Faith Venture

“Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted?”

Seth Godin is a marketing guru, but his blog comments encompass much more than marketing.

So, he asked the question above.

Have you ever thought that? I have. Have you ever wished that on your children? Probably.

In a recent post, Godin answered the question–sort of–in his unique way:

In fact…

It turns out that choices lead to habits.

Habits become talents.

Talents are labeled gifts.

You’re not born this way, you get this way.

You can be gifted, it turns out. It’s your choice. And you can teach your kids to become gifted. One choice leading to a habit becoming a talent.

It also helps to believe in yourself. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, discovered that those talented individuals who were so freakishly awesome that they could be known by a single name typically had devoted 10,000 hours to concentrated practice before they achieved super elite status.

We don’t need that much. 2,000 hours of concentrated study or practice can get you to a level of expert in many cases. But you have to trust it. I have a few years of technical training with a degree in Liberal Arts. Did some graduate school, but I didn’t like it. But I do like philosophy and theology. I’ve probably read 1,000 books on those subjects over the past 40 years or so. I’m no scholar, I think. However, I was just reading a passage from the Bible and thought about what I’d been taught about the interpretation. But, I thought to myself, the passage doesn’t read that way. Then I heard a guy with a seminary degree voice the same thought. Hmmm, maybe I’m not so dumb.

What about you? Are there areas in which you’ve already achieved better than average expertise? And with some more concentrated practice and study you could become a recognized expert?

You can do it.

I love the cartoon, Dilbert. Scott Adams has really captured the soul of the engineer–and some would say the soul of the manager.  He often gets right to the heart of the matter.

Dilbert’s “Pointy-Hair Boss,” “We don’t care what smart people think. There aren’t that many of them. We only need to convince our dumb customers. Dumb people believe anything.”

Do you sometimes feel that leaders or managers treat you that way?

Problem is that many people latch on to a belief system and then believe anything that is told them that fits within their system of beliefs. Therefore, they are easily manipulated.

This works in politics, in churches and in commercial life.

Therapists will tell you that it is very hard for people to step back from themselves, examine their belief systems and then take actions to improve them–and live a life more fully in line with what God wants for you.

Americans in the early 20th Century were passionate optimists that education would cure this. So, we are all now more educated–both academically and in our religion. Yet, we’re still gullible to that manipulation.

I think one of the more powerful concepts of the past 30 years has been the concept of Seekers. It tries to approach people by considering them Spiritual Seekers. Practitioners point the way not only in belief, but also in Spiritual practices–especially study, prayer and service.

The German poet Goethe said it’s not just in the knowing, but in the doing also.

One of my favorite thoughts comes from the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, who said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” We’ve spent too much time filling vessels, too little time kindling the flame.

I look also at Spiritual Practices in the same manner.

We need to kindle that flame within us. But we also need to be flame kindlers to others.