Gifts are things you are naturally good at. Skills are things you master. You can perform your gifts when the conditions are right, but you can perform your skills no matter what the conditions are or the environment you are in. The key to being your best is being able to turn your skills into gifts.
How do you do this?
Through deliberate practice and experimenting.
Carol Dweck is the master behind Growth Mindset. A Growth Mindset is having the belief that you can learn how to do hard things with deliberate practice and over time.
Deliberate practice is practicing with a purpose. Malcolm Gladwell once wrote a book that stated you can master anything with 10,000 hours of practice, but that statement is only half correct. You can master something with 10,000 hours of practice, but that practice has to be deliberate AND intentional.
Then, you have to try out what you are practicing in low-risk environments so you can see what works and what doesn’t work.
Comedians do this. Some comedians say it can take years to perfect one joke, and they experiment with their jokes on smaller stages until they master them and before they perform them on the big stages.
NBA point guard Damian Lillard said you have to be great in a private gym all by yourself before you can expect to be great in a sold-out arena.
Boxers spend years training and fighting in small gyms before they get their title shots in big arenas.
Beyoncé and Taylor Swift don’t tour every year; they spend time learning, growing, and experimenting before going on their record-breaking tours.
Having gifts is GREAT, but they have to be nourished and taken care of. Grow your gifts by practicing. If you can fall in love with practicing and mastering your gifts and turning them into skills you can perform in any condition, you can become one of the greats!
SOMETHING(s) TO THINK ABOUT
1 - What is a gift you have or something you want to master?
2 - What can you do to turn that gift into a skill?
3 - What are some ways you can experiment so you can practice those skills in real-life but low-risk environments?
4 - What are some things that might get in the way of you practicing or experimenting?
5 - How can you overcome those barriers?
For a PDF version of this, click here: Turn Your SKILLS into GIFTS
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