To encourage and inspire!
And open the DERN door already!
Let’s not be Van Gogh about it either;
by that I mean you’re dead before you even recognize your potential
and even receive the recognition or blessings
because OF your talents, WHILE you were alive!
I get HM’s column once a week – see this week’s below
—— Forwarded Message
From: Harvey Mackay <alerts@harveymackay.com>
Reply-To: <alerts@harveymackay.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:00:51 -0400 (EDT)
To: <hazel.rider>
Subject: Harvey Mackay’s Column–Open the door to your hidden talents
Open the door to your hidden talents
There was a man who played piano in a bar. He was a good piano player.
People came out just to hear him play. But one night, a patron told
him he didn’t want to hear him just play anymore. He wanted him to
sing a song.
The man said, “I don’t sing.”
But the customer was persistent. He told the bartender, “I’m tired of
listening to the piano. I want that guy to sing!”
The bartender shouted across the room, “Hey buddy! If you want to get
paid, sing a song. The patrons are asking you to sing!”
So he did. The piano player who had never sung in public did so for
the very first time. And no one had ever heard the song “Mona Lisa”
sung the way it was sung that night by none other than Nat King Cole.
He had talent he was sitting on. He may have lived the rest of his
life as a no-name piano player in a no-name bar, but because he had to
sing, he went on to become one of the best-known entertainers in America.
There’s a lesson here for all of us. We all have hidden talents. Good
companies understand this and give their employees opportunities to
try different jobs and learn new skills. They never know when they
might discover another Nat King Cole.
As proof, I offer you the array of reality television shows that
invite contestants to sing, dance or perform their professed “talents”
(which some actually possess) for a panel of judges and viewers.
I give the contestants credit for trying!
I have a friend who is constantly asking me, “When is the last time
you did something for the first time?” He wants me to stretch myself
and to experience as many new adventures as I can.
I often advise people to learn and try as many skills as they can
handle to make themselves indispensable to their companies.
There is another benefit: You just might find a talent you didn’t know you had,
or discover a new job or career to pursue. Companies like 3M allow
their researchers time to try their own projects, whether or not they
are related to their regular jobs.
One local television reporter has been job swapping with viewers—among
her experiences, she’s been a fire fighter, dog trainer, city manager,
florist, baker and sanitation worker. She has demonstrated some hidden
talents, along with a terrific sense of humor. So far, it doesn’t
appear that she is ready to abandon her TV gig.
I also advise people to take up hobbies or volunteer to give their
brains a break from their regular routines. The hidden benefit there
is that a change of scenery can stimulate your creativity, which in
turn helps you discover other hidden abilities.
If you don’t expand your wings you might end up like the eagle that
thought he was a prairie chicken. There once was a hiker who found an
eagle’s egg high on a mountain. Not knowing what kind of egg it was,
he carried the egg down to the prairie and placed it in the nest of a
prairie chicken.
The eaglet hatched with the brood of prairie chicks and grew up with
them. All his life, the little eagle, thinking he was a prairie
chicken, did what his fellow prairie chickens did. He scratched in the
dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled as they did.
And he flew no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, he told
himself, that’s how prairie chickens are supposed to fly.
One day the young eagle saw a magnificent bird flying high above in
the cloudless prairie sky. The magnificent creature moved across the
sky powered only by an occasional flap of its powerful wings.
“What a beautiful bird!” exclaimed the young eagle to one of his
prairie chicken brothers. “I wonder what it is.”
“That’s an eagle, the king of birds,” clucked his companion. “But
don’t get any ideas, you can never be like him.” So the young eagle
never gave it another thought. And so he lived out his life, close to
the ground, thinking he was a prairie chicken, never daring to soar.
Mackay’s Moral: How will you know if you don’t try?
Miss a column? The last three weeks of Harvey’s columns are
always archived online <http://www.harveymackay.com/columns/> .
More information and learning tools can be found online at harveymackay.com
—— End of Forwarded Message
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