There was a season of my life when working 80-hour weeks with three young kids at home was something I could do.

I could work 20 hour shifts while starting a business, raising babies, getting a doctorate, and produce at a high level in all areas.

I was REALLY good at pushing through.

Which meant that, for a long time, I saw the fact that I was able to continue doing something successfully as pretty compelling evidence that the way I was doing it was working.

But there’s this saying that I absolutely love as a self-proclaimed data nerd:

“Statistics are like a bikini bathing suit. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” –Aaron Levenstein [1]

Said another way - just because you can find evidence that suggests your choices are producing good fruit, doesn’t mean the fruit produced is ACTUALLY good.

I experienced another example of this when I was teaching.

As a Professor gift, I LOVE teaching something I deeply understand.

Give me time to research it, let me pull apart the ideas, let me ask questions to better get at the WHY underneath teaching it, help me connect it to something practical, and then ask me to hand that understanding to someone who actually wants it?

YES PLEASE.

But there were also times I had to teach material I didn’t yet understand at that depth.

And I could do it.

I could prepare and study my backside off, build the lecture, answer the questions, teach the students, and produce the outcomes I was asked to produce.

Internally, teaching something I didn’t truly “know in my bones” required more than I had to give, over time.

It took an enormously higher level of preparation, filtering, cognitive effort, and tension than it did when I was able to learn (and teach) it in the way that worked best for me.

Here’s the wild part: From the outside, I looked REALLY competent. Nobody looking at the finished lecture would have known how much it cost me to create it.

And that’s one of the sneakiest things about being a High Responsibility Human:

We can make a LOT of things “work.”

We are experts at compensating. We will overprepare, use twice the energy, and create elaborate systems around something that continually takes us out of our giftings and into what we call “forced competence”

And sometimes we become so competent at compensating that nobody can even see it anymore- including ourselves.

This is where I think spiritual gift formation invites us each into a much deeper examination of our primary motivational gifts than simply asking, “Am I good at this?”

Because A Professor can become excellent at producing information while losing the joy of understanding.

A Builder can become the person who gets EVERYTHING done while carrying action that belongs to half the people around them.

A Coach can become exceptional at motivating people while spending enormous energy trying to create growth someone else hasn’t chosen.

A CEO can keep an entire organization moving while remaining buried in responsibilities that continually pull them away from direction and leadership.

A Consoler can become beautifully skilled at caring for everyone while absorbing emotional weight their body was never meant to hold indefinitely.

A Judge can become extremely effective at identifying problems while living in a constant state of scanning for what is wrong.

A Steward can become incredibly capable of maximizing resources while feeling responsible for optimizing every opportunity they can see.

All seven primary gifts can produce impressive external results.

But GROWING in our gifts in the way God has designed requires us to look more deeply at ourselves.

We can look at the ROOTS of our gift formation, asking:

How am I carrying this?

What patterns have I developed around my primary gift?

What support do I need?

What has become diminished over time?

What has become distorted?

What needs development?

And- Where is God directing my gifts NOW?

That’s the work inside Grow In Your Gifts™.

We’re taking seven weeks to move underneath the label of your Primary Gift and examine how what God has entrusted to you is actually functioning in your leadership, relationships, responsibilities, and life.

You already know how to push through.

I want to help you become increasingly skilled at recognizing what faithful stewardship looks like before pushing through becomes the only strategy you know how to use.

​JOIN GROW IN YOUR GIFTS™​

Faithfully rooting for you,

Lee

P.S. If you’re reading this thinking, “Okay Lee, but I still don’t actually know my Primary Gift,” start here: TAKE THE FREE PRIMARY MOTIVATIONAL GIFT ASSESSMENT. Then come back. We have more work to do. 😂