Recently my wife and I had the opportunity to attend a Steven Curtis Chapman Solo Concert. There he talked about growing up with an older brother who was also into music and as Steven admitted “he has much better Pipes (singing voice) then I do. And in an attempt to be better (more like his brother), he focused on trying to imitate his brother’s singing style, resulting in the harder he tried, the less success he had. During that time, he was taken aside by influencers in his life, who told him that he needs to play to his strengths, which centered around his song writing skills and playing those songs from his heart. Now at the age of 56, he is still writing, singing, and performing to his strengths having written 302 songs and releasing 24 albums. http://stevencurtischapman.com/
Which raises the questions of, “Am I playing to my strengths in my hiking, personal, and work life? Or do I know what my strengths are?” In case you don’t here are a few ways to find out your strengths. One is to get the book “StrengthsFinders 2.0” which will take you through an assessment to get to your top 5 strengths and then gives examples on how to build on them. For me, my strengths showed up as: Maximizer, Winning Others Over (Woo), Communication, Positivity, and Includer. Another way is to ask your close friends: “Hey if you were attending my funeral day, what would you say about me?”
In hiking, because of social media; i.e. Face Book, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to imitate others and chase after their achievements; 14ers.com, The Manitou Incline Everything’s Better on the Incline, and other Face Book sites all allow us to post our hiking exploits. I’m not saying it’s wrong to post them and admire others, but we need to beware and check ourselves to make sure we are not chasing after hikes that don’t play to our strengths. As an example, my hiking strengths are centered around maximizing my hiking routine and health by getting out 3 times per week with a goal of 15 miles and 4,000 feet elevation gain total. And with that; including others who want to get to know about these local trails aka, taking 21 guys up the incline. While I admire, and like to read about everyone who wants to bag all the 14ers, that is not on my radar.
In my personal life, Face Book can also become a place where we can chase after the lives of others. And I think it becomes harder as we get older and start hitting those milestone decade birthdays. We start to compare ourselves to our peers on Face Book and can go down paths that are not healthy for us. I believe God calls us to “run the race that is set before us” with the strengths we have been; which gives us what we need to accept the challenges/adversities to grow to the next level.
At work, the spotlight shines on our strengths and weakness; especially during the dreaded performance review; where we are often given great details on what we need to improve on, aka; our weaknesses. Yet in reality, it’s our strengths we need to focus on and exploit. Focusing on our weaknesses (the potential strengths of others) will only get us to “average” at best; but focusing on our strengths, can excel us to new heights we never thought possible.
Getting back to story of Steven Curtis Chapman; it was the influencers and mentors in his life who were able to help him realize his strengths and be able to exploit them. Instead of waiting for those people to come into our lives, we need to be proactive and actively seek out others who can give us feedback on our strengths. As we start to close out this year, take some time to ask a few friends in your hiking, personal, and work circles; “What do you think I should be doing to build on my strengths in these different areas of my life as we move into 2019?”
Al Andersen 