Just because you CAN do something does not mean you were meant to spend your life doing it.
Somewhere between ability, enjoyment, aptitude, and purpose is a clue.
And that clue may be pointing directly toward you.
People are everywhere.
All unique.
All different.
All carrying abilities, talents, gifts, experiences, and SKILLS.
But here is something worth considering:
Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean it is your specialty.
And that is one place where I believe the world gets itself into trouble.
We have people sitting in personal and professional positions that really do not fit them.
Sometimes they know it.
Sometimes everybody around them knows it.
LOL.
A person may be capable of doing the job while something inside keeps whispering:
“This is not really me.”
That whisper deserves some attention.
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU DO?
That sounds like a simple question.
It is not.
“What do you do?” usually gets answered with a job title.
Teacher.
Broker.
Doctor.
Mechanic.
Parent.
Manager.
Writer.
Salesperson.
But WHO ARE YOU?
That is a different neighborhood altogether.
And sometimes discovering what you should be doing begins by discovering more of who is doing it.
EDUCATION IS PART OF IT — BUT NOT ALL OF IT
When I finished my degree in 2006, I marveled at the number of people in college who really did not know what to do, where to go, or what to study.
They were thinking about money.
Prestige.
What their parents said.
What their friends were doing.
What career sounded impressive.
What supposedly had the best future.
On and on.
But there was no AHA experience operating.
No internal:
“THAT’S IT!”
Education can prepare you.
It can expose you to ideas.
It can sharpen your thinking.
It can put tools in your toolbox.
But education cannot automatically tell you which tools belong in YOUR hands.
A diploma can prove that you completed a course of study.
It does not necessarily prove you found yourself.
APTITUDE
Aptitude means capability, ability, or an innate or acquired capacity for something.
That is a very important word.
What does your SKILLS BANK contain?
What do you naturally understand?
What do people repeatedly ask you to help them with?
What seems difficult to somebody else but strangely easy to you?
What catches your attention without anybody forcing you?
What can you spend hours doing and suddenly wonder where the time went?
There are clues everywhere.
Most people are simply too busy trying to become somebody to notice who they already are.
That is Richie talking now.
LOL.
WHAT DOES YOUR SKILLS BANK SAY?
Imagine that everyone has a personal bank account.
Except instead of money, it contains abilities.
Communication.
Organization.
Mechanical skill.
Creativity.
Leadership.
Patience.
Listening.
Writing.
Teaching.
Selling.
Building.
Cooking.
Designing.
Encouraging.
Analyzing.
Solving.
Entertaining.
Caring.
And hundreds more.
Your account will not look like mine.
Mine will not look like yours.
Good!
We already have enough copies walking around.
The question becomes:
What has been deposited into YOU?
And then:
Where could those deposits be put to their highest use?
This begins getting us closer to WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU DO?
WHAT DO YOU DO BEST — AND ENJOY DOING?
This question can reveal a lot.
Not merely:
“What are you good at?”
Plenty of people become good at things they dislike because necessity demanded it.
Instead ask:
What am I good at AND what do I enjoy doing?
When those two start overlapping, pay attention.
Now something interesting may be happening.
BLISS WORKS — WHAT DO YOU LIKE OR LOVE?
If you discover something you truly enjoy doing, effort changes character.
I am not saying there will be no work.
There will be work.
Sometimes plenty of it.
But there is a difference between being exhausted from doing something meaningful and being exhausted from fighting yourself all day.
One produces satisfaction.
The other produces Sunday-night dread.
LOL.
When you love the activity itself, improvement often becomes natural.
You WANT to learn.
You WANT to practice.
You WANT to get better.
Excellence does not have to be dragged out of you every morning.
It starts becoming a default product.
And success may begin standing in line to greet you.
Joseph Campbell famously encouraged people to “follow your bliss.”
I understand what he was pointing toward.
A properly placed skill, used at the right time and in the right environment, can make a person come alive.
You can almost see when somebody is working inside their natural territory.
Their eyes change.
Their energy changes.
Their confidence changes.
They are not merely doing something.
Something is coming THROUGH them.
HOW TO GET STARTED?
Well…
You already started.
It is called LIFE.
Your life has been giving you information about yourself from the beginning.
Parents noticed things.
Teachers noticed things.
Friends noticed things.
You experimented.
You succeeded.
You failed.
You lost interest.
You became fascinated.
You tried something once and said:
“Never again.”
Good.
That is information too.
Trial and error is not wasted time if you are paying attention.
It helps you turn up what works and begin abandoning what does not.
For some people, discovering their natural direction happens very early.
For others it takes years.
Neither one is automatically better.
Some fruit ripens early.
Some takes longer.
Still fruit.
YOUR HISTORY HAS CLUES
Look backward for a moment.
What were you doing before anybody told you what was practical?
What fascinated you as a child?
What did you naturally volunteer to do?
What subjects continually returned to your attention?
What compliments have people repeatedly given you through the years?
Sometimes other people see our gifts before we do.
Someone says:
“You explain things really well.”
“You are wonderful with people.”
“You should write.”
“You can fix anything.”
“You always make people feel better.”
“You have a way of organizing chaos.”
Do not automatically brush those comments away.
There may be information there.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO TURN EVERY GIFT INTO A JOB
Here is another Richie thought worth adding.
Not every gift has to become your profession.
Some things you love should remain things you love.
The modern world likes to ask:
“How can I monetize this?”
Sometimes the healthier question is:
“How can I enjoy this?”
LOL.
Your purpose may contain several expressions.
One skill may earn your living.
Another may serve your family.
Another may feed your soul.
Another may help somebody who crosses your path once every five years.
Do not force every gift into the same box.
YOUR WORK AND YOUR IDENTITY ARE RELATED — BUT NOT IDENTICAL
Be careful here.
What you DO is important.
But what you do is not the entirety of who you ARE.
Jobs change.
Companies close.
Careers end.
Bodies age.
Markets shift.
Titles disappear.
If your entire identity is attached to a business card, retirement can become a very strange experience.
Your work should be an expression of you.
It should not become your entire definition.
WHO ARE YOU?
A much bigger question.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
Hopefully one of the answers flows naturally from the first.
I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU TO CONSIDER
There is a practical exercise I recommend that can lead toward many answers.
It involves looking carefully at your abilities, interests, history, natural tendencies, repeated feedback, and the things that make you come alive.
Nothing mystical required.
Your own life has already gathered much of the evidence.
We simply have to look at it.
And that is where we will go next.
Proceed to PART 2 for the closure.
Because before somebody asks:
“What do you do?”
It might be worth having a better answer to:
“Who are you?”
— Richie
Pearls for the Soul
when you feed the soul, you feed everything.
https://pearlsforthesoul.com
Been expecting you