Recently I taught a Natural Gifts workshop and the question of feeling pride as a barrier to using our gifts came up. When this question comes up, and it is common, I like to draw the distinction between two oft-confused ideas, proud and pride.
When we are proud of our work we do better with our gifts we have been "given", though when we are prideful, we do worst with gifts we think we "have" of our own virtue. This is a key difference. When we are "prideful" about our gifts, we tend to hedge, procrastinate, and engage, and more readily resort to defensive reactions.
Proud is rooted in the idea that I have been given a gift and I have a responsibility, as a steward, to make best use of this gift in order to manifest the genius of the giver, first God, then our families then our communities. Pride is rooted in the idea that I am self-made & cultivated and that I can use my gift, or not, based on my own selfish ends. And, yes, I am suggesting that not using our gifts out of fear, laziness, perfectionism, even out of a sense of humility, is a form of selfishness resulting from our failure to get past our own self-absorption to recognize that the "givers'" need for what we have to offer is more important than our need to be safe from looking bad.
When we work from a position of "proud", we are:
1. confident, not so much in ourselves as in the "Giver" and "givers" who have developed our gift in us, though self-confidence should grow over time,
2. persistent, committed to sharpening our gifts over time despite opposition, mistakes and adversity , with a sense of hope in future mastery
3. assertive, looking for opportunities to offer, and offering, our gifts, and yes, even in the face of rejection and (seeming) lack of appreciation
4. mindful of the Source and sources of our giftedness, a antidote to pridefulness, which proud always has the potential of easily converting itself into
When we work from a position of "pride", we:
1. lack confidence and then overcompensate for such lack by being brash, defensive, procrastinators, quitters, etc.
2. lack persistence, assuming that opposition and adversity are the normal weather of getting anything done, and hope in the idea that time improves whatever we practice consistently, for good and for neglect
3. envy others' gifts, believing that what others have been given is innately better than what we have been given, misinvesting energy that would be more productively spent "sharpening our own saws" (Covey)
4. blame others and circumstances for our neglect in developing and offering our gifts, seeing opposition and diversity as a insurmountable unfair impediments, which they are not
5. are unmindful of the Source and sources of our giftedness, and thus succumbing to pride think we are the source, and usually an inadequate one at that.
Clearly, we need more proudness and less pridefulness in the world. The world is starved every time we choose pride over proud. Let's study today to act of maintaining a greater stance of proudfulness, versus pridefulness, in how we go about offering our gifts in the world.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Being Proud of our Work Without Being Prideful About Our Work (or Ourselves).
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Valuing The Givers More Than The Gifts
Sunday, February 24, 2008
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:
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.
