September 2024 Knowing What You Do Well

He doesn’t say anything about it to me, but I am positive my brother-in-law finds it incomprehensible that my husband and I can’t plan and execute our driving trips with any accuracy on when we will get to their house. Many times, we are off by hours. On the most recent trip, we were off by a day.

Well. While that’s absolutely a thing that truly happened, there’s a bit more to the story.

Anyway.

We marvel at hearing how they completely pack their car the day before, then get up in the dark, and before dawn on departure morning take to the car just one tiny bag each of stuff like toothbrushes and phone chargers before setting off at something like 5 am.

Then a few hours into the drive, after the sun comes up, they stop for a big breakfast at Bob Evans.  

And presumably congratulate themselves.

On at least some trips involving more than one day of driving, such as en route to their annual month in Florida, even the coolers get packed the night before in a complicated method involving some old fashioned but very effective homemade, long-lasting blocks of ice.

While I also believe my brother-in-law understands he’s good at this (and that we most definitely are not) I do hope he  truly appreciates his ability and sees it as part of his genius and God-given abilities.

I know I’m pretty awestruck.

It’s not boasting to understand what you are good at, as we have all been given natural gifts and abilities. And it’s very powerful to understand the value of what you bring to a team, a company, or a client.

Hopefully my brother-in-law appreciates his great skills at organizing and devising and staying on a schedule. He’s a master, and I trust he sees it in himself.

When he’s done fixating on how bad we are at it, that is.

This recent experience reminded me of some related things I learned in recent years.

For starters, it was a big Aha for me only a few years ago to realize that when we are good at something, we often don’t recognize it because it’s so effortless for us.  I so wish I had learned that decades ago.

Because it’s so easy for us, we gloss over it and sometimes brush off compliments, feeling like someone is complimenting us for remembering to brush our teeth or some other obvious thing.

The thing is, for most of my life, I assumed that what I found easy, everyone else did too.

Not necessarily.

I know now I missed opportunities because I wasn’t seeing myself clearly.

But there’s a flip side. When something is so easy for us, it is also easy to be critical of those who don’t perform as well as we do.

I haven’t always been very grown up about it.  In other areas of life, I have spent time amazed not in a good way at the things other people don’t seem to comprehend that are completely obvious to me.

My encouragement to you is to see yourself more clearly, but realizing how hard it is to see our own strengths, also help others around you recognize their gifts, and remember to extend grace as well.

That’s the first part of the Aha.

The second part of the Aha, true for you as well as me, is that these areas of our own special giftedness may well represent a new way to serve.

Many years ago, when I was even newer at this business thing than I am now, on more than one occasion I had clients asking me for things, or wanting to talk to me about things, outside of the tasks contracted for.

I’m pretty willing to share what I know, but the time spent walking authors through things I didn’t consider part of my services sometimes kept us from getting done what we had contracted to do. Or in other instances resulted in me giving a lot of bonus consulting time.

Duh.   

What I had but didn’t realize at first was an opportunity to expand what I was offering my clients. They saw me differently than I saw myself, and sought out my help in various ways I didn’t fully appreciate would be important to them.

I started figuring it out.

After a couple of rounds of those unexpected additions becoming appreciated add-on services, I finally caught on.

Now when I find myself reacting negatively when people keep asking me for something I don’t consider part of what I offer, I catch the signal. I take note. I stop, assess, and take a bigger look.

It may well be a clue to new avenues I wasn’t seeing.

And the final part of the Aha is a kind reminder to all of us that regardless of the despair or joy with which we view our strengths and weaknesses, we all do have many abilities and should be gentle with ourselves and each other. Even if I don’t think I’ll ever perfect leaving for anything on time.

Ask my brother-in-law.