What Is Your “Sweet Spot”?

I heard Ken Coleman say, “Everyone has a Sweet Spot. Your Sweet Spot is the intersection of your greatest talent and your greatest passion. Use your top talent to perform your top passion, [so you can] live on purpose and do what you were meant to do.”

As I spent weeks pondering on this statement, I was compelled to finally seek out my “sweet spot”. After much soul searching and asking my Creator, I determined that my greatest talents are administration, problem solving, and planning. My greatest passions are admiring and supporting all things creative (especially performing arts), community events, and business. Knowing this, it still took me a while to accept that I am skilled, equipped, and passionate about supporting my artist friends. I’m not just a fan of all things creative. I’m an artist advocate. I have been working to embrace this more fully.

A couple of months ago my artist husband, Jarrell, and I started an artist community called “Rise”. It’s an online community for creatives that also strives to come together in person monthly. We were so shocked that over 100 people signed up within the first few weeks of us casually announcing it on social network. We have since been transitioning into growing Rise and Jarrell’s artistry full time. In our private online community that most of our present Rise members are a part of, I have become the official discussion starter so that we can all get to know each other better. 😃 One thing I have noticed in my discussion starters is that my creative friends seem to be able to quickly and freely talk about weak areas that they need help and support in. They are so self aware of where they are lacking and struggling, which is great! On the other hand, talking freely about their strengths, skills, and basically how awesome they are is tougher. It doesn’t seem to come as naturally to talk about things that make up the “sweet spot”.

From my angle, this negatively affects artists. When you don’t know your strengths then you misinterpret your value. You can easily NOT finish that creative work you personally set a goal to complete when you don’t understand your value. When you don’t understand your value, you don’t have clarity on the worth of what you create. You wont even notice there are people anxiously waiting for you to pick up that creative skill and get to work again. When things don’t have much worth or value in our eyes, we leave laying around the house and collecting dust. That includes our skills and talents.

When we know the value of something, we do not ignore it or put it on a shelf to collect dust. I don’t wear much jewelry. It’s just my personality. So I have a small jewelry box full of beautiful costume pieces. What is not sitting around in my jewelry box collecting dust is my wedding ring. It is used daily and kept close at all times because it is full of valuable diamonds, and I know exactly what it represents. When we know our value and what we represent, then we don’t allow what we have to offer the world to just sit around and collect dust. For those who are Believers, we may know that we represent Christ and an eternal kingdom, but not understand our individual value, so much so that WE sit around collecting dust on a daily basis. Selah (pause and think about that)

If you want to present your value and who you represent to the world, take the time to get to know yourself and your gifts. It’s hard sometimes and may take some deep thought, but it must be done.

Here are some things to ask yourself in order to help determine how you best serve your community through your “sweet spot”:

• What have I always loved to do?
• What would I love to do everyday even if no one paid me?
• What am I known for doing well in my family and/or social circle?
• What do people compliment me on the most?
• What “work” have I done that may leave me feeling physically tired afterwards but yet energized in my soul?

I would love to hear some of your answers to these questions in the comments below.