What Changes Once You Accept and Get Skillful with Your Giftedness
Recently, someone left this comment on one of my social posts about giftedness and how the new operating manual, as I call it, is here:
I had to laugh. It was actually too packed with goodies for me to offer a simple response at the time, so I just ignored it, knowing I'd return later to pull on all the useful and also hilariously churlish threads.
And someone else popped right in to rebuke them with:
I’ve *always* known my brain was different. Accepting that as a good thing is an entirely different challenge. I know I can’t follow the status quo, but for decades I thought it meant there was something *wrong* with me.
I don't know either of these commenters and am unsure if the second person has accessed the Fundamentals Library or not, and it actually doesn't matter!
The cranky commenter is clearly not enjoying her life. No one who is enjoying their life pauses when scrolling social media to write a snappish criticism of anyone who might resonate with the post.
This sort of crabs-in-a-bucket behavior is endemic in the world these days, of course. This angry, grasping, clawing-to-get-on-top-of-others-to-get-higher-up-in-the-bucket behavior reveals the depth of fear and frustration people are in the grip of these days.
If I make myself superior to you even if I have to belittle you to do it, maybe I'll be just a smidge closer to safety than I feel right now.
Oh dear.
WHAT A WASTE OF A BEAUTIFUL BRAIN!
She's actually entirely proving my point. Getting in tune with your outlier brain and becoming skillful at living with it optimized may be the most powerful inoculation against many of the challenges of being alive today.
When I am in flow with my writing, as one example, I feel boundless and victorious.
I am filled up to overflowing from the joy of experiencing my unique design in action as it was meant to be.
The thoroughbred within me is running her race and deliriously happy for it.
I feel myself in my accurate place in the vast web of life, the tapestry of the cosmos and I am CONTENT.
This goes for both my writing here for you and my wider global writing of the joyful stories, as shared freely here.
For many years, too many years, this was the case.
Despite all the fancy titles and awards and people who looked up to me and good work of which I was certainly proud, it was a constant hamster wheel of never quite enough, of barely resting after one victory before heading out to run a new race.
And I never learned about true restorative activity and restorative rest that filled me back up after pouring myself out. Now I understand so many creative outlets that do this for me, and that my writing is never a simple or singular linear process but always multidimensional and interacting with various visual arts simultaneously, as well as my ongoing communications with kin in the rest of the natural world.
I have paid for that in many ways.
One of my aims with this work is to help you avoid such payments or at least minimize these debt burdens and help you recoup back to level and then soar above and beyond that.
AS YOU WERE DESIGNED TO DO.
Ok, then, Melanie, WHAT ACTUALLY does change for someone when they are both onboard with their giftedness and its othering impact AND have developed even the beginning skils and capacities for ling with it?
What a great question! 😬🤣
First off, I think it's hard to overestimate the immediate effects of FEELING SEEN. Often for the first time in their lives.
I hear this alllll the time and have since I began this particular work almost a decade ago:
Then there is coming to understand our brain type as the source of most, if not all, of one's otherness.
THE RELIEF, again. Another wave and type of relief, but relief.
Oh wait? You mean it's not because of some personal character defect that I'm like this? It's not because I suck? It's not because I have [fill-in-the-blank condition commonly misdiagnosed when giftedness is the core issue]?
In many ways, sitting with all that can be enormous. And plenty to sit with for some time.
Repatterning the neural network governing our self-story takes time.
Teaching the nervous system, it actually is way safer than it realized, that the body can STAND DOWN and relax? Yeah, takes time.
What I encourage, though, is to not just hang out here.
Each has to assess for themselves when they can start to move forward again without overloading themselves, but I GUARANTEE you that waiting for some perfect level of integration means you will wait forevah!
To actually start to get the benefit of this big, beautiful outlier brain you've started to accept, some forward movement is needed.
We are designed, FUNDAMENTALLY, for momentum.
Without momentum in the individually correct dose, we actually perish. True story.
Once we start to work with the 3 core pillars I lay out in the Fundamentals library, then we can begin to experience our true joy and discover how to access it with increasing regularity.
