The Gift You Were Before You Achieved Anything

You really are special.

And I’m sorry, because a lot of us were misled about what that meant.

They told you you were special because you got straight A’s and looked pretty in the pictures and made the touchdown and pleased some authority who adjudicated the rightness of your way of doing life.

Now, you achieved some stuff. I’m not trying to put that down.

But your specialness is rooted in a much deeper place than the dumb-ass rubrics of what “special” required.

I was a Stanford-educated lawyer before I had my big accidental awakening, before I fell into the gifts that made me an energy healer and a seer and a guide for people. I never thought woo was real until it happened to me.

That’s when my real specialty revealed itself.

I thought my specialty was teaching improvisation. I thought it was preparing cases for trial, processing depositions and evidence, and telling stories through trial briefs. I thought it was speaking the way I’d been trained in speech and debate. I thought it was drawing good pictures and playing guitar at church.

All beautiful gifts. Truly.

But those are all things I learned. And my natural specialty is something I didn’t learn in school.

So maybe the question is:

• What have I been intrinsically since the day I was born?

• What has been my unique effect on people just from being around them?

• What has been my gift to everyone in my life even when I wasn’t trying to do anything?

Hm… those questions are a bit more subtle, I know.

And some of us end up asking them because we HAVE to. Whether it’s the mid-life crisis, the crippling divorce, the unexpected physical challenge, or just your normal every-day nervous freakin breakdown… we finally get around to facing what’s been in us all along.

For us women around 50, it’s a common thing, especially with the joy of menopause in the mix. That’s when we stop giving so many F’s and we start asking a question we never stopped to ask before…

“So what?”

So what that I was school valedictorian? So what that I went to Stanford? So what that I traveled internationally teaching and performing improv?

Where is that now? What is happening now? What am I emanating now?

Because that happened. But what’s true now?

Enter the Specialist, our archetype of the month.

The Specialist is the part of you that already knows you’re weird. It knows you’re special, not impressive-special, but intrinsic-special. It’s the part of you that’s willing to be only what you actually are.

And that’s important right now, in an age where the robots are copying everything and passing themselves off as humans. It’s more important than ever to touch into what makes you human, yes, but also what makes you distinctly, unmistakably you, you freakazoid.

• What of your gifts is an emanation?

• What of your gifts never leaves you, no matter what job you take or what relationship you’re in?

• What’s your essential juju?

That’s a lot more interesting than your résumé, and more powerful.

The people closest to you probably see this more clearly than you do, because when you’re the fish inside the tank, you don’t know there’s a tank. You’re just swimming around being yourself, while other people may be having an entire experience of your presence that you have not put words to yet.

So here’s a shortcut: ask them.

Ask the people who know you best, who love you and see you in your worst moments and your best moments:

• What are the qualities I emanate?

• What do I make you feel that other people don’t?

• What is the thing you receive from me even when I’m not trying to be useful?

And please, because I know this move, don’t swat the answer away because it sounds too simple.

Don’t knock it away because it seems boring and obvious or like “oh you always say that” or because your self-worth issue wants to protest.

Listen to their response. Record it if you can. Make a note.

Those who love you can give you that deep acknowledgement of what you truly are - of what you’ve always been - before you did all those successful things, before the grades and the titles and the touchdowns and the little gold stars of being impressive.

Once you hear it, know it, and acknowledge it, then you can amplify that essence through all the other masks and jobs and duties you may still need to carry as part of your work.

That is when your perceived value goes up, for you and for others.

Your effectiveness goes up too, because you’re no longer dragging your whole self through work while pretending the most potent part of you is irrelevant.

You also learn who balances you, who supports who you actually are, because none of us is a one-person show.

You are a specialist. Each one of us is!

So what’s your specialty?

Not because you went to grad school on a topic. Not because someone gave you a credential.

What is your effect intrinsically, in the quiet moments?

Pay attention to that.

Center your service in this world around that. Center your business around that. Let the genius that flows through you when you’re open become less hidden, less apologetic, and more available. People are already looking for exactly that thing in you.

And if you need help figuring this out from someone who can see deeply into you and put words to your valuable specialty better even than most of your friends…

Hiiiiiiiii! Reach out. This is exactly the kind of deep seeing we practice inside my work: naming the thing you have always carried, then learning how to actually use it.