship of the Ying/Yang opposites and how they work together. Gifts and hinderances working together.
For me, what use to be labeled as “depression, sadness, over sensitive, soft, weak, over-emotional, too concerned for others, and “wussy-like” — is actually empathetic, compassionate, caring, loving, kind, considerate, respectful, strongly connected to all emotions of self and others, and genuine. The gifts, but can be misconstrued as all negative, and in need of some kind of pharmacology-induced substance to “stop” that from happening.
What’s REALLY happening, is your TRUE Self is calling out, SCREAMING OUT for you to become your best Self. That horrible disconnected, hollow, empty, lonely, sorrowful, dark and ugly place is nothing more that your God-given Self saying “LET ME OUT, GET ME OUT OF HERE!” And in a good way. Shedding all the nonsense and old labels and becoming what you were meant to become. Nature has your back! A tree knows how to be a tree, an apple knows how to be an apple, and a cat knows how to be a cat. Nature unfolds, the way it was designed.
It’s merely mankind, and it’s EGO that manifests more and more of that false, negative, fake, and artificiality that leaves so many feeling “lost.” When all they need to do is let go and let God as they say… ALLOW your real Self to be. Stop pretending to be something you are not.
A strong caution here though. Let’s be careful with what we “think” are gifts, when they might not be. How do we know the difference? We’ll explore that quickly with a few key questions, but primarily, the gifts you have would serve the world, the community, and others in a profound and beautiful way. It’s about how we serve others, and connect to the higher good— our higher calling. Also I often put it this way, whatever your belief system is: Imagine you are sitting in front of the one who created you. For me God, but call it whatever you like and imagine that. You now express to them your “gift,” would they agree? Would they approve?
Here are a few questions to help you discover your “gifts”
1. What personality trait is strongest in you at the top of the list?
2. What special abilities do you have that most others do not?
3. What do you LOVE doing, and makes life just amazing?
4. What is it about you that really helps, or COULD HELP many others?
5. List as many positive traits about yourself as you can—be free and imaginative!
Next, here are a few questions to help you discover your hinderances
1. What personality trait tends to get you in trouble?
2. What part about yourself do you hate most? and why?
3. What part about yourself do others often complain about?
4. What part about yourself tends to hold you back?
5. List as many of your negative traits as possible— things you hate!
Now, look at your list of positives, and negatives and do the following:
1. See if any cross over or relate in some way
2. Looking at the negatives, which of those might really work FOR you if you could put a positive spin on them? (how they might actually serve the world)
3. Focus on the things you LOVE doing, those things tend to connect you to who you really are. Explore that some more, and make more of THAT a part of your life
These few questions help us discover more about who we are deep down. It’s an exercise that is really not much more than “mindfulness,” being thoughtful and concentrating on your traits so you can examine them more closely. Without doing that, we never truly see the better Self. We simply hide behind a false sense of who we are (EGO) and not living up to the life we deserve. And an important part of that is knowing our gifts AND our hinderances.
One more note on the hinderances. It’s very important to see those, understand those, and to LET THEM GO. They do not serve you in any way, and that’s why they are called hinderances. They hinder you from being your best Self! So learn what your gifts are, and start nurturing, tending to them and developing new habits to build on and start to see your life develop in a whole new direction!