Gifts vs Passions, round 1, FIGHT! 🥊
I wrote recently about your gifts, and how wasting them tends to make you less happy. I sometimes forget (because I'm so deep into this s###) that other people haven't bothered to think through what their gifts are.
So how do you explain gifts to someone who's never thought about them? Truthfully, I'm not totally sure. I generally find it's easiest to hear people talk, and you listen for when they talk about the parts of their life/job that they're good at. You listen for their tone, sense their energy - it tends to change a bit when they talk about these gifts. It's clear that they draw some satisfaction from these parts.
In other words - it's the intersection of what you're good at, and what you like.
Personally, I happen to think I'm pretty good at drafting a service contract ... BUT I don't quite appreciate it in the same way - it's not, I would say, one of my gifts. On the other hand, I love talking with people. Luckily in my corner of the law, there's a lot of dealing with people, and I get to work with juniors who are only too excited to sink their teeth into a real contract.
But it goes deeper than just dealing with people, I love talking to people about things that matter.
I think that THAT'S one of my gifts.
🎁
Gifts often go to the core of you, overlapping with what makes you fundamentally you. That leads me to believe that most of us have had our gifts for a long time. Potentially, our gifts were always waiting inside of us to be found. I don't think this is technically true, but generally the things we are good at are things that we've been good at for a long time.
And THAT (the gifts are hidden in me waiting to be found) is how a lot of us feel about PASSIONS:
We must have some passions in us waiting to be found.
And as soon as we find those passions and align our work to them, we'll never work another day in our life.
*swoon* 💚💙💛💜🧡
I have some long-standing thoughts on the destructiveness of this mindset: https://leaderrising.com/blog/2020/01/08/havent-discovered-your-passion-just-give-up I've seen its destructive work in my own life as well as many clients.
So how should we view PASSIONS instead and how are they different from GIFTS?
I think it works like this:
you have something you like, and you work at it until you get good. then it's a gift.
or you have something you're good at, and you work at it until you like it. then it's a gift.
THEN if you have a gift, and you keep mastering it, you start to like it more.
at some point, you like it enough that it becomes a passion.
So many of us never make it to the passion stage, and that's okay. Don't guilt yourself over this. Just lean into the stuff you like to do.
Turns out that when you do things that you're good at and you like, life is more pleasant.
What do you think?
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