Everybody comes into life with strengths, gifts, and abilities. These are a unique set of skills they have as an individual. I believe everybody is born with these special gifts.
As you grow up, you learn about who you are in life, you determine what you believe, you decide what you stand for, and you yearn for what you would like to see more of in the world. But, we all come in with our own gifts that serve as the foundation of who we are.
Your Lessons
The things you experience, along with what you don’t like so much, and the lessons you learn, really shape who you become and how you perform as an adult.
I encourage my clients to get really clear about their core values, their beliefs, what they want more of in the world and build their platform from there. When you do that and you bring that into your business, you’re going to have a exclusive position. You’re going to be really passionate about it because it’s YOU, and people will feel that passion coming through.
Your Contribution
Because of this unique way in which we are wired and the unique experiences we have as we mature, we all have something beautiful that we can learn from each other. We can serve one another and contribute to each other’s lives.
When you discern your contribution and you understand what you do, you can take that and create a platform, which I call your stand. I see your stand in my mind as a soapbox. From your stand, you can explain how do you want to be seen. Who are you, REALLY, at the depth of your being and what do you want to contribute?
I not only want to be seen as contributing, I also want it to be my legacy. When I leave this world, I want people to think of my contribution. I want them to remember that I had this impact on the world.
When you understand what your stand is and you’re in business, you can tie your purpose and your passion into your business. You’re going to resonate with people in a different way than 90% of the businesses out there, because they are just making a lot of noise and creating a lot of hype.
A Teacher Takes A Stand
For example, A couple of hours before I sat to write this blog post, I had a conversation with a client. During her first year of teaching, she had a lot of unruly students and she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She had worked so hard to get her degree and get this dream job, but it looked like her whole world was falling apart.
After she finally worked out a way to communicate with the kids and create structure, she wrote a book. She now teaches first year teachers how to reduce chaos in the classroom and be successful.
As we spoke, she asked me, “How do I take a stand?” I told her to look at her core values. One of them is personal power. Together, we crafted a stand for her that sounded like this: If you do not know how to retain your own personal power your first year as a teacher, your classroom will be full of chaos and discipline issues.
She loved it! When I asked her “Why is personal power important to first year teachers?,” she just went off. Now that she has a stand, she has a position she can take, blog posts she can write, and speeches she can give. She’s going to stand out in the marketplace because she’s talking about her own personal beliefs and her experience. She shares that with the people who want to understand how they can avoid the same kind of problems in their first year teaching.
So, to wrap it up, when you look at who you are as a person, your purpose, your passion, and your stand, you will stand out in the marketplace and you will influence more people than if you just go along with the latest and greatest.
Your Turn
Name one of your special gifts in the comments section below.