Last week we talked about the massive Cheesecake Factory menu and about how we’re overwhelmed by choices. This week we’re talking about your natural gifts, or your natural advantage. Everyone has them. And they have nothing to do with how you compare to anyone else.
How many times have you stopped yourself from trying something new because you’re not as good as someone else? When I first got to engineering school, I was not good at engineering. Not by a long shot. I hadn’t taken enough math prerequisites in high school, so I had to catch up my freshman year. I was behind many of my classmates who had done the work in advance.
Thankfully, I overcame those challenges and got my degree. Comparison is hard. I believe it kills more dreams than we could count. It can cause people to settle for lives well below their potential. One of the biggest excuses I hear from clients is “I’m too old” or “It’s too late.” But what if the gifts you have are already under your nose and just need to be uncovered?
Take Frank McCourt. He taught high school in New York City for 30 years. Every day, he told his students stories from his childhood. He always wanted to write a book. After retiring from teaching, his first attempt failed because he tried to copy the experts. Authors whose work he greatly respected. He later had a breakthrough when he found his own voice and wrote the book through a child's eyes. All those years of classroom storytelling prepared him to write Angela’s Ashes, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize at 66!
Last week, I promised you an answer to how you can break out of indecision and live your life on purpose. You may be surprised by the answer. I have the privilege of working with highly talented clients. I use a tool called the Purpose Factor Assessment. It has been so helpful in bringing their purpose to light and getting them moving toward it. I will often ask my clients, “What most frustrates you?” Here are examples from real people:
A: “Being bogged down by excessive details is draining.”
B: “When somebody is intentionally not being coachable, it drives me crazy.”
C: “Nobody wants to do a bunch of work and then feel like that it didn’t bring any value, or that it was meaningless.”
These things drain them because they are the opposite of what they are naturally good at. Knowing why is important. The answer lies in what their Natural Advantage is:
A: Builder Advantage. They have big visions and love dreaming up big ideas and putting them into motion. They can’t stand being slowed down by details.
B: Teacher Advantage. They are insatiably curious about the world around them. Their interests are broad. Lack of curiosity is draining.
C: Recruiter Advantage. They go all in on things they believe in. These are relationship-oriented people who don’t want to be stuck doing detailed work that doesn’t matter.
We tend to be poor judges of our own strengths. What comes naturally to us feels ordinary, so we can discount it. Frustrations are different. You know exactly what frustrates you. You can actually feel it in your body. Frustrations are actually a clue as to what can make you feel most fulfilled:
If you were unseen as a child, do you love helping others feel seen?
If others controlled you, do you love freeing others to make their own decisions?
If you were called out for being unprepared, do you like helping someone else be completely prepared for their opportunity?
A practical question to ask yourself is, “What did I need when I faced this situation, and how could I offer that to someone else?” I believe that your purpose is directly tied to how you serve others. You tend to give what you didn’t get. In that way, we can see the hardest things we went through as gifts and clues to our purpose.
I’ll go deeper on this topic in a free masterclass I’m doing on November 16th.
A quick note before you go.
Starting tomorrow, I’m trying something new. For five days, I’ll send you one short email a day. They come from a different email system than this newsletter.
Same me. Shorter notes. More personal.
All five are built around one question I hear from leaders all the time: what’s next for me?
You don’t need to do anything. Watch for them starting Monday. If one lands in spam or promotions, move it to your main inbox.
And if daily email isn’t for you, unsubscribe from those anytime. You’ll keep getting this newsletter every Sunday either way.
See you tomorrow.
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