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Digging Deeper On Your ‘Amazing-ness’
By Steve Sjogren | July 27, 2006
Yesterday I encouraged you to begin to ponder the thought, “What am I amazing at in life?”
Upon thinking that through I realized that to throw out a second point would fall on deaf ears. That first point isn’t something that you can discover overnight by any means unless you are unemployed and score 25 Intuitive points on the Meiers-Briggs inventory. That is, you need some more digging on that question.
Here’s an idea to help you dig deeper on your amazing-ness:
Look back upon your life – starting at age 3 or 4 or when you first began to have a self-image come together. Or to put it another way, when you first began to get an idea of what you were good at.
Your life now at age ___ is merely a deepening of what started at that early stage. For example, I am among other things a leader. I have always been a leader. Without putting effort into it, I have been either the president or vice-president of every organization I have been involved with including my entire high school when I had just moved to the school a few weeks before the elections were held and there was a tremendous amount of anti-white sentiment – most kids there were either Hispanic or American Indian. Hello – I am Swedish. Out of over one thousand in the high school I was by far the only Scandinavian. I got into several fights the first week of school and I was just walking down the hallway – but a few weeks later I was elected the vice-president of the student body. I gave a 3 minute speech to the group – one of my first talks and for some reason all one thousand stood to their feet, whistled, and threw nickels (a tradition at that school when they liked you!) I won by a landslide. I shouldn’t have been surprised. When I was 5, I was the president of the Redbarn Lane Night Patrol as well (another long story, but it was based loosely on our favorite TV show of a similar name starring Vic Morrow – unless you are 45 you have no idea what I am talking about…)
Point being: You were amazing then, you are amazing now. You are just more of what you were then – you are simply better now than you were then.
I am assuming something big here that may well not be true for some reading this: I assume you had a decent childhood and that your parents / guardians were encouraging to you. Or that you have an indomitable spirit. I for one had a very unideal childhood – something I will eventually write about – many things I have not made public. I was raised by my mom. On Father’s Day I send my mom a Father’s Day gift because she was my mom and my dad. But mostly I have an indomitable spirit – a never-say-die attitude – my wife Janie had a very similar childhood and she too has developed the same attitude as an adult.
One big thought for today: I promise you this – you are indeed amazing at something. I will go a step farther – you are a freaking genius at something. Your problem – the reason your genius hasn’t manifested itself in a spectacular way and you haven’t seen a spectacular manifestation of that yet (read that last sentence one more time right now and say the word “yet” twice as loud as the rest of the words in the rest of the sentence) is because you are / have spent far too much time on what you are not a genius on.
Geniuses spend approximately 95% of their time on just one thing – what they are geniuses at! It really is that simple. They are the exact opposite of the arch-typical “jack of all trades” types. To quote Jack Palance in the character “Curley” in City Slickers, “It’s all about the one thing.” “So what’s the one thing Curley” asks Billy Crystal… “That’s for you to find out…”
Don’t despair. I promise. I can help you find that one thing. No kidding. I have helped hundreds and their lives have been changed.
Until tomorrow… walk by love.
