Do you wonder what makes you different from everyone else? Are you looking for an answer to "What makes me special and unique?" that is more meaningful than just your fingerprints or a spiral of DNA?
Understanding how each of us is unique is an essential part of questioning who we are and why humanity exists. To help you find an answer to this ancient and universal question, we offer a new way of looking at things.
Your potential, made up of things such as your gifts and talents, describes in detail who you are. And that description is so detailed it defines how you are unique on this planet.
Just as no two snowflakes are alike, you are like no one else. You are the only one who has your exact combination of the 30+ ingredients that define your work potential. So that is why there has been only one Beethoven, one Michelangelo, one Churchill, one Da Vinci, one Gandhi -- and why there will be only one you.
Our potential is a paradox that makes us at the same time both a part of the human family and unique within that family. We are united by our having gifts, talents, life callings, and dreams of an extraordinary life. But we are each unique because all of our gifts, talents, life callings and dreams are different.
Take a moment and think about this. How many people on the planet have the talent to figure out how to make rocket fuel from the soil on Mars? How many people have a gift for tracking, monitoring and deciphering whale songs so they can save the species? How many people have the talent to recognize how native medicinal plants growing in the Amazon can cure cancer? How many people have the talent to crack the code of DNA or invent an artificial kidney?
And here we are only talking about one gift or talent. In our experience everyone has at least 5 to 10 uncommon skills they are excel at. If you can sing, calculate odds, track bird migrations, or know which direction is north better than 100 random people or your high school class -- your gift puts you in the top 1% of the population.
When you start calculating the odds as you add in more of your gifts and talents -- your combination of 5 skills means you are one in ten Billion likely to have that combination. That is more people than are alive on the Earth today. And when you add in the other 25 + ingredients of your work potential, you get numbers that are astronomical.
These types of odds make you a unique expression within the universe -- and yet you are just one of the billions of expressions of life on this planet. And this is the crux of this paradox -- you are both truly unique and one of a countless multitude at the same time. Along with this knowledge of uniqueness comes responsibility. For if you are a truly unique expression of life, then only you have the gifts, talents and potential to excel at the unique tasks which define your destiny and your life calling. No one else can fulfill the life calling you are uniquely qualified for. If you do not do it, it will go undone, or done by someone else in a very different way.
We often refer to the human race as a contest and focus on who is winning and who is falling behind. But perhaps the race also is not just about winning, but who shows up to run it, and the type of race they run. Many times, the victor is the person who makes the race their own.
In your race through life, do you have all the information and tools you need to express your unique potential and live an extraordinary life before you run out of time, health, love and wisdom?
