Finding strengths

It's been two weeks since I stopped working for pay. Life is very busy and very rich.

In the past two weeks I have injured four of my ten fingers. What in the world does that even mean? The left pointer finger smashed in the bathroom door, the right pointer fingertip cut on the foil of a container of formula, the right middle plagued by a horrible hangnail that throbs, and now the left pinkie sliced with a serrated knife while cutting a bagel on Sunday. Snapping up baby pajamas with four bum fingers is really tough. (P.S. Carters et all perhaps you could tone it down on the snaps. Do the jammies really need so many?) If this were all a dream I would look up the meaning of injured fingers on a dream interpretation website. Is there a life interpretation website? Perhaps life is trying to tell me to sit quietly holding my hands up like a yogi--safe and out of harm's way. That can't happen. This four baby scene is a hands-on situation.

I feel good. Creative and juicy. Tired but alive. The thing is, I like the purity of working hard. I liked it as a full-time employee and I like it as a mom. It's nice to pay attention to my babies all day, even if I am wiped out by the time my husband comes home. I work best when I'm working hard. For a long time I thought that meant something needed to be really difficult to be worthwhile. My oldest friend--as in, we have been friends for almost my whole life not that she is the oldest person I am friends with--has a similar approach to life. She and I used to meet for coffee or dinner once a month to talk about being a woman in the work world. About being a boss and how to do a good job. About the challenges and frustrations in our industries. She is a year older than I am and throughout our lives has been one step ahead which is nice. Nice to have someone to follow and learn from. She shared her a ha moment with me, about realizing that she kept putting up with things that were almost too much to take because when it felt hard it felt real. Ohhhhhh. I could relate. Me too.

We did some management training towards the end of my tenure in my old job. One aspect of the training was StrengthsFinder, a Gallup tool that helps you identify the things you do best. It's based on the concept that employees are happier and more effective when they are able to use their strengths every day. This is the kind of stuff that I have always loved. To find out about myself by reading or fitting myself into descriptions that someone else has written? Yes please! Writing that and rereading it makes me smirk. What a strange thing to like. Why let someone else define you? And yet it felt so reassuring to read a description I recognized. Yes! I am like that! Thank you for saying so.

Why bring this up? Because I am helping a young friend consider her college plans. I also recently met with another young friend, a college junior, to talk about her summer internship plans. These things are so exciting to me--getting to talk to young people about what they like, what feels right to them, what they want to do. I can see by their faces how hard these questions are to answer. I'm sure people asked me what I liked doing or what I wanted to do but when I was younger I saw that as a question with a right/wrong answer. I was afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid to commit to something and then change my mind. Afraid to work towards something only to discover that eh, I don't like it. Now I see it as a thread to follow in the darkness. Think about what you like to do and then try to arrange your days finding ways to do that. Not because you win a prize for getting it right but because the prize for getting it right is doing something that feels good. Makes you feel smart, capable, like you're making a contribution.

Here are some things I like to do:

-Make decisions, particularly in high pressure situations
-Teach people how to do something
-Ask questions to help people specifically answer the question "What are you trying to accomplish here?"
-Explain something in a way someone can understand it
-Read
-Learn new things
-Speak Spanish
-Listen to people and help them feel heard

I also really, really love taking care of and spending time with my children. They light me up.