From the Deep

A couple days ago, I attended my Nia class. (Nia is a dance/movement practice that I hesitate to call a workout because I enjoy it so much!) As we begin each session, the teacher sets an intention, something to inform our movements, thoughts, and emotions. This particular day, the focus was “large and small.” The teacher introduced the idea by describing how some people have large personalities. They enter a room, and–ta da!–you know they’ve arrived! Others enter a room small, with timidity, a desire to remain unseen, and you may not notice they’re there.

As she talked, I reflected on how gifted people are like this. We were created to live large. We possess all these overexcitabilities, intensity, energy, enthusiasm, humor, creativity, and charisma. We were born to command attention when we enter a room!

Yet how many of us do? For whatever reasons, many of us have made ourselves small, trying to cram ourselves into society’s prescribed box. Or if we just can’t help drawing attention with our entrances, we try to deflect the spotlight as soon as possible. Still others of us have said “talk to the hand” to society, continuing to be our full selves but removed entirely from anyone who might witness us. This, too, is a way we’re small, even invisible.

Gifted people were born to live large. YOU were born to live large! I double-dog dare you–nay, TRIPLE-DOG DARE you–to find what’s standing in the way of you throwing the door open, waving your hands in the air, and announcing “I’m here! Now the party can start!” the next time you enter a room. There’s only one person on this planet like you, and we enjoy you. So, please, for the rest of humanity, live large!

These are the times that try moms’ (and dads’) souls, the dog days of summer. We’ve exhausted our supply of interesting activities. Despite promising he wouldn’t, ESGK has left his summer school project to the last minute, and now must complete it. The house is a wreck. The kids are bored, and what do bored gifted siblings do? They perfect annoying each other to an art. And here’s the kicker: because of our kids’ educational needs, we send them to a charter school, which means the school chooses its own calendar. Our school has chosen to wait a couple more weeks to begin while all the neighborhood kids are now in session. So who do my kids have to annoy…erm…play with but each other?

Me, apparently. But after two months of not being able to complete a thought, I long to do so. My temper is shorter. I have less patience. And my chocolate supply is low, suspiciously so (under-aged gremlins have apparently found it and helped themselves to it).

I do have some comfort. I am not alone. I’ve read blog posts by other moms struggling with the same thing. I’ve talked about this phenomenon with moms I’ve encountered at my kids’ activities. I’m not actually going crazy. (Who knew?!) I’m simply experiencing the last, rugged two weeks of my kids’ summer break.

My plan? Breathe. Lower the expectations for the house, yet put the kids to work when they’re annoying each other (and therefore me). Do a few more fun activities to get them out and about, to engage their minds and bodies. Accept the dog days of summer, and extend more grace to my kids and to myself.

If you’re in the same boat, I say “Welcome aboard, matey!” I’m grateful we’re in this together!

It’s summer break, and today has turned into one of those glorious, go-with-the-flow days around the house. My kids are currently preoccupied with their vast array of Legos, so I’ve taken this opportunity (how ever long it may last) to attempt some semblance of organization in my life.

As a gifted adult, I find myself extremely divergent. I have a plethora of ideas and projects running through my mind, and I enjoy creating and brainstorming. I can expand on these ideas exponentially, ad infinitum…and none of them achieve completion in the real world. As well, “minor,” mundane tasks, such as signing my son up for fall football or charting my daughter’s occupational therapy activities, can flit in and out of my brain at the speed of light, never getting done.

So far, everything I really need to do gets done. But I find this existence a little stressful, and sometimes I wonder if I could accomplish more and feel more at peace if I became more organized. Now as you can probably tell, “more organized” isn’t that high of an expectation around here. I’ve learned that I will never become an organization maven. My brain isn’t built that way. Checklists and day-at-a-time organizers don’t move me. Instead, anyone who knows me knows how I love stickie notes. I come alive brainstorming projects when I post colorful small stickie notes to gigantic stickie notes adhered to my wall.

This method, while fun and life-giving, has its limitations. I have only so much wall space, I can’t pack my walls in my purse with me when I hit the road, and it can lead to a cluttered feel instead of a clean, clear one.

While I imagine I will always carry on a love affair with stickie notes, today I’ve decided to find some fun online ways to organize myself. I’ve heard wonderful things about Evernote.com. This is a program you can find online and download onto your computer to create notebooks for projects and to-do lists. You can also upload photos from your phone or camera, and Evernote will make any text in them searchable. As well, you can gather links and pdf files in one place. One mom told me she keeps recipes, activity schedules, and her husband’s travel itineraries in Evernote. These items are not only kept on your computer but online, so you can access them from any computer or your mobile phone. Sounds like a mobile brain to me! Today I created a notebook for a new role I’m adopting. I’ve had ideas for this role swirling through my brain, and I just dumped all those ideas into Evernote. Now I can think up even more!

