If you have faithfully followed the first eight steps of transformation then you are ready for step #9 – I am going to show God (my Higher Power), myself, and my fellow human beings what I am able to accomplish with the talents and abilities that I have been given.
This is a very important milestone to reach. We all have God given talents and abilities. They may be identical, similar, or completely different than another’s talents and abilities. But, we all possess them.
We all employ different ways of looking at the world and operating within its bounds. We all amass different life experiences. We all choose different paths as we travel through life. We make different choices. Nothing else will reflect our differences more than the choices we make.
The composite of all of these different facets of ourselves make us singularly unique in this world. That is a marvelous thing! I am awe struck in the full reckoning of that – that as much as we are the same, we are all different. All 7 billion of us.
In this step of transformation are the words, “what I am able to accomplish.” Now some might consider accomplishment to always mean success. I do not. It means demonstrating your commitment to transform our life.
It means you have begun to take action. You have crawled out of your comfort zone and you are doing something, taking action on your plans for change. It means that whether your efforts meet with success or whether your efforts are less than successful makes no difference. You will be accomplishing something either way.
We learn by doing. We learn by our mistakes. We have success and we learn from that. We have less than stellar moments when things don’t go well and we learn from those.
We pick up, redress, retool, restart, redesign, redeploy, realign, readjust and we try again and we learn form that. Sometimes we create opportunities for a more positive outcome (my new term for failure) and we learn for those.
If you are learning in this way then your are acquiring knowledge. This is one of the very definitions of accomplishment – any acquired ability or knowledge. If your are doing, you are accomplishing.
This step also asks you to show God (or Higher Power), yourself and others what you can accomplish. This is important. I believe it to be our mission in life. I believe it is irresponsible and a universal injustice to squander our natural talents and abilities. We should seek out our talents, polish them, hone them, employ them to the best of our abilities and then put them on full display, as long as we draw breath.
I cringe inside when I hear someone say they are going to retire and quit working. Why would you want to do that? If you have found your passion for purposeful work in life then only you can do what you do in the way that you do it. Why would you withhold your talents and abilities from the world in that way?
By helping yourself be what you are meant to be and do what you are meant to do you will ultimately help others, which will ultimately help yourself, which will ultimately help still more others….
Showing God, yourself and others what you are able to accomplish with your natural talents and abilities is not a self-congratulatory exercise in affirmation. It’s showing the world your gratitude!
If you haven’t found your passion for purposeful work in life, are you looking? If not, why not? Please return soon for another part in this series on Transformation.