From the Deep

I love the Olympics. I enjoy watching athletes push themselves to the boundaries–and beyond–of what they can do. I appreciate the years of dedication and hard work culminating in this pinnacle of competition. And most of all, I love the stories that emerge of the sacrifices people have made to participate in this ultimate experience.

I heard one such story last night. Watching the pairs figure skating short programs, I heard the story of Yuko Kavaguti, a skater for Russia. Kavaguti, Japanese by birth, trained in skating and dreamed of being coached by Tamara Moskvina, famed figure skating coach who has coached a number of Russian pairs to Olympic gold. As the story goes, Kavaguti sent a fax to Moskvina, requesting that Moskvina become her coach, and that brash act resulted (I’m sure after many other steps) in Moskvina saying yes.

It also cost Kavaguti. For Moskvina to coach her, Kavaguti had to become a Russian citizen and compete for her new country. Scott Hamilton, himself an Olympic champion and now Olympic figure skating commentator for NBC, said “How many people defect to Russia?” Some people in Japan are calling her a traitor.

But now, with her partner Alexander Smirnov, Kavaguti stands in third place in the pairs figure skating competition. Gold is within her reach.

Obviously, this girl is talented, and to reach her potential, she had to take risks and make sacrifices. As gifted people ourselves and as parents of gifted children, we know what this is like. I remember telling the principal of our neighborhood school, who is also a friend of ours, that we were moving our children from his school to a new charter school. I felt like a traitor. But since that time, I’ve seen my children rise to the challenges presented to them. We’ve defected for excellence.

I know many of you have made similar choices. While the world may never understand, we have to do it. We have to go for the gold in our lives, for our kids’ lives, no matter the risk, the sacrifice, the misunderstanding.

Thanks to Yuko Kavaguti for the inspiration. It may be small consolation, but she has gained a fan in me.

7 Weeks Toward Leveraging your Giftedness for Greater Fulfillment & Impact

Do you believe you might be gifted, but you don’t know what difference that truth makes in your life? Do you wish you could feel better about your giftedness and leverage it to feel more fulfilled and make a greater impact on the world around you? The Set Your Brilliance Free! In this seven-week group coaching course, you will:

• Discover your unique gifted profile;
• Redesign your relationship with your giftedness;
• Envision your life based on being your full gifted self;
• Determine how you’re hiding your giftedness and how you’ll bring it into the light of day;
• Find and connect with other members of the gifted tribe;
• Integrate your giftedness into more areas of your life in specific, life-changing ways;
• And more!

As many of you know, I spent the past summer researching grownup giftedness. I have learned so much that I want to share that I’ve almost felt paralyzed! Where to begin? Well, as Maria from The Sound of Music would say, “let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” (I’m very much about the wisdom of The Sound of Music!) The beginning seems to be in identifying what makes a grownup gifted. And boy howdy, do I have a list of gifted grownup characteristics for you!

Before I begin my ginormous list, I’ll summarize by saying that giftedness is not about a number on an intelligence test. While high intelligence can be part of giftedness, giftedness is much more about a profile of traits. If you exhibit at least two-thirds of the characteristics below, you can probably consider yourself gifted.

Also, I want you to know that I did my best to cull through the traits and winnow them down so I didn’t repeat myself. However, in a typically gifted, divergent-thinking way, at times I found that one resource would present a trait in a differently-nuanced way than another. In these cases, I did what I could to consolidate the characteristic, but I also may have just repeated myself. It was the only way I could avoid the self-torture which would have resulted from potentially omitting information you might find helpful!

So, without further ado, I give you my ginormous list of gifted grownup traits:

