Maxim Monday: Use your skill

Last updated on: November 11, 2013 at 11:33 am by Niki Whiting

Maxim Monday: Use your skill 2013-11-11T11:33:27-08:00 Niki Whiting

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All of us are skilled at something. Maybe you are a violinist, a carpenter, or speak two languages. Maybe you knit or craft or bake the best muffins in your town. Maybe you kick ass at video games, play a mean game of foosball, or know how to carve wooden swords. I don’t know, but I’ll bet all of us are good at more than one thing. So the questions this raises for me are: are you valuing the skills you have? And, how are you using them?

Often times our skills can be put to use for the benefit of others. Sometimes we get to make money with our skills or use them in our day jobs. Many times our skills really shine when we use them for own pleasure.

Whatever your skills are, I encourage you to use them. You’ve likely worked hard to develop them, or at least spent many hours over the course of your life developing the skills you’ve got. Using our skills is a sign of pride in ourselves, can be a gift, a help or a blessing to those around us, and honors the work that we’ve done to hone our skills. Plus, when we use our skills they get better.

I’m good at several things: I am a skilled reader, a decent writer, and I know a lot about religions. I can cook and I can sing. I can organize like a mofo. I am trying to use the first set of skills in a more professional way. I have spent a lot of time, effort and money developing those skills – I’d like to use them!

I cook three hot meals a day for my family; this is an act of love and service. Cooking and hospitality also bring me a lot of joy and weave into the vision I have for my life, my community, and the world at large.

Singing is another skill on which I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money. Not singing seems like a waste of all of that effort. Besides, singing brings me joy, and I’ve also promised Kali I would sing! My husband tells me that my singing brings joy to him and others.

Lastly, I organize my household, but in the past I’ve used this skill extensively in my professional life, and I hope to do so again some day.

All of those skills utilize different aspects of my self. They all bring me different kinds of satisfaction. I am guessing that your skills do similar things for you: tapping into the varied parts of who you are and bringing you pleasure.

Let us value the varied skills we possess and encourage one another to use our skills for joy.

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