Discover Your Design
There we sat around the conference room table.
About a dozen of us were meeting to develop our careers and come up with ways of contributing to our company. It was a wonderful group, and I couldn’t help but realize that those of us around that table were there for a variety of reasons.
Some of us had accepted membership because we know what it entailed and wanted to add support and ideas. Some came out of curiosity — to see what the meetings were about. Others of us may have been there simply because we were invited, and didn’t want to say no.
In all, we were a motley bunch. Different levels of interest, commitment, and reasons for being there were part of the mix.
But behind these differences stood one even bigger difference that contributed to them all: some of us had a clearer sense of our calling — the place in life we were meant to occupy — than others.
Clarity on this issue has to do with so many factors. The family we were born into, how we see the world, and who we spend time with are just a few.
Of course some of these factors can’t change, but some can. And we never know how much change is possible. Any limit we try to put in place is more a reflection of our own thinking than of reality.
Living outside of our calling can be satisfying for a time. We set up a standard of success — money is a common one — and then try to maximize our life in that direction.
If we’re skilled, we may soon find ourselves outpacing others in our race for supremacy. When we’re winning in the way we think matters most, it’s a very satisfying feeling.
Once a reward cycle is created and is working, it makes sense that the cycle will persist until something changes. If everything in our life is going great, who would do anything different?
This happened for me in the area of education. Over the course of time in high school and college, I believed more and more that achievement in school was the most important thing. And so I gave it more time, energy, and focus — to the detriment of relationships and broader life experiences. But as I did so, I found that, based on my standard, I was winning. It felt good. And I suppose if I had never lost I would still be doing the same thing.
In general there are two ways to change a reward cycle once it gets going. The first is that we fail to meet our standard, and the second is that our standard fails.
Failing to meet our standard means different things depending on the standard. For me, failure happened after two years in graduate school, by which time my grades were in shambles and I couldn’t keep up, let alone excel.
This first way of breaking the cycle is arguably worse, because we may come away thinking that we just need to try harder and all would be well. It may lead to repeated attempts to climb the wrong mountain.
Better perhaps is for our standard itself to fail. This is when we do actually summit the mountain, only to realize at that point that it’s not the right one.
My friend Adam experienced this after 10 successful years in his job. Because of the pension structure of his organization, he could see that the next real financial milestone was 10 years down the road. The work was familiar and looked secure, yet by now he knew what it offered and what it didn’t. His standard changed.
Both of these catalysts for change can involve dramatic or harrowing experiences. They may stand out in our minds as light bulb moments, hinge-points in our life, or difficult times we struggled through.
Thankfully, shocking our system doesn’t have to be necessary for creating change. Gentler methods are available when we’re able to hear and respond.
What if we became interested in the way we are designed — our specific gifts, talents, and passions? What if we held a genuine curiosity about these things, to the point we were willing to work to find answers?
Twice a year, I get to facilitate a course called Discover Your Design. The goal is just that — that participants uncover how they are made and connect dots about what this means in terms of their work and service.
In the course, we explore five ‘lenses,’ each of which helps us see a bit more clearly what we might be called to at our particular time and place. Here are snippets of these five areas:
1. Life Gifts
Everyone with a resume can name skills they possess. Yet we also know we can be very skilled in doing things that drain our energy and lead to burnout.
Along with our skills, there are the things we do just for the enjoyment of it. These aren’t hobbies exactly, but more like the things we do in our hobbies that make them fun for us.
For someone with a hobby of singing karaoke, the thing they really love about it might be working a crowd. Someone who loves flying model rockets might really be enjoying their skill of tinkering, or a gardener might love using their eye for color and proportion.
In our minds, a thick wall may exist between the skills we use for work and the ones we enjoy. The concept of life gifts challenges that notion.
It claims that it’s possible, through careful work, to find skills that both come naturally AND are enjoyable.
Once we locate these skills, we’ve uncovered durable sources of usefulness and enjoyment in our life.
2. Personality
How many interpersonal conflicts come down to differences in personality?
I asked this question to a class taking Discover Your Design. After thinking it over as part of the homework, a young man said he thought of a strained family relationship that may have come down entirely to this. It wasn’t that either side had done anything wrong, but that they just didn’t understand one another, and this led eventually to active dislike.
Differences in personality can be strong, yet each type in the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory has something valuable to offer. Not only that, but knowing our type can also help us discover appealing workplace settings.
3. Spiritual Gifts
Discover Your Design recognizes a spiritual dimension to life. We hold that each person is specifically gifted for service, and these gifts can come under names like generosity, faith, knowledge, and even administration.
One standout aspect of spiritual gifts is how hesitant we can be to claim any. Doing so can seem arrogant, so we rarely spend much time thinking about them and owning our own.
The disadvantage of this is it minimizes the use of our gifts. When we don’t know and see the value of our gifts, it will be hard to express (and practice) them with focus. Their impact is diluted.
In the class then, we take a group approach. We name spiritual gifts we see in others! This may be the only way someone will see their own gifts, and is itself a great gift to them.
4. Values
Have you ever been deeply invested in a cause, project, or mission, and been baffled or even upset by how little interest others took in it?
Assuming the message was getting across, this gap may have been due to a difference in values. One person’s priority on, say, independence, was at odds with someone else’s valuing of tradition, for example.
Differences in values become even more important when it’s between a company and an employee. Some companies have stated values, and all have actual values that determine the way priorities rank and how things get done.
Disagreement with company values is a quick path to feeling torn and conflicted each day at work. It behooves us then to do a bit of work around discerning our values, and also the due diligence to understand the true values of organizations we join up with.
5. Passions
Last but not least, passions are held until the end of the course because they tend to be the hardest to uncover.
Unlike many other qualities studied in the course, passions are not hardwired in from birth. Instead, they may grow out of a wound in life. For example, the Susan G. Koman foundation, which has raised over a billion dollars to fight breast cancer, was started because of a death due to that disease.
Passions may take years to take shape and gain enough clarity so we can articulate what they are.
In the course, rather than expecting a ‘Eureka’ moment in our time together, we point to ways of discerning passions: questions to ask and categories to consider. A true passion may come just once in a lifetime, and may involve much more than one person can do.
Despite the challenges of putting our finger on passion, when it’s found, it becomes a source of incredible energy.
Bringing all five areas together can really help provide clarity in times of uncertainty. This happens best in a face-to-face, group context, so if you are in the Atlanta area and would like to take part in this course, contact me for details!
Which of these five areas would you most like to learn more about? Who do you know who might be interested in talking it over?
If you would like to learn more, I am offering the Discover Your Design course in Atlanta this October — write me back for details!
