Discovering Gifts and Talents

“Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.”

Mary Schmich, Chicogo Tribune, 1997

 

I was 44 when I discovered I had a talent for writing. The discovery was as seredipidous as my mothers walk through her carreer (chronicled in an earlier part).

 

I had chosen to stay at home with my new son. He was three and it seemed like the longest year of our lives. I had reached my goal and a dream of having another child – a son – and being able to stay at home with him. With my first son, Scott, who was now twenty, I was a single parent. And up until he was thirteen I had to work constantly to keep us afloat, but with Ethan, my three year old, I wanted to be at home and experience what it was like to raise a child, without the burden of financial stress and full-time employment. Now, in his third year and my fourth as a stay-at-home mom, I was ready to do something new - reach for another goal and find something that would stimulate my mind and perhaps move me off in a brand new. I wanted to know what it felt like to be self-sufficient financially. That became the new goal 

 

My husband owned a company and he made a very good income but I wanted to experience wealth; to know what it was like to never again worry about how much we had or whether we could afford the things we wanted. I had a desire to travel more, to return to University, to carry off the missions work in Nepal (my friend and I shared this dream and were currently financially stunted and unable to pursie it) and to make an income that would provide for my husband to return home and pursue what ever his heart desired.  I had, over the years, encouraged him in his pursuit of wealth hoping that he would be the one to get for us the wealth we both wanted but, he seemed always to bump up against an invisible fiancial barrier. He could only make so much and then his earning potential dropped off into the abyss. For example, he wanted tp purchase property and own a few rentals. We did this, but the hassle was more than I could stand. Being a landlady was not in my paradigm, in fact, I hated it. The well that provided water for the entire property would run dry and we spent our own money on water runs to fill it. The tenants were, on occasion, irrispnsible, and we ended up cleaning up after them and renovating – at our own expense. My husband struggled with the endeavor too, and although it made us a pretty penny, we would have to wait to spend that penny when we were in our sixties. It was not my idea of wealth.

 

He tried to sell his business but the economy bottomed out and no one would buy. He tried an online business but it ‘s progress was slower than a slug in winter. He began teaching martial arts again, but by this time he had spread himself so thin with so many businesses, he just could not keep track of who had paid and who had not. It managed to just barely paid for itself.

 

I leaned on him heavily for income during my stay at home with Ethan but it always seemed that there was not enough. Our bank account would dry up and go into an overdraft or, if we had a small surpluss, some "thing", like a new deck to replace the rotting one or a heavy ax bill, would uck it up. I could feel a growiing resentlment toward my husband for his inability to provide me with the wealth I anticipated he could and would. 

 

As we learned in the last chapter, the feelings I was experiencing were indicators of something that rested deep within me, of a lack of understanding about my authentic self and an off-centeredness in my relationship with God and others.

 

My financial problem took the time to investigate and what I found was not really very surprising.

 

Forstly, I had to own the resentment. It was not my husband I was resenting, but my father. As a child, my father had been the main bread-winner for our home. My mother worked too, but her success came after I was well into my teens and almost out of the home. Once I started to look at myself, drawing in my tentacles of blame, I could hear my mother’s angry voice saying, “Your father puts a roof over your head and food in your stomach and you can’t even be bother to . . .” I don’t remember the rest, and it doesn’t really matter. After that epiphanie, I saw how I had made (and still did make) the interpretation that it was my duty to maintain the household – along with my older sister. There was no pay involved and we were never thanked. I felt like an indentured servant - a Cinderella. Often times my father was angry with the way we performed our duties. On this anger I built the interpretation that my duty was not performed good anough - that I was defective in my workmanship - that I was defective and not good enough (see how slippery the slope is). During this time he drank heavily and was heavy handed with his daughters. From this I interpreted that I had little value to him other than to take care of his needs and in return, he would provide me with a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Now, my parents never meant for me to make this interpretation. These experiences represented moments in time that I chose to build a belief about myself upon. None the less, there it was.

 

I drew in my blame further and realized that it was not my father that I resented but myself. I resented myself for not being able to provide the life I desired. My current financial state was all my fault and it was up to me to change it.

 

I spent some time talking to God about it. What was I looking at; I needed the whole picture – and what was I do do about it once I saw it? He showed me that my husband had developed a heavy reliance upon money; that his self-esteem rested in the amount he could accumulate, and that his trust was in money to get him through the hard times. Not a bad belief except when it negates trusting God, and it did. This was the wall my husband was hitting. It was not up to me to change my husband’s frame of reference surrounding money, but it was up to me to change my own.

