One of the most important ways to recognize your gifts is by embracing feelings of uncertainty and really seeing the beauty in vulnerability. Do you remember the last time that you attempted something and gave up before finishing? What might have happened if you had finished - or better yet, what might have happened if you had been completely satisfied with your "unfinished" product?
One of my favorite stories is about a woman named Mary who had the idea to combine her two favorite passions, poetry and crop circles. She spent about 6 months formulating a workshop for people of all ages and walks of life to attend in England and the surrounding areas. Her workshop lesson plans were quite original and entailed creative ways to induce natural creativity in those open to learning. She envisioned her attendees expressing all types of poetry from classical to improv with great vitality, while standing in the center of a huge, mysterious crop circle. She decided to name it "Circle of Poets'' and poured her heart and soul out through her blog and website. She wrote her ideas on napkins, post-its, receipts and anything else in her path of undisputed creativity, yet she still felt apprehensive about promoting her workshops publicly. She had found a nifty, free website building program online (recommended to her by her friend, Alison), and like most website building programs, she was permitted the option to publish at any time. She found herself excitedly clicking the "publish now" button each evening in order to view her website LIVE, but minutes later she would hastily click the "un-publish" button, worried that her site was inadequate for public viewing. She thought things like, "It's not perfect yet." and "What if someone steals my idea and makes a better version of it?". But little did she know, by clicking "un-publish" she was belittling her authenticity and starving the most vulnerable part of her soul - her creativity! It was a form a self-destruction and in turn, she eventually talked herself into a dark hole and gave up the project all together. But on May 23rd, 2002 this young woman passed away, due to a curious bout of throat cancer. Mary died alone at her computer in her apartment just outside of Portsmouth and left almost everything to her dear friend Alison, who had helped her with her site.
Well... years went by before Alison stumbled upon the Circle of Poets website online. It turns out, Mary had clicked "publish now" before her passing and poets around the world were viewing her site. In turn, her friend Alison dug up Mary's old log-in information, only to find that over 5,000,00 people had visited her site and inquired about her crop circle and poetry workshops!! Her site had been perfectly suitable all of the time, and people were much more enthralled with her beautiful, original ideas than the colors and fonts that she used. Poor Mary got caught up in the illusion of appearances rather than seeing the beauty of her own vulnerability.
The moral of this story is:
Accept the situation as it is. Go ahead, share your story, publish that site, and be confident in your authenticity. You can always add more along the way.
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