There were a few moments over the last couple of weeks that I genuinely wanted to give up.  I couldn’t see the answers, I felt discouraged in the steps I was taking, unclear in the decisions, and scared that I was stuck.  I felt frustration with my current 9-5 because I’ve been working on branching out and I don’t seem to be making headway.  I told myself that I was no longer marketable because I didn’t have a specific area of focus that stood out above anyone else.  I’ve been a jack of all trades and my attention is constantly split so there is no definitive growth or expertise in any one area.  I cursed myself for my ADD and my inability to pick an area of focus and I got really upset thinking about my employer for inhibiting that growth because they don’t want me to have a single area of focus.  I had to regroup and recognize this is a story I’m telling myself.  Now, as it applies to the current job market and how we find work/market who we are, yes, this is a detriment.  But when it comes to growth and moving forward, the new story I want to tell myself, these multiple talents and ADD can be highly beneficial.

The new story becomes a tale of taking those multiple talents and creating my own life, the life I want to live.  When we love, accept, and market ourselves instead of letting others tell our story or tell us what we are capable of, the entire universe opens up to us and we get to create it.  It’s still a lot of work, taking all of the talents we have and alchemizing them into our identity, something useful and helpful to the world, but it is authentic work, and we know when we are in flow, it doesn’t really feel like work.  Not all of us are meant to have one area of focus, we are meant to combine our gifts in new ways.  We aren’t meant to sell ourselves on who people think we should be, we are meant to be who we are and bring the people who need our talents to us.  That is how we become magnetic.  It’s a matter of programming the mind and to start cherishing instead of disparaging who we are.  All of our talents are a gift and when we embrace that and work with who we are, we make the complex/multi layered/multi faceted aspects of who we are coherent and easy to understand.  All of the pieces fit together to make a picture that others couldn’t see. 

So for all of us out there who struggle because we aren’t “one thing,” this is to help reframe that.  I was never very good at seeing those Magic Eye things from the 90’s, but I knew the image was there.  So the work of putting these pieces together is a bit like that—we have to learn how to see the picture, and then we have to put it together.  Basically we need to shift the focus.  It isn’t about what we can’t do or how we don’t fit in with what others expect of us—all of that may be true.  But when we shift our energies and understand that we’ve created the opening in the chrysalis, the focus is no longer on breaking the chrysalis—we have to learn how to spread those wings and fly.  See the opportunities around us, trust and celebrate who we are.  Stop downplaying and hating who we are and put the energy to honoring all those pieces of ourselves.  Even the ones we are ashamed of.  Have faith and understand our value is inherent and shed light on that.  Love the creativity and break the box created by the habits we were told to adopt that would make us successful.  When we find what makes us happy and shift that creativity to make the life we love, the rest flows to us.  Fly and don’t ever waste time hating who we are.