For anyone who follows these posts, there is supposedly a path to follow of a post a day on each of the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder® talent themes, introducing the individual guide we just re-published on Amazon. That was the plan, until yesterday. Was it a co-incidence the post was meant to be about Arranger™, which is an executing strength and I couldn’t execute? What does it mean that #17Arranger is my first executing strength landing half way down the ladder (17/34) and I didn’t take action? Why is it on a Thursday (4th day of the week), the day I tend to focus on #4Activator, I could not activate?
Honestly, they were simply excuses. Responsibility needs to be taken and I simply didn’t get off my backside and write a 20 minute blog post. This could warrant beating myself up, questioning failure, giving up and/or doubting whether what has been done is good enough. All pretty good excuses for not producing a post. However, what we attempt to do here at CYC, is dissect our natural patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour. We then correlate them with our natural talents to identify if they are raw or mature and whether we are using them in the basement or the balcony.
With that in mind, it seemed important to reflect on the interview with Strengths Coach, Brian Kelly and see what gold we can gold extract from his answers. When asked how to use Arranger™ to achieve goals, Brian responded,
“Arranger brings organization, flexibility and adaptability to change, and the ability to synthesize and form effective configurations resulting in a purposeful way forward.”
Hmm, my initial response was, but I didn’t, there was no flexibility or adaptability and there was no moving forward. All in under 24 hours… wow, is this being too hard on myself? After sleeping on it and reading Brians answers the penny dropped. It’s time to re-arrange what I’m doing. Let’s take a look at what was happening and then try and improve on it.
First question, why write a blog post each day? Answer – to introduce the guide books re-published on Amazon. But why? To market the books. Why? Hopefully to sell them and make some money. Why? To spread the work on strengths and build a following.
There is a small amount of purpose in there. Honestly, chances are not too many people are reading these posts around the time of posting, so why not redirect the purpose of the posts to be more of a journal of my strengths journey? The purpose then can shift toward my growth and development of strengths. If this helps people along the way great. Each post can simply be about each of my personal strengths in numerical order from 1 – 34.
If we revert back to dissecting what happened yesterday we could also consider the following:
#2Connectedness was looking for connections why not to post, Arranger being an executing strength, Thursday being #4Activator day, etc etc. Basically searching for an excuse not to continue. Looking for weakness. Ahh! Maximiser just thinking about that statement makes hairs on the back of the neck stand. Is this basement #1Maximiser or possibly dredging up past memories of projects not working? (Probably doesn’t help with #34Context).
#1 Maximiser was questioning whether the posts, books and Amazon are good enough to generate traction. This could be seen as over-critical and devaluing, which in a raw state is how it looked yesterday. On reflection it’s the constant reminder to search for excellence. This is what make Maximiser so great, why don’t I accept that more? It’s simple, because when things are not flowing, going great, we question. We are drawn toward the basement, the simple path is always to ‘go down’ the metaphorical stairs rather than ‘head up’ to the balcony. Even if being on the balcony is enlightening and energising – the basement still drains us.
Not posting appears to be procrastination and feels unproductive, which it may be. Although, is patience and understanding required? Have I been too harsh on myself believing it was lazy to not write a post? The goal was set to write a blog post each day, was it too presumptuous? How much thought was put into that? Did Activator rush into that plan? Not because it is too hard of a task, just where is the mindfulness around feeding all my top 5? Where is the grace and breathing space for Maximiser to question whether posting was good enough and did it serve a productive purpose? How do #3Ideation and #5Futuristic play when there are deadlines to post each day? Answer, once again I have been too harsh on myself. Coming up with ideas, rushing into them with no thought of outcomes to processes other than wild dreams of results. In other words, poor execution. Hmm sounds about right for someone with no executing strengths in his top 16.
On topic for the theme of today, Arranger™, there needs to be ‘rearrangement’ in how to set my schedules or timeframes. It’s possible there needs to be time to ‘sleep on’ thoughts and ideas. Give myself a bit of lee-way to question how things are going. Again, this doesn’t mean procrastinating, simply time and space to just ‘be’. Does that make sense?
Wow, what a difference a little grace makes. To relax and just be. Stop being too harsh and give yourself a break – and that doesn’t mean ‘take 5’, more-so being more forgiving. The outcome, when it comes to achieving my goals the intention will be to be more mindful when planing tasks, including flexibility and adaptability using my top 5. Under Brians suggestion, this should help to continue moving forward. If you’d like to learn more about Arranger™ as a talent theme and read Brian’s interview, you’ll find How to Arrange Success on Amazon. Or you may prefer to read the interviews of all 34 talent theme in the book, How to Reduce Stress and Create Success.
Great aha moments over the past 24 hours. What do you think? If you have any comments, questions or feedback, we’d love to hear it. Simply leave a comment below or contact me personally at danny@chooseyourchapter.com.au
And remember, focus on your strengths.
*Disclaimer – These videos and the Focus On Your Strengths course are entirely developed by Choose Your Chapter and are NOT products of Gallup nor the Clifton StrengthsFinder. We would like to acknowledge Gallup and the CSF for their data and research tool which allows us to help spread the word to focus on our strengths. Clifton StrengthsFinder ® and StrengthsFinder ® and each of the Clifton StrengthsFinder theme names are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. Choose Your Chapter are not affiliated with Gallup, Inc or its subsidiaries.
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The Focus On Your Strengths Udemy course and companion guides were written, designed and produced by Danny Crouch and Nicole Feledy. The best Gold Coast Business Coach, best Gold Coast Life Coach, best Gold Coast Strengths Coach, best Gold Coast keynote speaker.