Feed your Gifts, So They Can Feed You!

When I was a child my grandmother used to use a proverb, Feed a cold, starve a fever. I have been think about this alot the last few weeks as I have been battling bronchitis. (Read more about this at WikiAnswers)

As I have been mulling over this, it has triggered thoughts of what we starve and feed in our own lives. This mulling then triggered memories of a Native American tale about the twowolves that reside in each of our heart, one good and another less so, and how the nature of our characters rely on which wolf we feed the most in our daily lives. (Find this tale at InspirationPeak)

So you might be asking what this cold-fever and Native American tale talk has to do with wiseworking. Well, it occurred to me at the end of all this musing that these former truths apply to our careers and work in that we have all been gifted to perform uniquely well in any number of roles and capacities for the purposes, in part, of feeding ourselves, our families and the world but too many of us are not able to do this well because we have starved our gifts. Thus a new proverb, “Feed your gifts, so they can feed you”. :-)

In my personal and observed experience, I find that we as human beings usually spend more time feeding our fears, doubts, procrastinations, risk averseness, ignorance, discouragement, etc., than our gifts, potential, learnability, patience, persistence, self-encouragement, etc.. In this habit of failing to feed our giftedness we starve ourselves and those around us. This is manifest as:

• unfulfilling work
  
• underemployment
  
• subpar compensation
  
• unused educations
  
• miscellaneous physical, emotional and psychological maladies 
  
• poor self perception and image
  
• strained and unsatisfying relationships

Interestingly enough, this is a poor habit with a simple, though not easy, solution: change your thinking and actions diet. I say your thinking and actions because this is where the potential of your giftedness is made or broken. Examine what you do with your time and make changes in both your thinking and your activities so that you attend progressively more to building your giftedness and contribution and progressively less to those ways of thinking and action that starve them. As you make these changes, you will see that your ability to feed yourself, your loved ones and the various communities you are blessed to be in, will increase.

As this ability grows you will have enough for yourself and for others. You will move from being a follower to a leader especially in the area of your giftedness. You will be the head and not the tail, Deuteronomy 28:13a - And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath;

Takeaway: Examine and revise your thinking and actions diet so that you better feed your gifts, and by extension are better fed.