What are the things we can only know the value of when we share them?

‘Your contribution is a gift you may not even realise.’

These are the words I’ve started to say whenever I facilitate any group session. 

It is a statement founded on the numerous times I have seen someone muster the courage to share a thought, perhaps not fully formed nor perfectly put, that is still more than enough to be a totally transformational gift for someone else. 

Sometimes it isn’t even the thing the person intended to say or the idea they wanted to convey that is the magic, merely the act of saying it has provided someone else with a new perspective. 

Sometimes the mere act of sharing is the gift that inspires someone else to share a thought, idea, or piece of work that becomes a gift that inspires an ever growing ripple effect.

Sometimes we just don’t know what may be the thing we bring or share that is a gift. 

There are so many factors: place, time, people. 

What might you be holding onto that shared, might just be a gift for someone else? 

What is stopping you?

What would it be like to share it? 

If you knew that in sharing it it will always be a gift, what would you do differently?

What helps to share the thing that could be that gift? 

There are two blog posts (this one on making things work and this one on valuing what got us here) where I have said to my partner ‘I don’t think this is my best blog’ or ‘it doesn’t quite capture what I wanted to say’. 

In the past that would have then resulted in months of refining and crafting until it felt ‘good enough’ or they would have been consigned to a folder on my laptop to revisit sometime, maybe, maybe not. 

The only reason they were not procrastinated nor postponed was a commitment to (barring illness and holidays) write and share a blog a week, which left me with two options. 1) Write something else in the little time left of the week given I’ve already spent my ‘blog writing’ time writing something, or 2) share it anyway. 

And both these blogs received responses beyond my expectations for them. 

What are the commitments that will help you share the thoughts, ideas or projects you are creating, that may be a gift to others? 

What if the intention for sharing something was always as a gift?

Still, there is a lot that can get in the way of sharing something of us, be it a thought, a piece of work or a perspective. 

While one consideration is: what is getting in the way of me sharing this thing? And, knowing that, what might I do to share it? 

What if we reframe sharing us and our work as always being a gift? 

And so we can ask ourselves: 

What is the gift I might be sharing?

Who could this gift be for? 

What may be the gift of this I may not even realise without sharing it? 

What is the gift that is at stake if I don’t share this? 

What if we share it and that’s it?

What may be the gift we never know of? 

And, besides that, what is the gift to us? 

What is it like to not be burdened by the what if we had shared that thought, that idea or piece of work? 

There are a few blogs (this one on difficulty and this one on the value of the long-term picture) that I was really excited to share and which received little reception, whether it be content, context or algorithms. Initially that response came with a disappointment founded upon the fact that, for me, they were a gift to be able to write, and that experience created a hope that in sharing them they would bring similar joy. But in focusing only on the reception I could perceive missed the gift that had already been, which was the experience for me to have written them and the realisation that the response really is not everything.

What would the world be if we never shared any of us ever? 

What would the world be like devoid of all our gifts? 

What would the world be if we all shared our gifts just 5% more? 

What may the gift be that we can only know from sharing it?