Feeling happy is a signal from talent

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.

Let me ask around to see if anyone finds this worth reading?

Hi all

I'm writing this new blog (in a fictitious voice) because I have an idea that's easier to show than to explain. I think I'll send a link to my FB people to see if anyone finds in remotely useful or interesting. I hope everyone who is inspired to do so will leave a comment below.

And since I haven't really said anything at all in this post, may I encourage you to read the first three, starting with the oldest.

Then, when you get back here, imagine there are posts of many of the paragraphs in Live the Life You Love, the most relevant or interesting or whatever - without copying every word in the book into this blog.

Would you like to go through my books again, a little at a time, and have conversations below via 'Comments' about them? (I'll get the author to read and answer your comments :-) )

You know, of course, that these posts start at the bottom?

I'm doing excerpts from Barbara Sher's Live The Life You Love, and I'm doing them in order (and you must pretend I'm doing them in Norwegian!) Well, all I can say is, start with the oldest post or you might be very confused.

Or maybe it doesn't even matter. Let's see.

This is excerpt two of Lesson One: What Motivates You?

"All the same, most of us have made some attempts to try to develop our talents. The urge to follow your gifts never quite goes away. Many of us have flirted with our dreams, taking a class or two in something we loved. Most of the time we were unable to find the motivation to follow through and turn these beginnings into a serious commitment - far less a career. Some people seem to have the drive to be unstoppable, to take themselves seriously, to never give up. They are the envy of us all. So how do we become like them?

Well, I don't know about you, but when I read that paragraph I wondered if the author had been reading my mail. It's an exact description of me, and most of my friends as well, even the talented ones I was sure would throw themselves completely into their beloved work. They did more than I did, that's for sure, but they stopped too. Why do some people hang on to their dreams like a pitbull and others of us just forget them as if they don't matter? Or, as if we don't matter, because we lack the drive to dedicate ourselves to them.

Now for Lesson One: What Motivates You?

Pretend this is in Norwegian:

Hi dear reader

I've skipped the Introduction because it's way too long and I want to get to the first point, which is that you are unique - everyone is - and the things that motivate others might not work for you.

"Nobody makes you go after a dream. It's not like doing your schoolwork or paying your rent. No one is waiting for you to realize all your talents. You're on your own. Fulfilling your own potential, realizing your gifts, these are the only important things in our culture that are left entirely to you. Rarely does someone help you search for your hidden gifts, or give you the same guidance to develop them that you would get learning to read or do math or play football or drive a car. That's why we all have a very hard time following through on our impulses to write a novel, learn a new language, or try out photography.

Hmm. I've never quite seen it that way until I read this excerpt. Certainly my family encouraged me to go after a career, but it's true that no one helped me go after a dream. Maybe that's why I didn't have big dreams, or didn't pay much attention to them. And maybe that's why I can't quite figure out what my dream is, these days. Not at all.

An example of a translated walk through one of my books

Suggested to a Norwegian this morning that she probably would have no trouble putting up a membership site that used translations of one of my books in small excerpts, interspersed with her comments that make it relevant to Norwegians. For an example, let's say I start with one of my favorite books, Live the Life You Love.

First, I'd select an excerpt
(I won't start at the beginning because the first pages - title page, dedication, etc - aren't characteristic and won't illustrate what I'm trying to demonstrate. But I will start with the opening quotation all the same: It's by Henry David Thoreau.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.:

That is to say: You are one of a kind. When you try to follow the instructions of those who need people to act in a more uniform manner, you might not do a good job. That's not because you're inferior. It's because you're a different type of person and the instructions don't suit your abilities or viewpoint. A fish is not an inadequate bird, it's a fish.

A classical story that illustrates this point is The Ugly Ducking [Story to come]

Now you must listen carefully to try to hear the drummer inside you so you can march to that beat.

That's what the following blogposts will be about. They're taken from Barbara Sher's prizewinning book, Live the Life You Love. [My good Norwegian friend might put them all in Norwegian, of course.]

I'd like to end today's post with another quote, and this one often has a big impact on the people who hear or read it:

[to be corrected] The world has never seen anyone like you, and they never will again. [find quote by Vartan Gregorian]