Finding Your True Gift

Everyone has been blessed with the ability to make a big contribution to the world. I’m not talking about becoming a Nobel Prize laureate. I’m sure that you are meant to achieve something far greater than an award for literature that adds impurity to our world, or an award for non-existent peace, or an award for physics that is used only to destroy.
 
What I’m speaking about is what Rebbe Nachman of Breslev calls your nekuda tova (literally your good point); which is what you are primarily gifted to do. Your true gift is something that comes very naturally to you and is congruous with who you are as a total personality. Since you need to actualize your true gift in order to complete your mission in life, you can be sure that G-d didn’t forget to give it to you. When you cultivate and develop your true gift, it will surely have the power to bring you more fulfillment and happiness to your life than anything else can.
 
Ironically, it is easier for people of lower intelligence to find their special gift than it is for the brilliant overachievers amongst us. The simple reason for this is that people who are more limited in what they can do have been blessed with greater humility than those who can do more; and so they are more inclined to be in tune with and accepting of G-d’s plan for them.
 
Many of the people who I speak to are very successful from a business and professional perspective; they have been able to amass wealth and influence in their respective fields and industries, but unfortunately they lack fulfillment from what they are doing because they have scattered their efforts in too many directions and haven’t yet found their one true gift.
 
I also speak with people who have climbed great heights in Torah scholarship and yet are also very far from being happy because they too have yet to actualize their special gift.
 
Let’s take a few examples:
 
A very learned Rabbi approached me and literally begged me to help him develop more emuna. I was really impressed by the man’s sincerity. Here was a great Rabbi, the head of a yeshiva for married men; the author of a renowned book on Jewish law.  This man has more Torah learning in his little toe than I have, yet he wanted my help to strengthen his belief in G-d and find his mission in life! Just imagine the humility, sense of desperation or both that it took for him to admit that although he was known as a great Torah scholar, when it came to his faith, he was barely on the level of a “nursery school”child. He was constantly worrying about his image as head of the yeshiva and comparing himself to other people; finally the strain of compulsively projecting a false image of strength and confidence in areas that were not his real talents wore him down and humbled him. 
 
When he accepted that running a yeshiva was not his strong suit, things started changing quickly for the Rabbi. He realized that although he had been “smart” enough to function as head of a yeshiva for many years, that this was not what G-d wanted him to do with his life. He faced the reality that he was not gifted in the areas of patiently answering his student’s questions in learning or counseling them about their life situations.
 
More than one person, including his own Rebbe had asked him why he wasn’t writing more, since the consensus was that the one book that he had published was a gem. But alas, he had ignored these Divine messages and simply plowed ahead with what he thought he should be able to do. Unfortunately this attitude almost cost him his marriage and his job. When he realized that his “job-in-life” was to write and not manage young people’s emotions, he resigned from his position as the head of the yeshiva, allowed someone else who was better suited for that work to take over and began to fulfill his true passion which was to write.
 
Another man came to me who was very successful in financial terms. He owned his own software business and was making lots of money. The only problem with this was that he hated what he was doing. It was easy to see that the reason for his unhappiness was because he was forcing himself to do too much: he was the company president, the director of sales and marketing, the human resources director and, in addition, the creator of the software! When I asked him what he honestly felt most suited to do, the answer came quickly. He said that his passion to create was so intense that when he was immersed in the creative process he literally “lost time.”  When he accepted that sales and management were not his forte, he hired a team of people who were better than he was at these tasks and started devoting his time to what he loved doing. Initially this has cost him some money, but he is far happier and a more pleasant person for his family to be around.
 
It’s been said that success without fulfillment is not success at all; in fact might be the ultimate failure. What’s left for a person who has reached the top of his profession or industry and is still not happy? Depression? Suicide? A life of hedonism?
 
Yet with the right spiritual guidance, I’ve seen doctors switch specialties and become happier and  business people make such simple changes as moving from a commission based salary to a regular salary and ridding themselves of insomnia and “irritable bowel syndrome.”
 
So if what you are doing is causing you anxiety, stress, and irritability. If your marriage and family relationships suffer because of your business or professional activities, isn’t it time to fit your business plan into your life plan and not the reverse? If you are on the right spiritual track your life plan comes first, only then will both aspects of your life blend naturally.