Discovering Myself and My Calling Through Writing

I recently began to write for a monthly devotional publication – Living Life: A Journal of Spiritual Formation & Reflection (It is published by Duranno and the English version is translated into Spanish and Russian), and guess what I’ve discovered about myself? I love writing. I even consider writing to be a potential strength for me as well – albeit I do still need to improve many aspects of this skill.

In Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work, he considers there to be four S.I.G.N.’s of a strength.

• S uccess
• I nstinct: How you feel before the activity
• G rowth: How you feel during the activity
• N eeds: How you feel after the activity

Based on these SIGN’s, I can deduce that writing seems to be a strength of mine.

• S uccess: When I write assignments, I typically receive A’s.
• I nstinct: When I even think about writing or having the opportunity to write, I get really excited.
• G rowth: As I write, I can easily concentrate and get into the zone. Even if I am interrupted, I can easily begin writing again.
• N eeds: Afterwards, I feel such a sense of accomplishment and joy.

But it wasn’t always like that…I didn’t always like writing.

Here’s my story…

Ever since grade 5, I wanted to be a doctor. It was always about the sciences, satisfying my curiosity, and helping the world. I begged my parents to buy me ‘do-it-yourself-science experiment’ books, and it was awesome! Even in high school, I focused on the sciences and thus entered university with a relatively high GPA in sure hopes of getting my Bachelor’s of Science (BSc) degree. With that, I hoped to get into medical school and save the world.

But what happened? I neither graduated with a BSc nor did I enter medical school, yet I am absolutely enthralled with the journey that God has brought me on, rather than being filled with devastation.

In grade 10, when I actually started to care about school (that’s another story), I discovered that I was actually a good writer. I enjoyed writing so much that I decided to enter into AP (advanced placement) English in grade 11 – what a bad decision. It wasn’t necessarily the challenge of an advanced placement class that caused me to regret my decision, but it was the specific teacher who taught the class. She was such a strict and harsh grader that I began to wonder if I was even a good writer at all; in fact, I began thinking that I was actually incompetent at it. As a result, my mom forced me to get an English tutor, which further reinforced the idea that English skills were poor.

Thus, with all the discouragement, I decided to focus my efforts on the sciences because people couldn’t judge me based on my sentence structure or grammar – I was merely judged on whether I was right or wrong. So I worked hard. I worked really hard in the sciences. I worked so hard that I was guaranteed a place in multiple BSc programs before my grade 12 year was even half finished.

However, upon entering university, I encountered another crisis. I liked the sciences and I worked hard, but no matter how hard I would work, my grades were horrible. I didn’t experience success.

Let’s fast forward a bit to my third year of university when I transferred out of sciences (biology) and into arts (religious studies). I was afraid at first because I knew I would be judged again on my writing, but guess what I discovered? Rather than my grades going down, they actually shot up into the high 80s and 90s.

In fact, from that point on, my joy and desire to write has actually increased exponentially. It’s gotten to the point where I am hoping to pursue my doctorate and begin writing books.

Here’s my point: This generation struggles with the big and looming question, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” In fact, children are asked this question beginning in elementary school and onwards. Thus, in order to answer that persistent question, you are either told what to be by others, or you choose your future occupation from a list – and that’s that!

However, there’s an inherent problem with that sort of methodology – you can’t be anything you want to be! Our culture says you can, but the raw, plain, and absolute fact is, you can’t!

BUT, you can be who God has created you to be.

So instead of looking to others for your university major or your ultimate career destination, why don’t you look in a mirror and try to discern the SIGNs of any strengths you may have?

Here are some tools that can help you to do that:

• Strengthsfinder 2.0 (For Anyone)
• Strengths-Based Leadership (A leadership-version of Strengthsfinder 2.0)
• Living Your Strengths (A Christian-version that integrates strengths with faith)
• StrengthsQuest (A version specifically for students trying to figure out what they want to do in the future, or individuals who want to make career changes).

I love the quote by Sun-Tzu Wu in The Art of War: If you know your enemy, you’ll win half of the battles, but if you know yourself, you’ll win the other half (paraphrased).

Let’s discover who we are and who God has created us to be, rather than listening to all the other voices telling us who we are and ought to be.
On a side note, I’m a certified strengths-performance coach, so if you have any questions on those books or you bought a book, but would like some guidance, feel free to contact me! 😀