As many of you know I have a passion for helping people identify their dreams and go after them. What you may not know is that (much to my surprise) I have uncovered a spiritual aspect to my work.

I use a 3 stage process to help people find the kind of work that will make them happy for the long haul. We start by taking a 3 hour test which objectively measures your natural talents. Then, we do a 2 hour inventory of your peak life experiences to extract your values and motivators. Using these collections of information, we can synthesize what skills you were born to be good at and in what way you want to use those skills to make a contribution to the world. The third phase is to add logistics -- or how you want to work -- i.e. required compensation, preferred working environment etc.

By helping people match their natural talents with their passions, I have come to discover that each and every one of us has talents that support our passions, and in most cases, our passions directly benefit someone else.

It is almost as if we are born to make a specific contribution with our lives but somehow we get derailed along the way. My work has started feeling more like helping people return to their natural course of action rather than about creating new uncharted paths.

This is very exciting! Doing this work has made me believe that there just might be some kind of innate order to things after all.

Once my clients re-visit this junction between their innate gifts and their passions, the rest is almost methodical and they become unstoppable. I've watched it happen time and again. They tell me that they feel more alive than ever before. I know I felt that way when I fully embraced my gift for relating and put it to work as a coach.

Why not be 100% you and start sharing all of your natural gifts with the world! If you are a poet (and you know who you are) write! If you are a leader, lead! If you are a musician, play!

It may or may not become your career. If it does, that is wonderful but even if it doesn't you will gain the benefit of feeling fully expressed and alive in your life. And the world needs more people like you who have come alive!

As Nelson Mandela shared in 1994 Inauguration Speech (quoting, I believe, from Marianne Williamson's A Return to Love)

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I'm sure you have heard those words before. But each time I hear them I am reminded again to be the best I can be. Whether you believe in a God or not, the message is the same -- you have been given wonderful talents to share. It is summer, go forth and be fully alive. Let your light shine!

c2004 by Deirdre McEachern. All rights reserved