Passions

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I often have to interact with people who are interested in getting involved in volunteering or partnering with me. My goal in the interaction is to help them find a place they can partner with us and be able to gain life and enjoy what they do. A place where they are not bogged down by the details but instead inspired to do what they do outside of their time spend volunteering.

Part of this process has revolved around what they are passionate about. “What do they love to do?” is the question I would ask them. And time after time, they would have no idea. People would either gravitate towards low hanging fruit they knew could be valuable to us or they would just spin around about how they have never known what they love to do and they have never had something they feel like they are naturally good at doing or inherently passionate about.

I have had a minor revelation in all of this. I realized it almost does not matter what they are passionate about, almost being the key word there. If they are passionate about something I want to know. But, given they do not know what they love to do I need ask a new question, “What could you be passionate about?” or maybe even, “What have they not tried that they want to try?”

I realized passions often do not start with some revelation or origin story tightly knit to my life. My passions started with a decision to try something and finding out I loved doing it. My passions and interests came from trying something knew and realizing I really enjoyed it. I have also tried many things I have not enjoyed. But those were the moments I found out I was trying the wrong thing and needed to try something else. The moments I have found out I do not enjoy doing something were blips in the story of finding what I can be passionate about.

Now I need to lead people down a road where I help them try new things and gain inside into themselves and see a place where they can be passionate and find life in what they do because they have decided to make this a place to play. 

What could you try? What could you be passionate about? What could new thing could you do?

Passionately,

–JT

Naturally Wrong

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I recently realized how deep my preconceived notions colors my interactions with other people. I have a knack for learning people. I don’t necessarily learn all people, but I do learn people close to me whom I think of as friends. I learn coworkers and people I greatly respect. I learn their nuances and schedules and routines. I cannot keep track of everything but I keep track of what I can. Most importantly, I do not do any of this intentionally. My head naturally keeps track of it all. I do not understand why my head does it, it just does. A natural part of my personality. 

This is great for me because I know when and how I should best communicate with people and what is going to work best in order to connect with them. 

The major drawback of my tendency to track people is the baggage it creates. If my brain is a cargo ship cruising across the ocean of life, the people my mind tracks get a shipping container in aboard the SS Manning’s Mind. As I have more experiences with a person, I slowly fill their container with information. In the moment, the information is useful and accurate. Long term, not always the case. 

Long term, I end up applying static information to dynamic people. Long term, the people in my mind do not get to grow or change. The information now colors how I see them, what I think about them, and how I interact with them. 

Every time I open their shipping container, I see everything in the container colored by static information. Information in dire need of an update. 

These preconceived notions keep me from allowing people to grow. 

These containers are in a terrible need of some spring cleaning.

What is a natural skill you have? What are some benefits of this skill? What are some drawbacks? How are you compensating for the drawbacks of what you do naturally?

Reconceiving,

–JT

Pathmaker

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Part of the reason my sabbatical is so well timed is because I am going to be doing a personality assessment with the rest of the staff team I work with. This is well timed. I’ve already gone through the binder of questionnaires, and today is the first day of the process.

Something that gives me a leg up on the situation, which is great because I hate going into situations like this blind, is my counselor is the one administering/leading the process. Since I’ve already met with him I feel like I have a good start on the process. Hopefully this doesn’t come back to bite me and leave me bored for too much of this two day seminar. 

Long term, I’m excited to see where this goes. Tomorrow I’ll be posting my initial reactions to the process, workshop, and interactions I have with people throughout the process. I will post more discussion about this process later this week when I’ve had some time to digest and I’ll post everything from a zero foot view and a 10,000 foot view about me in the weeks to come. 

The best question I can leave you with is this, when was the last time you sat down and looked in the mirror at yourself and analyzed where your natural gifting is? Do you work in that field or position? Do you utilize that skill set often? What is stopping you?