Susan Finds Her Gift
"Like the damaged stone from which Michelangelo's David was
carved, Susan beheld what she considered to be her ruined life and the
empty years that lay ahead of her. For the past 16 years, she had been a
hard-working single mother, juggling a demanding career and taking care
of her daughter without any help from the child's chronically absent
father. To make her life more challenging, Susan was ambitious for
herself and her daughter, and over the years pushed herself to keep more
and more balls in the air. Every year, she would take on more work,
more community service, more professional development classes, while
tutoring her daughter at home after work and making sure she knew what
was going on at school. Susan was a master juggler, but her busy
schedule took a toll.
Susan worked as a legal assistant for a major law firm. Her daughter,
"the flower from my compost heap of a marriage" as she put it, had
recently left for college on an academic scholarship. With her daughter
launched, Susan was left to consider her own path. She looked down at
the ground below her. "Dull cement," she said, "and my feet were planted
in it long before I had a chance to choose."
Susan wanted a change. She was dying for a change. But to what? She had
no idea. And wasn't it too late already? After all, she was nearly 42.
Susan couldn't think constructively. She believed that she had no
choices. Here was a bright, articulate, capable woman who, in her own
mind, could never do anything right and believed she had missed her
chance anyway. Susan thought her life nothing more than a giant "might
have been." If she hadn't married so young, she might have had a
relationship she was happy with. If she hadn't gotten pregnant, she
might have finished law school. If she had finished law school, she
could have been the lawyer and not the legal assistant. Susan couldn't
figure out where to begin. Her early enchantment with the law had faded.
She wanted a new life, and her greatest fear was, to paraphrase Oliver
Wendell Holmes, that she might die with her music still in her. For
Susan, it was time to start playing her own music.
Working with a life coach, Susan asked, "How do I find out what exactly to do? Can you tell me?"
"You have to find it within yourself," the coach said. "But I can start
by asking you a few questions that will begin to reveal your gift."
"But I don't have a particular gift. I'm not gifted."
If you were to ask someone what their gift is, chances are their minds
will immediately turn to Michelangelo sculpting his Pietà or Einstein
unlocking the universe's secrets with a simple equation. People tend to
think of gifts in such extraordinary terms. They see a gift as an
innate, exceptional talent, as something that few people in this life
are born with. But they are wrong.
A gift isn't just the province of the exceptionally talented, the
successful, or the blessed. Quite the contrary, everyone has a gift.
Some gifts are thousand-watt bolts of light. Others are hidden in the
stone. All are there, waiting to be revealed.
Your gift lies in the place where your values, passions, and strengths
meet. Discovering that place is the first step toward sculpting your
masterpiece, your life."
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Finding-Your-Gift/2
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