Reframing.

I went to a weekend class about 30 years ago that literally changed my life.

Let me explain.

It was called Networking, and it was a class on identifying gifts and talents, etc that make us uniquely who we are.

It concluded with a one on one session with the facilitator, who happened to be my good friend Rick.

Rick spread all of my paperwork across the table and we reviewed it.

“OK, you worked at a newspaper, then you went into radio, and then you worked at a TV station where you started a new public affairs program and a noon news broadcast, and became their first assignment editor. You started a marketing and export program for the State of Delaware, and later you put a radio station on the air until you sold it, and you started a Christian music festival, and a BMX track, and then you ran your own video production company. Yours is easy”, he said.

“It is?”

“Yes, look at what I just said. What do you see?”

I hung my head. “I’m a quitter. I can’t stick with anything more than a few years.”

Rick laughed but I was dead serious.

It had kind of bothered me, to be honest. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t do something for a long time?

“NO!”, he said. “You are a starter!”

“I am?”

“You have ideas and you start things and you get them up and running and then you get out of the way and go start something else! That’s your gift…you are a starter!”

I left that weekend conference on cloud nine. I kind felt like young Rudolph when he learned Clarice liked him and he jumped around and discovered he could fly.

That reframing…of looking at my life experiences as a positive instead of a negative…flipped a switch in me. I now gave myself permission to believe that I was a starter. That I had a special gift to see a need or opportunity, and do something about it. And most importantly, I gave myself permission to pick up and move on and start something new, once I had somebody else to continue the work I had started.

Maybe you have something in your life that is really a gifting but you, like me, see it as a negative. Take a step back and try reframing it. Embrace it and who you are. It is liberating and could result in the next best chapter of your life.

It did for me.