Back to our churlish commenter:
How gifted can a person be if they need someone else to point out what's obvious?
Sigh. So many ways in which this misses the mark. As we unpacked above, it may not be at all obvious to us.
If someone was never identified as gifted, they would have no way of knowing this was even "a thing."
Maybe they did well in school and were labeled as "smart" as a result, but not in a manner that helped them see what that actually means (not all gifted people do, many check out from boredom or misalignment with topics, or they just skate by with minimal effort for a variety of reasons I could unpack but won't take the space here for that, it's a whole article in its own right).
Also, there are many who don't have this brain type, who are high achievers and did great in school and out in the professional world. The Venn diagram overlap is by no means complete!
One characteristic I have commonly seen in the gifted adult is the tendency to live in the brain and to overthink EVERYTHING as a result. When this gets turned inward, much can be missed. Trees for the forest type of thing.
If your face is pressed all the way up close to the glass window of the restaurant where the desserts you crave are being served, you won't see the obvious sign heralding FREE CAKE TODAY! So much for the obvious...
And honestly, personally I highly value kindness. so a comment like this just irks me with its utter sneering contempt for people.
This is NOT what the world needs more of.
You know already from me that my purpose in this life is to contribute meaningfully to the restoration of joy to this world. Kindness goes a long with me. Meanness does too, just in the opposite direction. 🤷🏻♀️
Joy comes in many styles. Think of it as many colors or many musical notes.
There is a particular joy available to people with a highly gifted brain that others wouldn’t recognize nor understand how to generate.
It's hard to describe the true and sustaining joy that the person with the highly gifted brain experiences every day when they have their brain in proper alignment and are living from that place of optimization.
What we crave most deeply is to fully experience clarity about our own true potential in this life and then witness ourselves contributing that potential to the whole.
When our gifts are not being optimally used and shared in a manner that allows them to be used as intended out in the world, we find this incredibly painful and frustrating.
This can be a deep existential pain which those around us don't understand and may find frustrating about us.
I want your special, unique, gifted joy! I want to experience that radiating out from you like the star that you are. I want to bathe in that light as you bathe in my own special joy.
I want to see what you will MAKE with it! What will you create and share in to the world for the pure unmitigated joy of doing so? How will you live our special lifestyle?
If you have the library already, keep working with it. Steep in it. This has remarkable results, I always hear.
If you feel lonely or simply want some community where you can be your wild and big-brained self, join us in the Joyful Outliers!
This private community gives us something we have long craved: the opportunity to connect with others LIKE US that is organized around accessing and stabilizing that special, gifted joy of the highly gifted brain!
We will gather live twice a month on Saturdays for emergent teachings, occasional ceremony, and sharings from all who desire to share, be witnessed, ask for support.
OUR GATHERINGS CENTER AROUND SHARING + EXPRESSING ABOUT OUR LIVES FROM THE RARE PERSPECTIVE OF THESE GIFTED BRAINS.
Any topic you’d like to share about is welcome. This is a community more than a self-help group, to be clear. I will happily be sharing any wisdom and expertise that seems appropriate to the moment, but I will also be sharing about my own current journey, both the ups and the glitches!
Many of us will be motivated by the societal paradigm change opportunities we have ahead of us. But many may equally be motivated by and focusing on this gifted life as a journey to be created and enjoyed.
BOTH ORIENTATIONS ARE WELCOME.
Personally, I am a both:and regarding those motivations, LOL (welcome to giftedness “all the things” personalities… you’ve been warned… 😬🤣).
In between our live gatherings, we will chat in a private space, off social media and all its dopamine-draining, attention-grabbing, dystopic algorithmic nonsense! 🤣
Keep us updated on your projects, your progress in living your gifted joy, your inner and outer journey!
If you want more background on this community, see here:
Be aware that in these early days, there is the option to join as a Founding Member and get various benefits now and in the future, including 50% off the Fundamentals library (the library is not required to join the community though). There are also monthly and even weekly options at this time.
I hope you'll join us! We are just getting started!
With INFINITE Love,
Melanie
🌟🌸💗