I do love it when you comment!

Here are two, fol­low­ing last week’s arti­cle on Sur­viv­ing Tal­ent:

Err, you seem to be assum­ing that every­one has a tal­ent, per­haps some repressed artis­tic abil­ity etc,. Per­son­ally I don‘t have any that oth­ers would value, though I like writ­ing, paint­ing etc. In your exam­ple the per­son has excep­tional abil­ity that you and oth­ers can see. My prob­lem is how does that relate to us mediocre artists.

And:

I find it so amaz­ing to be with my kids in school and see­ing all the dif­fer­ent chil­dren with their sprout­ing tal­ents. It’s pretty easy to spot at an early age, 2^nd grade and 4^th grade. I so want to embrace my kids’ pas­sions and tal­ents, encour­age them, let their lit­tle lights shine. I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing about how to recover my pas­sions and tal­ents, they have been so buried. I want to let my kids see and watch my own growth not just hear my words. It’s so much more pow­er­ful to be an example.

The first com­ment, above, addresses an impor­tant issue. Let me unpack.

Yes, I do believe that every­one had tal­ent—where I have gone off the rails is that I tend to use “art” illus­tra­tions to make my point. Much of my own skill set is in graph­ics arts like paint­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy, and, of course, I write. A lot.

Not what I mean, though. I’m not talk­ing about artistry, but rather about Mastery.

A great Zen story: a monastery needed a new abbot, so another abbot was sent to pick one. He inter­viewed all of the monks, but was not sat­is­fied. He went to the kitchen for a bite to eat, and noticed the cook carv­ing meat. With great skill. They struck up a con­ver­sa­tion.
Abbot: Your knife-work is excel­lent.
Cook: Sharp knife, great care. I avoid the bones.
Abbot: How often do you sharpen your knife?
Cook: Once–24 years ago, when I became the cook.
The cook was imme­di­ately installed as the abbot.

The issue with a word like “tal­ent” is that it is mostly applied to artists and actors. In Zen, we speak of “skill­ful means.” This is the appli­ca­tion of tal­ent to the task at hand. There­fore, one might be a skill­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tor, a skill­ful par­ent, or a skill­ful math­e­mati­cian. My dad, for exam­ple, was all of these.

Sec­ondly, note the clause, “…that oth­ers would value…” Inter­est­ingly, I deal with this issue with clients all the time. They are stuck because they first of all are con­cerned with how “what­ever it is they’re think­ing of mak­ing, doing or being ” will come across to oth­ers. This comes, again, from our upbringing.

Good par­ents ask ques­tions, less ele­gant par­ents pro­vide judgements.

My par­ents taught me to always watch my back… that’s why my neck’s so stiff…

Ask­ing a child, “What does your (project) mean?” is open-ended, and takes away the cri­tique. “You’ll never be an artist” begs the ques­tion, “Accord­ing to whom?”

I sus­pect every­one either knows, or can unearth (see below) their skill-set. The lucky few may have picked up on it as chil­dren and just car­ried on into an adult career. Oth­ers dis­cov­ered some­thing perk­ing dur­ing Uni­ver­sity, or young adult­hood. I think imme­di­ately of a young man, who is deaf, that Dar taught. He loved car­pen­try. Dar found ways for him to build stuff at school, got him into a Col­lege car­pen­try pro­gram (he dropped out, as the aca­d­e­mics was too much, but kept his pas­sion.) He works for a fur­ni­ture com­pany, and in his spare time goes to 3^rd world coun­tries on build­ing projects. This is tal­ent, being applied.

The sec­ond comment

Notice how this teacher can spot the “not yet repressed” tal­ents her stu­dents pos­sess. Good teach­ers and par­ents can do a ton to encour­age students/kids to fol­low their own lead, and keep pas­sion­ate tal­ent alive.

When I was in grade 11, we had a stu­dent teacher for a whole year. I was in an accel­er­ated pro­gram, includ­ing Eng­lish. Kathy was in our Eng­lish class, and was a great teacher, quite funny, and adorable to look at, just what a 16-year-old wants. But what I remem­ber most was her focus on get­ting me to write. She didn’t let me get away with lazy writ­ing, was hon­est with me, yet deeply encour­ag­ing. This is men­tor­ing at its best. (I ran into her again in my 20s and dis­cov­ered that a) she was only 5 years older than me, and b) she was a great kisser… but that’s a story for another day…)

Here’s a line from the above quote:

“I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing about how to recover my pas­sions and tal­ents, they have been so buried. I want to let my kids see and watch my own growth not just hear my words. It’s so much more pow­er­ful to be an example.”

Notice the “…they have been so buried…” clause. In Wayne-speak, this would be: “I have, and con­tinue to, bury my tal­ent.” I’m not nit-picking.

“I notice my ten­dency to sti­fle my tal­ent, and here is what I will do right now, to change that.”

99% of ther­apy is help­ing clients to moti­vate them­selves to do some­thing. Or bet­ter, to stop stop­ping them­selves, while start­ing a new behav­iour. Many, most, are addicted to behav­iour pat­terns that are get­ting them nowhere.

