How can you be competitive and a lightworker at the same time?

[seeker5]

Bruce, you bring up a really good point, that I am actually trying to mesh two different tool models together. One model being the lightworker-darkworker model, and the other model being the Strength Finders model of working from your strengths.

One model - lightworker seems suggest that you do not see life as competition, while the other model, strength finders says that you work from your top strengths, and competition is one of my top talents.

Originally Posted by Bruce Achterberg

I advise you start looking at polarity in the essence behind what you're doing. Are you aligned with love, or fear? Literally feel your way through it--intellectualising it won't help much, since we're dealing with energy here. Ultimately, I don't think polarity is an inherent universal, but it is at least a useful label and you will see people who are decidedly "darkworker" types or "unpolarised" but with leanings to a certain polarity.

That's a great point. Hmmmm. When I get competitive, I do it for the love of the competition. I don't want to hurt the other, I don't want the other to be badly off, I do it for the thrill and love of the challenge, and doing something that drives me. I don't do it out of fear - fear that the other person will take something from me. Actually, competition for fear leads me to be completely de-motivated and blocked. Hmmmm. But competition for fun, for thrill, oh yeah

Concerning some of the other comments on here, not sure if you've read some of my follow up posts, but basically, I'm not seeking to feel good or justify anything. I am comfortable being competitive. What I'm curious is maximum effectiveness as a lightworker.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Bruce, you bring up a really good point, that I am actually trying to mesh two different tool models together. One model being the lightworker-darkworker model, and the other model being the Strength Finders model of working from your strengths.

One model - lightworker seems suggest that you do not see life as competition, while the other model, strength finders says that you work from your top strengths, and competition is one of my top talents.

[...]

That's a great point. Hmmmm. When I get competitive, I do it for the love of the competition. I don't want to hurt the other, I don't want the other to be badly off, I do it for the thrill and love of the challenge, and doing something that drives me. I don't do it out of fear - fear that the other person will take something from me. Actually, competition for fear leads me to be completely de-motivated and blocked. Hmmmm. But competition for fun, for thrill, oh yeah

Concerning some of the other comments on here, not sure if you've read some of my follow up posts, but basically, I'm not seeking to feel good or justify anything. I am comfortable being competitive. What I'm curious is maximum effectiveness as a lightworker.

If it's maximum effectiveness that you want as a lightworker, you'll get it from your talents and strengths.

I suspect what you're really looking for is perhaps something else, or at least, you didn't define it clearly in your writing but you intuitively know what you mean.

But in general, yeah, you get it.

I still think you might not get lightworking as much as you could, though, since your previous definition seemed very influenced by the specifics of what Steve wrote about lightworking, instead of the essence he points to.

I find this is the simplest, most real-life-applicable definition of lightworking:

Aligning with love as often as you can and as much as possible.

That basically means that lightworking is really a lack of alignment with fear. For example, if you, say, think that "oh, I don't want to be competitive because X might happen" or "oh, I don't know how to be competitive", there's a good chance that is coming from you fearing something, which means you're aligned with fear, not love.

If you look at polarised people, you see that there is a self-confidence in them that is pretty unmatched. The reason? They choose to align with love.

Steve's book will cover this pretty well, since the basic process, as I see it, is about first being truthful with yourself and your situation--truth squashes fear, since it bring awareness into the equation and you become present as the "observer", instead of identifying with the fear or other emotion involved. Power is about following up on that truth, and love--more connection and alignment--is the result.

Now, as your authority on all things talent and strength and helpful strengths-based mentor, I'm going to pull you up on something to help you come to an even clearer understanding.

You said:

strength finders says that you work from your top trengths

You are right conceptually, but you're using the wrong terms (just trust me when I say that strengths-theory has a morass of terms, and understanding them is crucial if you want to work with them. The strengths-based authors are, for the most part, terribly unclear. At least Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, is pretty clear).

Basically "StrengthsFinder" is the tool developed by Gallup to help you find the areas where you have the most potential to develop strengths. StrengthsFinder was created because those at Gallup wanted to start "a global conversation about what was right about people" (source: StrengthsFinder 2.0) because nearly everyone focuses on what isn't right with people (and those who would disagree with that would be surprised if I went into the way people actually focus on what is "wrong" instead of strength and what is there and what is right).

It's "strengths-theory" that says that you should become aware of your talents--where you have the most potential to create a strength--and then focus on putting those strengths to use.

A semantic difference, but still important. (People will argue that, but those people don't have individualisation as a talent theme, I bet. )

* * *

To go into even more detail...

StrengthsFinder was called StrengthsFinder, instead of "TalentFinder" because, to quote page 17 of StrengthsFinder 2.0:

StrengthsFinder actually measures [...] talent, not strengths. [...] we named it "StrengthsFinder" instead of "TalentFinder" because the ultimate goal is to build a true strength, and talent is just one of the ingredients in this formula.

A "strength", in Gallup language (not Marcus Buckingham language; he has 2 definitions), is a talent--an instinctual draw towards a certain pattern of feeling, thought, and behaviour that you probably engage in without even knowing it--combined with knowledge and skill (both of which are learnable, unlike talent) that results in consistent, near perfect performance in a certain activity.

To repeat that so it's more clear:

A "strength" is a talent combined with knowledge and skill that results in consistent, near perfect performance in a certain activity.

