You Need to Share Your Gifts 🎁 😁 💝
Even If You'd Rather Drive A Rusty Spike Through Your Spleen 🔪 😐
Everyone has dreams to do or accomplish something.
Some achieve their dreams and goals and some don’t.
And some people manage to achieve their dreams, while creating an extraordinary experience, not just for themselves but for others. I am in awe of these people.
And sooooometimes, you have a gift and you’d like to use it to work for yourself and create lots of money and a very, very happy life where you jet off to Malta just because you’ve always wanted to see Casa Bernard and enjoy St. Peter’s Pool and decide it is TOTALLY worth the trek to get there and you meet kind people who say things with a beautiful accent, even though they could literally be telling you to go have sex with yourself, but you don’t care because the weather is perfect and the food is divine, and most importantly, you’re doing this because You. Want. To.
And then sometimes you suck it up while you write about escaping from the prison you’ve built for yourself because you thought it was what you wanted and by the time you figure out it’s not, you’re afraid it’s too late.
But you see it now.
You see how you’re strong in places where you kept doubting yourself. You see where you settled before, dutifully worked, hoping someone would notice, maybe toss you a cookie. And you feel deeply how much that hurts, how painful it is, to let yourself be kept down, to keep yourself down. So instead of feeling the pain and making something happen with it or because of it, you push it down and keep telling yourself, “It’ll never work,” and every time you do it your heart breaks a little more. You crumble a little more.
That might work for a while.
But no matter how hard you try or pretend not to see it, the light in you won’t go away. It can’t.
So you have to make a choice:
You can either get angry at it, becoming bitter and resentful about the world not allowing you to shine OR about that damn light continuing to shine anyway because, Goddammit, doesn’t it know it’s useless????
OR
You can keep digging away the debris around it, use whatever you can to punch a hole in the ceiling above it, and let that light become one of those big ass Hollywood movie premiere-type spotlights for the rest of the world to see, in whatever ways you can make that happen.
Anyone who tries to make you feel bad about it? They’re in that first camp above.
If you’re still reading this, then I suspect you’re in the second camp.
My gift is numbers. Remembering them, working with them, balancing them. Most of the time I love them — except when I feel like they’re keeping me stuck.
Hold up.
Numbers aren’t keeping me stuck. They’re just… numbers.
They’re not to blame. I am. I’m limiting myself. I have this belief there’s only one way I can use them, mainly working for someone else. I don’t allow myself to see all the other possibilities and ways to use them.
I mean, they’re EVERY-FREAKING-WHERE!!!!
It’s the same with any gifts. Just accepting that we have gifts can be a slog. Ask me how I know.
It’s easier to deny we have them than to take a chance and put them to use in the world, where everyone can see them. That’s risky. That’s scary. That’s why a lot of people don’t do it.
So, yeah, like most of us, I’m my own problem.
This Is How You Do It
A couple of weeks ago, I spent a weekend at Edwards Waterhouse Inn (EWI), a B&B in Fredonia, NY. I had never stayed at a B&B before and had no idea what to expect.
While I was there, I drank the most spectacular coffee I’ve ever had, after eating the most spectacular breakfast I’ve ever had, and talked with one of the owners, Phillip (who made said coffee and breakfast, and is forever my morning-time hero).
Phillip and Martin, along with their adorable puppers, Giovanna and Brego, bought this B&B and have been running it since the beginning of this year. Everything about it is warm and cozy and charming and welcoming.
While I listened to how the two of them came to own the Inn, and how they are running it while also having full-time jobs 😳 😱, I was insanely inspired. These are the people of whom I’m in awe.
For example, Phillip is a music teacher at a local school district and the associate director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Choir and founder of the Fredonia Community Choir and a founder of the Main Street Studios Community Theatre Project and maker of some spectacular breakfast dishes. Martin puts everything he has into running EWI. He OH-SO-graciously accommodated our late arrival, showing us our room, taking our breakfast order, and generally making us feel more at home than I’ve EVER felt while visiting anywhere. Martin also works as the Senior Architect with the US Army Corps of Engineers, much of his work focusing on rehabilitating neglected structures all over the world.
So, yes, they have other jobs and run the Inn — AND opened it to local artists and crafts people, have plans to create a retail space for them, and arranged for musical performances and outreach events.
Now, I guess, anyone can do that — even though I need a nap just thinking about it.
It’s not what they do, though. It’s the way they do it.
Their love and enthusiasm for reaching out to the community - for being an active part of the community - makes staying there a unique experience.
They have a gift for sharing their love, enthusiasm, and passion for this work. They’re committed to opening this beautiful space they’re creating to others, and everyone thrives as a result. Everyone is welcome and supported, the community is engaged, and friendships and relationships are created.
Staying there felt like being a part of something special, which had very little to do with a beautiful old Victorian-style house (see below) and everything to do with Martin and Phillip.
That feeling of belonging they’ve created is what makes the experience so unique.
Photo credit: https://images.app.goo.gl/Qtpb1PdkK5x93FjE7
So when you’re considering what you love, what you’re passionate about, what brings you BLISS, consider this: It may not be so much what you do, but the love you bring to it. The commitment and passion you bring to it. People will feel that.
You are uniquely you. In all the history of the universe, there has never been another you. (I see you, Marvel fans. We’re not getting into any of that multiverse shit. Sit down.)
Stop telling yourself that eleventy billion sentuple million people are “doing the same thing.” They’re not. I promise. Because no one can do it like you can. Your gifts are uniquely yours.
And someone out there needs to be a part of the unique gifts you have to share.
I promise.
LOVE! Also, frankly, envy. I consider my gift to be words -- but you got words AND numbers. Numbers to me are a scary dark forest wherein I am sure to get lost and eaten by monsters. Like you said I'm my own problem. Brilliant piece.
Another wonderful opus … and a potential career twist if you consider writing descriptions for B&B… you have a natural talent… to the point I was close to packing my suitcase, grabbing my passport, and booking a flight to meet the puppies and their owners (or the other way around 😂)
We all have a super special talent be it cooking strawberry jam, mixing the best cosmo, or running a marathon in 60 mins… in my experience, the main difference from those who share their gifts and those who don’t… stems from our inner sense of security, our deep feeling of self esteem and how equipped we are to handle healthily negative thoughts, mean comments, inevitable setbacks.