 

As for my father, he had grown up in poverty and with the belief that money came through very hard labourious work. "No one was going to hand it to you" and "That's the best job 

your (refering to me as a reflection of someone like himself) ever going to get." I had grown up under his assumptions and belief system and now needed to break the casing around my financial life. Regognizing my father's belief imbedded in my own was the key to identifying what changes were needed. And athough both these key men in my life were highl self-reliant, the barriers they has erected - the walls that supported the continuation of thier own lack of wealth - were my own as well.

 

I had the potential to make as much money as I wanted but I had resticted myself to a life of poverty. I did this because it enabled me to live according to a lie I had created – that I was unpaid domestic labor, working for a roof over my head and food in my stomach.  and little potential. And that "settleing" for a "good job" was the best someone "like me" could hope for in this life. That I was only so good and no better. I had buried my potential under these beliefs and now I had to track back to the experiences that created those beliefs and inflict some damaging blow equal to the pain they had inflicted on me. I needed to alter them with more concruent, true, edifying beliefs. And so, I began to tell myself that I had just as much ability to create wealth as anyone else on this planet and that I had as much potential for change as the Creator himself. I tracked back to every experience and altered it. I let blame rest with my father for his mistaken beliefs about money, potential and purpose and I began to incorporate new truths - God centered realities about myself, my uniquness and my potential.

 

After altering the past I worked on the future. I used visualization to produce the feelings I needed to incorporate change. I saw myself wealthy and felt all the relief and pleasure of untold wealth. In my visualizations, I walked through the house of my dreams, travelled, worked as a writer (a dream I had. In the socialism I was raised in, artists were discouraged from their work in favour of more practical applications of labour. My sister was a painter but . . . to this day she does not paint. I was a writer but was encouraged to work hard, as my ather and mother had). I gave money to my mission and felt how good it was to help others. I bought and wore quality clothing and drove a quality car. Most of all, I enjoyed my life to the max.

 

At first, however, some visialization went askew. I imagined myself lording my new found wealth over my husband, as I had misinteroreted him doing to me (drawing in more tentacles of blame). Then, as my values about loving others took over, I saw how sharing my wealth with loved ones would feel so much like loving God and therefore loving myself.

 

At around the same time as the coming of this new revelation, I decided to take a course at the local University. After visiting with the counsellor, I was informed that my transcripts were incomplete and that there was no proof that I had ever graduated. I could enter, she said, as a mature student, but I’d have to jump through a few hoops first. I am always up for a challenge, so I agreed to the conditions -  write an English competency exam ( an essay written in a closed room over the course of three hours) and , if I passed this, I could take English 100. If I passed English 100, I was in.

 

My English teacher was a young American man who was working on his Doctorate, and it was in his class, the focus on critical thinking (ironic as it may seem), that I learned hat I could write. I also learned how much my parents beliefs, the media, politics, and the my low self-esteem and the advent of so many other people, had influenced me. My papers were returned with 'A's' and I began to allow myself to entertain thoughts surrounding my ability to write.

 

So I began to write. I wrote short stories, articles for new print, and eventually self-help books. I began to call myself an author and a writer, and I opened myself up to receive encouragement from others, plus the high from seeing my work published. I told myself that my next job would not be some task I didn’t enjoy, but I would be paid for writing, And then, as these things happen, in common hours, an unexpected email arrived asking if I would I consider sitting in the editor’s chair while she was away on holiday. This inquiry from the publisher of a paper I had often submitted articles to. Just like that, it happens.

 

I had, within a year, discovered my talent, writing, and my gift, self-help literature, and my purpose, reaching out to others in love.

 

Is it this easy? Yes! In the chapters before, we began to lay the groundwork for the discovery our talent, purpose and gift to the world. Just the fact that you are reading this book says that your are ready to make this discovery yourself. Knowing yourself and your purpose, gifts and talents is contingent upon the practice of authenticity, correcting beliefs that have been formed in the past that are not serving us well, and making value based decisions.

 

The rest, all the doors that will open before you, are not of your concern, really. It will just happen for you as it does for so many other. My life is full of stories about serendipitous moments that have forever altered the trajectory of my life. And your will be too.

 

To be continues