Last night, I took my little from the Big Brother Big Sister program to a haunted house. He’s in fifth grade and didn’t make it past the entry hallway before starting to hyperventilate. We had to bail on the experience before he had a heart attack. A couple of weeks ago, I got in trouble with Big Brothers because I let him drive my car around an empty parking lot.

I’m really lowering the bar with their program.

It’s interesting to see him as a snapshot of that age and developmental stage. I was once there too: scared of the dark and elated to drive my dad’s truck around the farm.

He’ll go through a bunch of training and trials and, if everything goes to plan, he’ll pop out the other end a fully formed adult who is no longer terrified of haunted houses or electrified by driving his car.

Then his development will slow way down as it enters the unstructured environment of life.

This transition happened to me and probably to you as well.

Yesterday, I wrote on strengths as they pertained to a business. As an individual, your strengths permeate your business because you make the strategic choices that direct it.

One of my strengths is thinking deeply about things, forming connections, and drawing out insight. The constraints of a writing practice help to provide structure for this. I write a daily blog to keep that developmental engine running.

What habits, challenges, and activities do you engage in to grow what you’re best at?

If you don’t do anything today, StrengthsFinder is a good place to start. Once you get your strengths, there’s a section in their results that concerns application (not easy to find unfortunately.) It’s in a module called “Understand and Apply Your CliftonStrengths”.


Featured image is Chiron teaching Achilles how to play the lyre, Roman fresco from Herculaneum, 1st century AD. Used under public domain.