• early and heightened concern for justice and morality
• early verbal ability
• enjoyment of intense intellectual discussions with others and with themselves
• complex thought processes
• capacity for abstract thought, which as it increases so does the connection of emotional reactions to cognitive appraisals of situations
• internal asynchrony (out-of-sync-ness): experiencing different levels of development among physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and skill set areas of self
• external asynchrony: lack of fit with same-aged people and with age-related expectations of culture
• immense capacity to care
• assimilation of extraordinary amounts of information
• unusual retentiveness (and I’m not talking anal here, though that can sometimes apply too!)
• advanced comprehension
• unusually varied interests
• insatiable curiosity
• unusual capacity for processing information
• accelerated pace of thought processes
• heightened capacity for seeing unusual and diverse relationships
• ability to generate original ideas and solutions
• evaluation of self and others
• persistent, goal-directed behavior
• heightened emotional sensitivity and intensity (these are evident in a gifted child and may go underground in adults, especially in males, but will still exist)
• heightened sensitivity to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and taste sensations
• keen sense of humor (may be gentle, hostile, sophisticated, and/or bizarre)
• desire to make actions consistent with values
• sophisticated, global thinking
• capacity to generalize
• understanding of difficult concepts and phenomena
• uncommon imagination and creativity
• view of self can be fundamentally different than the view others have of them (gifted people are sometimes endowed by others with more power and ability than they actually possess)
• driven, not by what drives the rest of the world but by inner agenda
• sometimes overwhelmed by the pressure of their own creativity
• greater awareness of what’s going on in the world, therefore feeling things more deeply
• relating best to those who share their interests
• don’t have many relationships, but the ones they do have are deep and meaningful
• leadership ability
• need for solitude and time for contemplation and daydreaming
• search for meaning in both the inner and outer world
• highly intuitive, gaining insights without being aware of the logical sequence to their conclusion
• special problem awareness, therefore can predict consequences and possibly prevent foreseeable problems; but can also experience more anxiety
• ability to see patterns of development and growth, and therefore can recognize, predict, and influence trends, although they may not be trendsetters because others won’t be convinced of their way of thinking
• dislike of public relations methods of image making
• perfectionistic, in terms of own standards and expectations (not necessarily in terms of the outside world)
• multiple abilities and interests, frequently to the point of feeling frustration at not being able to engage all of themselves at any one point in time
• frequent feelings of being misunderstood, of being an outsider, of being unable to communicate
• difficulty understanding the seemingly inconsistent and short-sighted behavior of others
• ability to see a difference between justice and equality
• potential development of emotional issues related to their abilities, but also possession of greater resources for dealing with their problems
• independent thinking
• difficulty with authority figures, including knowingly or unknowingly being threatening to them
• desire to use specific talents, insights, and knowledge for betterment of the world
• ability to process information in several directions at once
• love for self-actualization
• divergent thinking ability
• high potential to be wide open to life and fully present in the moment
• love of challenge
• ability to feel great joy in the unfolding journey–goals and means are one and the same
• balance between discipline and spontaneity
• as they become more successful, development and use of a support system that fuels their creativity
• persistent
• ability to complete tasks more quickly than others
• tendency to “use up” jobs
• sensitivity to beauty and pain
• empathy
• perceptivity
• no fear of being regarding as oddball or weird person
• playfulness
• more insight than others
• need for challenging work
• resistance to routines
• low frustration tolerance
• reluctance to accept criticism
• holding unrealistic expectations of self
• being one’s worst critic
• ability to see many sides to an issue
• enjoyment of debate
• fountain of ideas
• love for puzzles, mazes, paradoxes, complex ideas, and words, including word play
• feeling of responsibility for problems that don’t belong to them
• been criticized for not sticking to one thing (”flakiness”)
• value for honesty, integrity, and authenticity
• connections with people of all ages
• capacity for keen observation
• extraordinary tolerance for ambiguity
• excitability, enthusiasm, and expressiveness
• abundant energy
• early spiritual experiences
• deep concern about universal issues and nature
• reverence for the interconnectedness of all things
• awareness of an inner force that draws them toward meaning, fulfillment, and excellence
• feelings of urgency about personal destiny
• yearning at a spiritual level for answers to existential puzzles
• passionate, intense feelings
• inability to switch off thinking
• search for questions in their lives
• a feeling of coming apart
• preference for complexity
• overwhelmed by pressure of one’s own intellectual, creative, or emotional intensity
• just seems more complicated than others

Late last night I watched ESPN, and noted on the ticker a message about Andre Agassi confessing in his new autobiography to using crystal meth. I pointed this out with curiosity to my husband, and figured this was probably Agassi’s way of getting skeletons out of the closet so he can live his life freely. Surely enough, this morning on espn.com, sports writer Rick Reilly reviews Agassi’s autobiography entitled Open (from Knopf, written with Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer). You can read the review here. And indeed, apparently Agassi is coming clean in a way that will empower him to live more freely. (Just a teaser: the old-school Agassi mane? Fake!)

