I love this and hope you have the book, Live the Life You Love, so you can follow more of it. This starts on page 6 and I've only put a small excerpt here, but it just gets better after this!
"...one by one the pieces all fell into place. I had no reason to be ashamed of my grand dreams or believing I might be special. Far from it.
"I realized that dreams are astoundingly important. They keep nagging you because you're supposed to fulfill them. When you sense you're special you're not neurotic or grandiose. Something inside you is calling to you and you have to listen. When you love to do something, that means you have a gift for it. Every time.
And when you're gifted at something, you have to do it.
That's why you have to pay close attention to what you love, and never listen to anyone who tells you to be practical too early in the game. You don't have to quit your job and mortgage your house but you do have to turn those dreams over and give them a careful look. If you don't pay attention to what you love, you could overlook your greatest gifts! That love is the surefire indicator of hidden gifts, and it is the only way to find them. Skills don't count. They're just abilities that were useful enough to be developed. Gifts often haven't had the chance to be developed and because of that we're fooled into thinking they don't exist. But the pleasure you feel when you see a subtle color, or dance to your favorite music, or read a certain kind of book is like a bell being rung by your gifts saying, "Here we are!"
Well! I certainly wouldn't have told anyone I knew that I had grand dreams - and never, ever that I thought I might be special. Maybe I did it when I was 3 years old because I know what would happen: I'd be ridiculed. I know it for a fact. Somewhere I learned for certain that it's forbidden. I've always tried not to think it, even.
Because thinking that you're special -- that is, you're different and have some kind of vision you don't see in others -- feels like competition in my world. It feels like I'm saying "I'm better than you are." I can tell that's what people would feel if I said it.
But that's not what 'special' means to me. I means there's something really wonderful no one seems able to help me with, as if someone who loved colors was born into a colorblind family. The family thinks she's crazy or putting on airs. She hears or sees or thinks about something her people ignore. Often there's not even a name for it. Maybe she's just weird. So she tries to suppress it and do what everyone else is doing. Then she not only feels she's lost something beautiful, she turns out work that's mediocre, second-rate, not inspired.
I wonder how many talents are destroyed by families who just don't get their kids.
Well, if I can get enough of you to read this, maybe yours can be saved.
For now, I think I'll just sit back and think about this whole thing for awhile. I'd love to get some comments.
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