Discovering Your Giftedness
A Step-By-Step Guide
Step 1: Telling Stories
The best way to discover your giftedness is to see it in action from your own life history.
Your life is a story in which you’ve done many things and many things have happened to you. You can probably recall all sorts of events, milestones, achievements, experiences, difficulties, successes, failures, and the like.
Out of those many life stories, certain stories are about an activity you enjoyed doing, felt a sense of satisfaction from doing, or gained energy from doing. Stories like that are called your Giftedness Stories.
Giftedness Stories
There are two criteria for a Giftedness Story:
(1) it must be about an activity, something you did, something that required effort and action on your part; and
(2) it must be about something you enjoyed doing or took satisfaction from doing.
Examples:
Age 5 – I memorized a poem and recited it to my kindergarten class.
Age 10 – Went fishing with my Granddaddy and caught my first fish.
Age 13 – Made the basketball team and scored a key goal in the final game, which we won.
Age 16 – I made a birthday cake for my younger brother.
Age 18 – My sister and I planned a special dinner for our parents, cooking the entire meal, setting the table, and then leaving them alone to enjoy it together.
Age 23 – I volunteered for a Big Brother program and worked with an 8-year-old boy. I specifically remember one time when we visited the zoo and he told me he wanted to work with animals when he grew up.
Age 28 – Developed a database for our marketing team.
Age 34 – Took a group of 10-year-old boys on a camping trip in the mountains.
Age 34 – Ran a marathon and finished. My time wasn’t very good, but that didn’t matter. Finishing was my goal.
Age 40 – Set up our family’s budget and finances on my computer. I use it to manage our expenses and stay within budget.
Age 47 – Bicycled across Death Valley with my wife and our teenage son.
Age 51 – Led my assembly line team to a company record for our portion of the line.
Age 58 – Taught my granddaughter to sew.
Age 59 – Volunteered to keep track of the members of our tennis —which doubles teams play on which nights, which teams have won, etc.
Age 63 – I oversaw the “Meals-on-Wheels” ministry at my church and set up a system for the other volunteers to follow.
Giftedness Stories can come from any period of your life—childhood, teen years, adult years up to the present.
Giftedness Stories can also come from any area of your life—personal life, school, work, home, sports, leisure, hobbies, volunteer involvements—wherever you enjoyed the activity. Satisfaction is the key!
Additional pointers for coming up with Giftedness Stories >>