To say it another way:

What is a strength?
A strength is the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity. The key to building a strength is to identify your dominant talents, then complement them by acquiring knowledge and skills pertinent to the activity.

(Buckingham defines a strength as both the above, as well as "an activity that makes you feel strong." The above would also do that, but you have to be aware who is using what definition, which you can usually do when you take into account who is talking or who wrote what your reading. Buckingham is great, but he tends to be a bit vague at clarifying his terms and opts to be more wordy. He does this because it's good for leadership, I believe. In terms of writing, it's not ideal.)

[Bruce Achterberg]

As an aside, I want to highly recommend StrengthsFinder 2.0 as the #1 tool for finding your strengths ("strengths" in the Gallup and Marcus Buckingham sense).

I took the test and read the book today and the test results blew my mind.

Now, Discover Your Strengths is still king when it comes to research and introducing you to the paradigm of strengths-theory (so long as people don't mind the length of the book), but 2.0 is a much better test, and a much more concise book (which might appeal to certain people).

Seeker, I wouldn't be too surprised if "competitive" isn't actually derived from another theme. I would have sworn that some of the top 5 talent themes StrengthsFinder 1.0 listed for me were about as accurate as you could get, but heh, apparently my talents get much more deeper than that.

What I found so great about the 2.0 test was that it gives you a holistic snapshot of your talents and how they interact together, and consequently, updates your talents (if necessary) to more accurately display what StrengthsFinder (1.0--the version you get with Now, Discover Your Strengths) gives you.

The book you get with it is actually really well-written (considering how most things are written these days), and it has some really nice info and examples in there and it represents concepts that were pretty abstract in Now, Discover Your Strengths in a much simpler, more elegant way.

I'd tell you what my 2.0 talent themes are, but I think that'd just mislead you. What you're interested in, and what's really great about StrengthFinder 2.0 are the "personalised strength insights" it gives you. Somehow the 2.0 test factors in your talents and how they blend together, and gives you a customised description for each talent that is much more specific than the very general theme descriptions 1.0 uses. They probably do it by drawing on the data they got from the 1.0 tests people did (over 2 million people did the 1.0 test), maybe even working that in with their other research data.

So the thing to take away from this post is that StrengthsFinder 2.0 gives you a top 5 talent listing that has descriptions that take into account how your talents blend together, consequently giving you much deeper, probably more accurate talent descriptions.

For example, I can derive many of my previous talent themes from 1.0 from the new talent themes I have in 2.0. FYI, 2 of my themes where the same in both 1.0 and 2.0 (just in different order), but 2.0 put 3 new themes in my top 5.

Perhaps one day I'll write about the specifics of how I can derive the 2.0 themes from the 1.0 themes, but for now I'll just say that the new themes are probably because:

(A) I knew more about the StrengthsFinder test so I made better use of the "neutral" option when I feel my talent wasn't being captured effectively--and it really is something you have to feel out

(B) I've been deliberately working on becoming better at reading my intuition from playing Kongai and Street Fighter (while also supporting that practice with other, less consistent things). I honestly don't think I would have gotten results that resonated with me as much as I did if I hadn't been practicing this. (And now I finally have some solid evidence that games can be super-useful for real-life, and especially personal development.)

(C) I had a very good idea of what my talents were and they looked like, so when I saw that I was starting to answer 2.0 questions based on knowledge instead of feeling, I went back to using my intuitive feeling to guide my answers, since that is a better sign that my talents are at play (if you feel nothing, or at least, no strong emotion, it's best to skip the question).

So yeah, consider buying the book (you have to buy it so you can get a code). I thought the book looked a bit gimmicky, as if they just packaged a book with a 2.0 code to make more money, but no, the book is actually decent--and this is coming from someone who's been studying strengths-theory material for months. It's not revolutionary, but it's very elegant and simplistic--and concise!--which really helps to promote understanding. NDYS was very... long. That was great, but I've been craving a great summary like the 2.0 book for a long time and honestly, which I had it earlier so I didn't have to learn most of what I know now by being confused for weeks on end, heh.

Note that I did include an Amazon affiliate link in this post and my above one, but that's because I was going to link to the book already, and because I'm starting to figure that if I'm linking to books all the time while doing pretty decent write-ups, I should at least make my links affiliate links. Doing so enables me to be writing now instead of sleeping to get up at for a job, or something.

Also, if I seem overly enthusiastic, partly that's my being a little too "close" to the experience so the satisfaction with the 2.0 results hasn't really deminished, and partly because I'm really satisfied with the results and the overal quality of the book (I consider the purchase worth the money; I wouldn't pay too much more for the book--the price is about right--but the 2.0 test results are probably worth more if you really consider the insight they provide). In terms of satisfaction, my experience with 2.0 (the test and book) is about as high as my satisfaction with first discovering strengths-theory when reading NDYS.

I'm trying hard not to make this sound all "sales copy"-like, but darnit, it's not working, heh. I think it's a result of my being very subjective in this post, and also the fact that I'm pretty pleased with the 2.0 results. If anybody wants to pull the self promotion card, please see my 400+ posts where I have no affiliate links yet still write posts like this (although, perhaps none as enthusiastic as this one since I was too busy reading NDYS to write posts after I read it; if I had, they'd be equally enthusiastic).