I’m also playing around with Remember the Milk. RTM is basically a monster to-do list. You can create various lists, such as for yourself, each member of your family, any roles you fulfill, your house, and anything else you desire. For each task, you can determine a due date, have the activity repeat on your list if you need, and have RTM send reminders to your phone and/or e-mail address. I signed up for RTM long ago, but haven’t used it much. Today I’ve connected it to my Gmail, Google calendar, and Twitter accounts, and I’m hoping that these interfaces will make using RTM easier which will mean I will use it more.

We shall see how this goes. I must admit I’m susceptible to a “look, shiny!” outlook on life. If something is new, I enjoy trying it out. However, I find it difficult to keep using systems long-term unless they integrate into my life in an easy, and more importantly fun, way. At least if these new online systems don’t work for me, I can return to my beloved stickie notes (or try these online ones!)

What tools do you use to organize your divergent mind? Please let me and the rest of the gifted, divergent world know!

©2010 Lisa Lauffer

“Jane! Stop this crazy thing!”

Ever feel like good ol’ George Jetson who yelled these words at the end of every Jetsons episode? I find myself sometimes wishing I could stop the world and get off for just a few minutes to regroup. The rest of you would be suspended in space and time while I take a nap or sip a grande mocha and read a good book.

This is a common theme of life in our current culture. Too much to do, too little time. For the gifted, this can be even more acute. With the characteristics of multipotentiality–having many possible areas in which we can excel–and multiple interests, we frequently find ourselves overcommitted, wanting to fulfill all our obligations and our potential. If we’re not in this mode, we might be about to enter it, because we just have to take that art class or learn that new language or invent the next new gadget that will take the world by storm. Before we know it, we find ourselves running on a hamster wheel, wasting energy going nowhere, and wishing we could get off.

If we feel as if we’re stuck on the Jetson’s conveyor belt, the life coaching principle of balance can help. Balance is about movement. Consider this idea for a moment. How do you best balance on a bicycle? By moving forward. You can even experience balance as movement right now. Simply stand on one foot. Notice how your foot and leg muscles, bones, and tendons constantly adjust to keep you upright. If you’re not moving, you might actually fall over. If you feel stuck in your life, either because you’re too busy or because one area of life isn’t flowing, balance can be harder to achieve.

Often what keeps us stuck is a particular perspective we’re holding about our lives. For example, maybe we feel stuck in a job because we don’t think it’s helping us fulfill our potential, but the economy is so bad that we don’t believe we can find another job. Perhaps we have a view of life that sees balance looking one way, with a certain amount of time spent at work, with family, and in recreation, but we just can’t seem to achieve that “perfect” structure for ourselves.

When we feel stuck, we may unintentionally behave in ways that keep us feeling that way. This blog post is a perfect example of this. I started writing this post a couple of months ago then stopped. I wondered if others would find a series on why coaching works for the gifted as valuable as I believe it could be. I was stuck in an “I’m not offering value” perspective. Ergo, this post sat fallow for many weeks.

We can become “unstuck” when we identify the perspective we’re holding and realize we’ve actually chosen it for ourselves. This gives us the opportunity to play with other perspectives that might move us forward. For example, to finally publish this blog post, I’ve adopted a “whatever” perspective. I’ve identified that my perfectionism had commandeered my creativity, and I decided to let that go and just finish whatever the outcome may be.

As gifted people, we can feel stuck for many reasons. We might have a list of dreams so long it ultimately paralyses us. We know we have the abilities to fulfill those dreams, but we don’t even know where to start. Having multipotentiality, we fear that reaching for one goal might preclude us from reaching another. Or we might not want to draw attention to ourselves and risk rejection, so we keep ourselves from moving forward. Or here’s a classic I hear from parents all the time, especially moms: “If I go after my dreams and desires, I won’t have the energy or capacity to care for my gifted children’s needs, and it’s my job to make sure their special needs are met.”

As a life coach, I help my clients recognize perspectives they might be holding and how those perspectives might keep them from moving forward in their lives. Together, we play with new perspectives, imagining what life might be like from those points of view. Then my clients choose the perspectives they want to hold for their situations. Sometimes they choose a new one. Sometimes they choose multiple perspectives to utilize at different times. And sometimes they decide to hold the exact same perspective they held at first, except now they have consciously chosen it and therefore are free instead of stuck.

Do you feel stuck? Would you like to invite more balance into your life? If so, I’d love to help you discover ways you can move forward. Please contact me for a free 30-minute coaching call!

Other blog posts in my Why Coaching Works for the Gifted series:

• Why Life Coaching Works for the Gifted
• Fulfillment, Why Life Coaching Works for the Gifted, the Sequel

In my last post, I described one reason why I coach gifted people and parents of gifted children (which, let’s face it, are generally gifted people themselves. And yes, moms, that does include you; your children aren’t just gifted because of their fathers. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that one…Anyways, I’m now going to simplify my life and your reading by referring to gifted people and parents of gifted children as “gifted people.” Now, back to our not-so-regularly-scheduled blog post). It’s a word called entelechy, which is the drive to self-actualize, and you can read here how this characteristic of gifted people makes them prime coaching clients.

