Selfish not to share your gifts

I always believe we come here with our gifts. Even if there are people who have the same type of talents, we still have something unique about us. If you paint the same exact scenery, your art will look different. If you are a doctor getting exactly the same education as someone else, you will be treating your patients with your own individual approach. If you are an elementary school teacher, you will be different in how you approach education and your students. I think this is what is so beautiful about being human living in this planet. What if we all looked exactly the same and have the exact same gifts? It would be so boring.

Yet some of us are so afraid of sharing our talents and gifts with others. Many of us feel like “Who am I to share my art, my new idea or my work when there are so many talents out there?” We feel like we are bragging may be. We may think it must be the biggest next thing before we share any of our creation. I understand that since I was one of them. I did not write my book for a very long time thinking there are millions of them. What would be different about mine? Who would pick my book to read? But I understood over the years that sharing is never about bragging or being better than others (unless you are intentionally doing this) but it is about inspiration and telling your own story through your own talent. It is about leaving something you find to be important behind. Every time you share your poem, your new idea, your art piece, your innovation, your new way of approaching parenting, your engineering project or whatever it is in your case, you are giving the right for someone else to do the same. We all have that place close to our hearts where we get to say “wow, she did it, so I can too.”

So now I tell my clients “it is selfish not to share your gifts.” They look puzzled and sometimes angry at me. I ask them what if Picasso never shared his art since it did not look like any other art at the time? Wouldn’t we have missed a lot? Think about everything not only art. The same question applies to everything around you. Look at the desk you are sitting at, the office you are working in, the glass you are holding, the phone you are using, the toaster you are buying; they all started in someone’s imagination first and then they decided to share it with the world.

So please don’t be shy and don’t wait anything to be perfect before you share it with people around you. The amazing thing that happens is that people that you least expect appear in your life and support you for the things you did not even believe in.

You don’t need everyone to like your gift, you just attract the right people and that is all you want. If you wait for approval from others, including those who are closest to you, it may never happen. You just have to share it anyways. Being vulnerable is part of the deal. It is OK.

So just don’t be selfish. May be I need to hear that music to make my day better; may be I need that new technology in my car to make my life safer, may be I need that book to understand a new culture or may be I just need you to share your gift so that I have the inspiration to share mine.