Your skills and the roles they support didn't come about by accident. They were developed through training and experience. The question that fascinates us is, "What kind of training and what kind of experience?"

Your current abilities depend largely on how you experienced four important developmental factors as a child in relation to your budding skills. These four factors, Permission, Promotion, Protection and Power, greatly influence the feelings we have about various skills whether the be joy, fear or dread.

Imagine that you are a small child just beginning to explore the world around you. You discover that there are some things you really like to do, such as dance or draw. You discover that when you dance, your parents praise and support you. What they have done is given you "Permission." If, on the other hand, you would rather draw, but your parents insist that you dance, that is "Promotion" – you are being pushed into something you have not actively chosen for yourself.

Whether a talent was given permission or was promoted, it certainly required practice on your part in order to develop that skill. As you practiced you probably made mistakes – sang off key, forgot a dance step or had difficulty drawing a face. Protection, in the form of encouragement, was there to prevent those small failures from being devastating. Protection allowed you to pull yourself together, dust off your self-esteem and try again!

Finally, with enough practice you gained competence. With competence came Power – the power to affect other people with your skill. Your singing now moves people, your dancing entertains them or they admire your art.

This process was repeated, usually without awareness, for all of your current roles and skills.

Take action and reflect on those things you do best. Make two columns on a piece of paper, heading one column with Permission and one column with Promotion. Now make a list of your skills and roles, placing each in the appropriate column. Which did you choose, and which were you guided toward? Reflect on some of your early "failures" and how adults provided you with the necessary "protection" so you could continue skill-building.

As you look over these activities, highlight the ones that give you a feeling of power and strength. These activities are important to your success in life! These are the skills that will bring you the most joy and fulfillment and are worth your happiness to discover and develop.

About the Author:

Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 27 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley. He's the co-founder of Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., a consulting firm that specializes in helping people discover their true skills and talents. www.vrft.com.

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