Brenda’s Blog – June 15, 2021
“Find out what you’re good at and do lots of it.”
Archie Manning, all-pro football player, and father of the Manning men of football fame is seen in a commercial reminding son Eli of this wisdom in an ad for barbeque grills.
The words have universal application, don’t they? A young woman selected as commencement speaker for her college class wrote of her career direction. “Everyone in my family were educators and all advised me to choose that major, so I did. But I just knew that wasn’t for me after a while. When I changed to digital media I found my fit and I look forward to years of developing my skills.”
She is going to certainly do lots of it!
My Dad constantly counseled people (young and old) to identify their uniqueness: their God-given design. Additionally, he advised developing strengths and bolstering weaknesses. Time and energy are valuable and fleeting resources. Wasting either on endeavors less than “what you are good at” is fruitless.
Bill Hendricks of The Giftedness Center in Dallas, Texas captures this principle succinctly and powerfully: “Focus on the called to, not the can do.” We live in a multi-tasking culture which lauds the driven. Women particularly buy into the whirling dervish lifestyle. But even brain science is now proving disjointed, distracted activities do not produce effective results. Fishing deep rather than jumping from place to place often produces a larger haul.
Identifying our uniqueness then committing to the systematic development is a worthy life goal.