Integration of Four Components that make up pursuit of any art. The four components are: 1) passion, 2) talent, 3) skill, and 4) knowing what matters to you and what the art or activity contributes to you and to others. I illustrate these with my own story.
Passion: This feeling of love and fascination with a particular art or activity cannot be manufactured. My own experience is that certain things have really called out to me. For me these were connections with people, the study of human beings and life, being an educator, being a psychotherapist, and developing the talents that I was fortunate to have, and the skills in these realms that enabled me to be effective in a substantial way. Increasingly, I became clearer and clearer about what was in me that compromised my felt sense of passion for these activities. Seeing the impediment clearly, I was able to facilitate (often with skilful help). Subsequently my passion and understanding of these arts has become increasingly freed up. More expansively this is about passion for life.
Talent: Talent enables you to learn and discover what your actual capacity for the activity is. When I was a young boy I was very keen about becoming a professional baseball player. By my mid-teens it became very apparent that I had nowhere near the physical abilities that this would require. I could still play baseball, which I did for a while, and I could enjoy it at the level that my talents afforded me.
Skill: Development in an increasingly fine-tuned way the nuances of the talents I have and their expression is a central part of my life. I see the connection between the whole nexus of my life and the specifics of skill developments on which I am working.
What Matters: Finding and knowing core values and beliefs. At the core of this discovery is knowing who you are. This is a lifelong pursuit. Sustained exploration and discovery about who you are and what really matters will open increasing clarity. And as Barry Stevens the famous gestalt therapist stated, “Don’t push the river. It flows by itself.”
Becoming who you are underlies knowing what matters, contributing, and living fully.
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