Counting Blessings - Blog (October)

What are you good at? Managing people? Hospitality? Writing? Drawing? Dancing? DIY? Business? Public speaking? Sports? Problem-solving? Whether we admit it or not, we all are all gifted in some unique way or another in some area, and we have the ability to choose whether we  bestow awe on ourselves or to make a radical change using our gift.

I believe that the things we are skilled at are nurtured through months, years or decades of practice, but we aren’t amazing at it right away. Surely there’s got to be a purpose behind why we are good at it? This can be tied back to a previous blog post: The Why. Why do you do what you do? What is the motivation behind your commitment?

Things aren’t always as they seem. 

Depending on where you were - both mentally, emotionally, physically and time-wise - when you discovered your strength, it may have been a smooth entry or the complete opposite, rocky, bumpy.

So, the journey began. That’s what life is anyway: a journey. Could it have been that you discovered your talent at just the precise time, so as to bring its purpose and potential to the light? 

Say you found you could bake bread really well and within good time, but then the next week a famine broke out in a part of your country - well, that’d be divine timing, because guess who can bake really good bread within exceptional time? You!

Therefore, the timing would’ve been a blessing in disguise.

Look around yourself: What resources do you have that can support your gift? Where can your gift be used best? What would you do if you learnt you were developing a disease that would prevent you from doing what you love, so time is precious? Everything would change, right?

Whatever you’re good at, you’re committed to it, therefore you need to be able to stand firm amidst a range of different conditions, like a tree rooted in good soil. You could be an athlete running a race in front of millions on a blue spring day or you might be running against the wind with only one person watching, nonetheless you want to run fiercely and passionately. 

The attitude that fuels an action is crucial to empowering others to take on the same attitude. How you react to the conditions in the moment and how you get up if you get blown back may be on show. Plus you're representing something or someone, maybe a team - that's the bigger picture. 

Apply that to your chosen scenarios. View the disadvantages from a critical lens: yes, there are challenges to be faced, but perhaps they are blessings in disguise and will show just how committed and passionate you are. 

Why? There are two sides of the coin. There’s the work of a person, and then there is the person. You don’t have to go with the crowd. You don’t have to appease the crowd, but you do want to seize the moment - and seize it well! - not merely for self-attraction or to rank highly, but to demonstrate commitment despite what may get in the way. 

Now think of things that are not physical: the mindset, the struggles, past experiences, etcetera. Likewise, they are obstacles at the best of times. My advice… do your thing, but make it clear that you’re just like everybody else: you’re real, you’re a human; you endure grit and shit as well, and each speck of dust has shaped you in big or small ways into the person you are, but you are not those specks. They're not your identity. What your identity is is up to you; I can’t define it.

However, I can speak for myself. 

I’m a thinker who has thoughts and some I turn into stories and then into words on paper or screens. 

Half of the time, I don’t know what I’m doing but just writing down my imagination. Heck, pretty much all of the time. I don’t know what books readers will like six months, one year or five years from now. 

I wrestle with the same brain that conjures those stories, but I am not those internal struggles. So I write those feelings down too. 

Writing isn’t something I was born good at, and it didn’t happen overnight. I’m just a thinker who has experienced nineteen years of life including highs and lows and that’s given me a unique perspective on different themes.

Sometimes the thoughts race, and I can’t get them all done tidily, so I think what’s the point? But then I remember there’ve been more smiles than frowns, more hugs than broken hearts, more kind words instead of rejection letters, more freedom than isolation, so I decide that the least I can do is jot down a testament that I’m a thinker who experiences life.

You’ve got a gift. You can make a difference with your gift like nobody else can in the exact same way. 

Again, check your resources, check your conditions and consider what you’d change if you discovered your time using your gift was limited. Consider the closing quote through a lens of your skill, not necessarily your life in the context I’ve been focusing on. Your life is much more than your work.

“Perhaps you were born for such a time as this” - Esther 4:14, The Bible

-Campbell :D