How can we more easily take responsibility for our gifts, and what if doing so is a celebration of those gifts?

When you receive positive feedback how do you find it?

What if you know that feedback is true, that they’ve highlighted a skill or quality you have? 

What about when you’ve accomplished something, what do you put that accomplishment down to?

Hard work? Luck? A good team? 

Perhaps all the above are true but what about the skills, qualities and abilities you have? 

In fact hard work, luck, a good team are in some way always the result of an application of qualities. Whether it is patience or openness to others underpinning a collaborative team, or perseverance behind the hard work, or the ability to learn and adapt that is no doubt needed in almost any accomplishment given nothing is ever the same, there is always a quality of ours contributing to things we may assume occur by chance. 

So what gets in the way of accepting that positive feedback or acknowledging our genuine and real part in an accomplishment?

And what is the consequence of not acknowledging that feedback or your skills and qualities? 

Or even, what stops you accepting your skills, strengths and qualities? 

If you are to accept your gifts what would the impact be? 

What if, the difficulty to acknowledge your gifts is that to do so you have to take responsibility for them?

If you knew you were genuinely gifted in something (spoiler alert: you are) what would be different? What would you love to do? 

What are my gifts?

The first hurdle is the question of knowing our gifts. A few ways to get clear on this could be to ask people who know you well or to consider the qualities you admire in others, as we cannot see something in others we do not see in ourselves, even if in the smallest measure.

What do I need to take responsibility for my gifts?

“What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?”

Buckminster Fuller’s quote or the famous one from Spider-Man: ‘With great power comes great responsibility’, both suggest that as soon as we know our gifts it is on us to make the most of them, to take ownership for them.

So what gets in the way?

If you knew your gifts, your skills, your qualities, what would stop you using them?

Or what would help you take responsibility for them?

What if it comes down to the weight of responsibility. While taking responsibility is important (who else will take responsibility for your gifts?) that word can feel heavy, burdensome even.

So how could that burden feel a little less burdensome? 

What if taking responsibility is an act of celebration?

How does taking responsibility for your gifts compare to the responsibility you take for other things?

It could be a pet, a person or a houseplant.

Take the houseplant, it will likely wither and die without your care. What if that is the case for your own gifts?

That doesn’t exactly lighten the sense of burden for taking responsibility, the fear of what is at stake and could be lost if we don’t take responsibility.

So what would move us toward taking responsibility? What is the positive of using, applying and growing your gifts?

What does it feel like to know you used your gifts, your skills and qualities?

We will guess it is usually pretty good, so what would it be like to have that sense more often, to know you’re growing your gifts? 

it may not be a linear process but each time you apply your gifts and abilities they develop in some way.

And what if each time you use your gifts you’re also celebrating them? 

What if taking responsibility is an acting of celebrating and honouring yourself, of showing up for you?

And how does that idea compare to receiving positive feedback?

Only you can truly celebrate you, to accept and acknowledge your gifts. And no doubt that process is the first step to really taking responsibility for them.

Holding it lightly

Perhaps it still feels hard to acknowledge your gifts even to consider that using them is a celebration of them. 

Now it isn’t just about taking responsibility it is about acceptance too! 

What if both things can happen steadily? 

Back to the houseplant it requires our attention and nurturing but it doesn’t visibly grow overnight.

So what is the light and gentle way to start owning your gifts, even tentatively?

To take responsibility does not have to be a heavy burden to shoulder and hold. What could it look like to own your gifts in the smallest, gentlest way? To tend to them like a houseplant, not too much water and not too little.

What would it be like to simply consider how you can utilise your strengths today rather than what great feat you must accomplish with them?

What about how you can bring your strengths and qualities to each moment, to each task? 

What would it be to consider one quality you showed at the end of each day?

What if considering and acknowledging those gifts is enough? 

And perhaps in time, what would it be like to approach each day really knowing you are uniquely gifted and knowing those specific gifts? 

What world would we create if we all took responsibility for our gifts?

What would it be like if we held those gifts lightly?