
People tell you that you’re super smart. They’re baffled by how much you know and how you know it. You can ace a test without studying. You can talk with just about anyone about just about anything. You’re always thinking, analyzing, imagining and empathizing.
But you’re sure that you’re not gifted.
How is that possible?
Here are some ideas:
• You know how much you don’t know.
• You think you’re normal. Doesn’t everyone obsess about Dr. Who and David Attenborough’s Planet Earth documentaries?
• Too many people have told you “Don’t get a swelled head, “Who do you think you are,” “You think you’re so smart,” or “Nobody likes a know-it-all.”
• You value justice and equality. If someone is gifted, someone is not gifted. It can imply that you’re better than someone else.
• Your Aunt Mindy was gifted and she didn’t turn out too well.
• You haven’t sent rockets into space or designed something “insanely great.”
• You’re good at faking it. If people knew the real you, it would be obvious that you’re average.
• You’ve been told over and over that you can’t possibly know as much as you know. You’re starting to believe it.
• When you were in school, it was embarrassing and lonely to be the smart kid.
• You’d have to live up to it and the PRESSURE would be overwhelming and then everyone would be disappointed in you and the PRESSURE would be even more overwhelming. So overwhelming, then, that you’d have to disappear into a witness protection program and acquire a new identity and not even Sherlock could find you.
• You fear rejection from family and friends. You want to belong, to fit in, to be normal.
• You have so many interests in so many diverse areas that you flit from topic/job to topic/job instead of mastering only one topic/job thoroughly and completely for your entire lifetime. In fact mastering ONLY ONE topic/job thoroughly and completely for your entire lifetime is totally terrifying.
• If you were gifted, you wouldn’t be so anxious, so depressed, so not rich or so bad at chess.
Why does it matter? Why do you need to realize that you are, in fact, gifted?
I’m glad you asked. It’s pretty simple. If you accept and embrace your giftedness (your rainforest mind), you’ll be better able to find your authentic voice and contribute in your uniquely sensitive, intense and complicated way to making a better world. Your Aunt Mindy will thank you! (so will your kids, your friends, your partner, your pets, your colleagues, your neighbors, your trees, your rivers, your planet….)
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To my bloggEEs: Tell us, why it is that you still don’t believe that you’re gifted. Or, if you do believe it, tell us how that happened. Thank you for sharing. I so appreciate that you’re here!
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