Closely related to entelechy is another reason life coaching works well for gifted people: fulfillment. Fulfillment is one of three life coaching principles. It involves discovering one’s values, which in coaching lingo means that which makes you uniquely you. When we live according to our values, we feel resonance, that feeling that all is right with the world. For example, if we value authenticity, we’ll feel alive when we’re in relationships and circumstances that allow us to be our full selves and to speak our truth. Even when we’re in difficult situations, we’ll feel energized if we’re expressing our values in them.

On the flip side, when we don’t live in line with our values, we feel dissonance. Energy drains from us, and we don’t feel fulfilled. We might even begin to feel dead inside. For example, if we value authenticity, but we’re in an intimate relationship, work setting, or social situation where we feel the need to hide parts of ourselves, we feel less alive.

Fulfillment is closely related to entelechy. Entelechy is the drive to self-actualize, and fulfillment is a vehicle for getting there.

Because fulfillment is a basic principle of life coaching, gifted people naturally make wonderful coaching clients. Gifted people have strong inner compasses full of values. They often wish to use their gifts for the betterment of the world. They possess a strong sense of justice and morality. They are empathetic. They also frequently hold values of curiosity, deep connection with others like them, wacky humor, creativity, challenge, playfulness, and solitude, among others. (You can look at My Ginormous List of Gifted Grownup Traits to find more values gifted people hold.)

Gifted people adhere to their values very strongly (do we do anything halfway?). In fact, we frequently cannot not live our values! Sometimes we do this unconsciously. We don’t know what our values are, yet we feel compelled to speak and behave in certain ways. Life coaching can help gifted people become conscious of their unique set of values and find ways to live them out in all areas of their lives: family, friendships, work, fun and recreation, and health, among others. By exploring what makes them come alive, a process that naturally brings most gifted people resonance, gifted people can create lives that bring them energy and allow them to make their unique contribution to the world.

If you’re interested in learning more about this, please contact me, and inquire about my complimentary thirty-minute session for potential clients. I’d love to help you explore your own set of values and find fulfillment in every area of your life!

©2010 Lisa Lauffer

If you look at my Twitter profile, you’ll see I’m Chief Sanity Officer for Gifted Grownups & Parents of Gifted Children. What does this mean? First of all, gifted people and parents of gifted children can lead crazy lives with so many abilities, so many interests, and so little time. Gifted people and their parents need some sanity!

But how do I offer it to them? I offer it through life coaching. Life coaching is a relationship developed between a client and coach to help the client discover his/her unique identity and purpose. You can read more about life coaching on the What Is Life Coaching page on my website.

Why coach gifted grownups and parents of gifted kids? While some may think I’ve chosen a crazy, narrow niche for my coaching practice, I’ve found that the gifted profile makes gifted people and their parents particularly good coaching clients. In this post and in many that will follow, I will share why I find this to be true.

The first reason I believe life coaching works well for gifted people has to do with our word for the day (we gifted people love to learn new words): entelechy. Entelechy is the drive toward self-actualization, and most gifted people possess it in truckloads. How many times have parents of gifted children said “I just want him/her to reach his/her potential”? Many gifted people of all ages feel this push. Deidre V. Lovecky, Ph.D, posits that entelechy is one of five traits present in gifted people (you can read her article “Can You Hear the Flower Sing?” in this Dynamic Living blog post).

This characteristic of gifted people is one reason life coaching serves them well. Life coaching helps people discover who they were created to be and what they were created to do. It gives them a place to develop and implement concrete expressions of their unique identity and purpose. It’s about clients discerning their potential and figuring out how to maximize it and use it in life. Parents of gifted children can benefit from life coaching too. It helps them discern what they uniquely have to offer their children to help those kids reach their potential.

If you’re feeling the push-pull of entelechy on your being, please contact me about a thirty-minute complimentary coaching call. It’s my purpose to help you discover yours!

©2010 Lisa Lauffer

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!

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. It seems to be the least commercialized, and in its intent it focuses on gratitude (although some would say it majors on food and football, and I do see that perspective!). While I believe we should acknowledge our gratefulness throughout the year, I find it helpful to have a day set aside for it too. And so today, I want to say thank you to you, my readers. Whether you’ve been reading my blog for awhile or have just stumbled upon it recently, I feel grateful that you’ve taken the time to read, and in some cases respond to, what I’ve written. I’ve received an enormous amount of encouragement, inspiration, and insight from all of you, and that has given me courage to continue down my path toward coaching gifted grownups. Because of this, I have experienced profound meaning in my life, and I’ve already witnessed others setting their own brilliance free.

I have great hope for the coming year, that what began this year is just the tip of the iceberg and more will soon follow. I hope you continue this journey with me! More fun, laughter, fulfillment, understanding, and camaraderie await!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

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

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.