Here are Eight ways to get on with let­ting your­self be you.

Get your smirk on…

1) Start with your senses

Pas­sion is the word we use to describe the pleas­ant, hot, tingly, ener­getic feel­ing we get when some­thing (or some­one) is a turn on for us. I was, for exam­ple, at a clas­si­cal music con­cert, and a vio­lin solo brought me to tears. I did not take from that that I should learn to play vio­lin, but that I miss going to clas­si­cal music con­certs. I have a tal­ent for immers­ing myself in music.

Ded­i­cate time to explor­ing your senses.
Touch: Go for a mas­sage, and for body­work. Roll around in sand. Dance. As you do, just be with the feel­ing. Make phys­i­cal con­tact. Hug more.
Sight: Go to a gallery. Go to a mall and look at peo­ple. Watch a visu­ally stim­u­lat­ing movie. Stare into someone’s eyes, gen­tly, for 5 min­utes.
Sound: Go to a con­cert or two. Learn and prac­tice good com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Tell a friend a story from your life that is mean­ing­ful,
Smell: go to a green­house, a cheese fac­tory, a farm, a Lush store. Pay atten­tion to the sto­ries the smells gen­er­ate for you.
Taste: Eat, drink, be merry—try new things, exper­i­ment with the famil­iar, and share the expe­ri­ence with a friend or two.

All of this is designed to get you firmly in your body, hav­ing a full-bodied expe­ri­ence. This is how pas­sion is re-ignited.

2) Visu­al­ize

Close your eyes. Imag­ine vis­it­ing an old, inter­est­ing house. As you open the front door, rec­og­nize the house as “your secret house.” Go in, look around, see what’s there. Per­haps each room rep­re­sents a period in your life. As you walk around, look for signs of what inter­ested you as a child, a teen, etc. Make note, men­tally, of what you discover.

Only the Shadow knows…

3) Shadow dancing

Same house, but head for the Shadow room. (You’ll find it!) It’s pretty dark in there, eh? Imag­ine dim light, and a place to sit or lie down. Imag­ine that the room is filled with things about your­self that you have for­got­ten, neglected, or been scared by. Imag­ine that you are safe and secure, and can look at the con­tents, one at a time, sort of like being in a movie. Invite one thing to come for­ward, and ask it to explain itself.
For a descrip­tion of one I expe­ri­enced at Haven, see Tip 6: http://www.phoenixcentre.com/blog/2007/10/30/live-fearlessly-7-tips/)

4) Do some­thing challenging

It might be hav­ing an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion, per­form­ing at a tal­ent time, singing in the shower, dress­ing dif­fer­ently, eat­ing a food you’ve resisted, rid­ing a zip line, sky div­ing, or spend­ing time alone (with­out dis­trac­tions.) Med­i­tate every day for a month. Walk every day, no iPod, just look­ing. Spend time with some­one who does what you want to do, and pick their brain.

5) Take a course

Think of some­thing you might be pas­sion­ate about (you ought to feel a bit of heat as you think of it.) Find a course at a com­mu­nity col­lege, local teach­ing cen­tre, library, wher­ever, enroll and see what hap­pens. One fiend wanted to learn furniture-making. She not only enrolled, she talked sev­eral friends into it too. Her house is rapidly fill­ing with projects. Is she Dun­can Fife? Does it matter?

6) Up your tol­er­ance for yourself

We mostly stop our­selves (self-sensor) out of the fear, “What will every­one think (of me)?” Answer: what­ever (if any­thing) they think. Spend­ing your life hid­ing accom­plishes pre­cisely noth­ing. And noth­ing can give you the courage to act. All you can do is act.

Crit­ics will be crit­ics. Many are intim­i­dated by suc­cess, or even by peo­ple who just do stuff. Many for­mer friends did the, “You can’t do, think, be… that.” What they really mean is they are mak­ing them­selves uncom­fort­able, and rather than deal with their own issues, they demand that I stop doing what they are mak­ing them­selves uncom­fort­able over. Need­less to say, that one went nowhere. I’m not inter­ested in tak­ing care of them—and so, they are… elsewhere…

You are who you are, and you likely are a lot more “inter­est­ing” than you let on, or let out. Time to let go of check­ing over your shoul­der to see if an adult is watch­ing, to strip down to who you really are, and to make real what you’ve been hiding.

7) Show others

To use the above illus­tra­tion, the teacher could pick a group of top stu­dents, and form an after school, “Make Magic” club. Each per­son would state a project they want to do (a tal­ent they want to work on) and the rest of the group pro­vides feed­back and encour­age­ment. The teacher could lead with a project of her own. I was a part of a writ­ing group, and later a paint­ing group, that did exactly this.

And you don’t need to be a teacher to do this. Start your own “club” with peo­ple you trust, and have at it!

Make a commitment

Use the com­ments sec­tion on this blog to state an inten­tion, and to post updates. Why not really put your­self out there?

More on liv­ing life with verve next week.