What struck me about this review, and what I imagine will strike me about this book, is that Agassi is a tremendously talented individual who lived the life many gifted and talented children live: they try to reach other people’s dreams for them. Agassi didn’t love tennis, and it showed in his performance. It showed in his downfall (the crystal meth phase). This happens to many gifted and talented young adults. They realize that they can’t reach other people’s dreams and standards, and they hit rock bottom. Some fall into drugs. Some fall into depression. Some even fall into suicide.

Only when Agassi got real with himself–when he shaved his hair, his image, and his drug use–did he begin to excel. And excel he did. His talent shone, and he won his way to number 6 in the tennis rankings and to five additional major championships.

When Agassi walked off the court for the last time, the public didn’t view him as the tennis brat that had started playing a decade or so earlier. He walked off the court beloved by his fans. He was true to himself; his talent delighted others; he had made the tennis dream his own and fulfilled it. And when he said goodbye to the sport he had come to love, he was able to walk into a full life. During an interview right before he retired, he said something to this effect: “I look forward to waking up in the morning and, instead of having to ask myself ‘What do I have to do today?’ asking myself “What do I want my life to be like?’” He had found the secret to a fulfilling life: being himself and choosing his path.

What are you doing with your giftedness? With your talent? Are you living someone else’s dream? Or have you given that up and faced your true identity, allowing your light to shine? At whatever point you find yourself in this continuum, I encourage you to keep following the path toward your truth. As you do, you will find yourself satisfied in life and blessing the world with the unique gift you have to give.

©2009 Lisa Lauffer

Over the summer I had the privilege of prototyping my new coaching program for gifted adults with a couple of encouraging, engaged (and engaging!) friends. I was pleasantly surprised by what I learned, most of which supported the research I’ve done and the services I plan to offer.

I was also surprised by the response of one friend’s husband. Himself a gifted grownup, he said to his wife (my prototype client) “Really? You’re going to look into your giftedness as an adult? Really?” In other words, “What’s the point?”

Other than him calling into question the entire focus of my coaching practice, I understand. In fact, I understand a great deal. For those of us who have felt out-of-step with the mainstream all our lives, why look into the potential of giftedness and where it might lead us in the future? After all, whether identified as gifted children or not, I’d venture to say we all experienced misunderstanding, confusion, and rejection. Why bring all that up again? What impact could it possibly have on us as adults? Isn’t “gifted” just a label we use to understand our quirky kids and attempt to obtain the educational interventions they need…and not a label relevant to adulthood?

The more time I spend interacting with gifted adults (whether they know they’re gifted or not), the more I know I’m on the right track. I’ve talked with many of you who have finally experienced that “aha” feeling that accompanies the realization that many of your struggles past and present could be attributed to your giftedness: to those pesky gifted qualities–such as your energy, intensity, sensitivity, and your wacky sense of humor–and to how others react when you express those characteristics.

That “aha” feeling alone is reason to address your adult giftedness. Here are some additional benefits to acknowledging your giftedness as a grownup:

• You can make sense of your childhood experiences and experience healing from the wounds inflicted via those experiences.
• If you’re a stay-at-home mom, you’ll now understand why your role doesn’t completely fulfill you. Your mind races, and as bright as your children probably are, reciting ABCs with them repeatedly won’t meet your needs for intellectual stimulation. You can now admit–without guilt–your need for greater mental challenges and find ways to meet it.
• You’ll comprehend why you’ve switched jobs so often. You have multiple interests and abilities, and once you’ve reached a status-quo point at work, your entire self wants to run toward a new challenge. Others may call this flaky; for you, this is survival. In realizing this, you can determine how to cope with it.
• You know why you don’t connect with some people, and why those people sometimes give you the strangest stares. They truly don’t understand what you’re saying, and you can accept this.
• You know you need to find gifted others, and that when you do, they’ll totally understand you. You’ll find a tribe of people who will validate you and your experiences.
• You can leverage your gifted characteristics to your advantage. For example, you know that you frequently develop answers to problems before other people do. You may not know how you reach your conclusions, but you know you’re right. You can now begin to trust and use your intuition more freely to serve yourself and others.