The Wonderful Unwrapping
It’s December 1st 2019. Happy Advent! I hope you enjoy the festivities and celebrations leading up to Christmas Day. For many of us, thoughts of the Christmas festival will have been with us for some time. For weeks now, we have seen Christmas cards and gifts in the shops, been tempted by family-size tins of chocolates greeting us in supermarket entrances, heard Christmas jingles been piped into shopping malls and been cheered by sparkling lights in our towns and villages.
The Christmas TV advert has also now become a perennial feature of our build-up to Christmas. Do you find yourself drawn to the excitable “Edgar The Dragon” from the UK’s John Lewis Christmas offering or perhaps prefer Ikea’s grime offering with its animated kitsch ornaments?
Whether we hear once again the Christian story of love or whether it’s the giving of gifts to loved ones, the act of giving is central to this season.
But what about a different type of gift? Is now also a useful time to consider our personal gifts and talents and how we might use these? Perhaps you have gifts of leadership, management, key decision-making, listening, empathy, warmth, a talent for communicating with all?
As you read this blog, I’d like to invite you to consider for a moment your own gifts, your own talents and how you plan to use these in 2020. What opportunities are there around you for you to utilise your strengths? What will others notice? How will others benefit from these gifts?
Discovering The Gift
When I was a child Mum and Dad had great fun trying to quietly carry our Christmas presents out onto the landing so they would be there in the morning for myself and my sisters to discover. Happy times!
How do you discover your gifts? Would you describe yourself as someone with an innate sense of your own personal strengths and potential? Do you feel you know yourself well? Have you asked yourself recently what your strengths are? How would you name these? What would you say is your greatest talent? Interestingly, Albert Einstein famously declared:
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
Really? Surely the attribute of curiosity certainly can’t be underestimated here.
I also love the metaphor of awakenings to consider an increased self-awareness. As the psychologist Robert Biswas-Diener declared:
“Once you start making the effort to “wake yourself up” – that is be more mindful in your activities – you suddenly start appreciating life a lot more.”
Sometimes, however, we have blind-spots about our strengths and require others to prompt us. One effective way to gain these insights is to choose 8 – 10 people who know you from different walks of life. Ask them to write down a description about a time you were at your best. It is helpful if they can be as specific as possible and if they can describe what impact and effect it had on them and why. As you read and enjoy these stories, consider common themes. Pool these words and phrases together and create a profile – “Me At My Best.”
Appreciating The Gift
Sometimes Christmas gifts do not turn out to be as we hoped. There may be a few surprises in our stocking! Some presents may lead us to consider what they are not, rather than what they are.
With our own personal development, it is important to retain a focus on the positive strengths and maximising these and at the same time to limit distractions of weaknesses. And when we are working on our strengths, the engagement, confidence, assurance and success follows.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.” William James, influential US philosopher and psychologist
Organisations are often better than individuals at this, with the most successful being really clear on their key strengths and how to maximise these. Ikea proposes that its strengths lie in “offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.” Lego have turned around a staggering $800 million of debt due to focusing on its key strength of constant innovation, selling distracting peripheral investments. Coca-Cola is another great example where consistency of product, branding and message is one of its key strengths constantly exploited.
What is your pre-occupation? Do you find yourself considering how best to maximise your strengths or do your weaknesses distract you from this purpose?
As Martin Seligmann proposes:
“The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyse a change in psychology from a preoccupation with repairing the worst things in life to building the best qualities in life.”
Using The Gift
Don’t allow your gifts to join the pasta makers, bread makers, juicers which (in my household anyway) are destined to spend most of their time hidden away in cupboards. Make your strengths part of your routine, your choices in life. People who use their strengths daily are six times more likely to be engaged on the job, according to research by Gallup and are less likely to experience stress or anxiety. Continuously find ways to spend more time in your strengths. Build strong habits. Always push for activities which strengthen you and allow you to be your best self. Allow your best self to be seen in all aspects of your life. Ask yourself:
- How can I apply my strengths to the goals I want to achieve in my life?
- How can I use my strengths to live my values?
- How can I adjust my job to incorporate more of my strengths?
- How are my strengths visible in ways they are not in others?
What gifts will you discover this Christmas? How will you use yours most effectively in 2020?
Happy Christmas!
Janet Leonard
Imaginate Development
www.imaginatedevelopment.co.uk