Should #Talent be shared?

a video song of Maestro Sergio Snyder, Pianist

A tribute to a very talented man, he shared this joy with thousands in his life!

When you listen to Beethoven’s 5^th symphony it’s hard to imagine how could anyone write such a magnificent piece. And when you look at a Picasso or Monett, makes you think of the hours they spent with every single stroke of a brush trying to bring life into their pictures. The inspirational performances of actors, dancers, musicians and singers make us stand for five minutes clapping our hearts out in admiration for their craft. Enjoying a carefully crafted meal from an award-winning chef and it's delights in our taste butts and leaves us wanting more. A beautiful pair of custom made shoes, a designer dinning table, a high performance sports car, are all personal possessions people seek and desire to own because of it’s unique craftsmanship. All of these are made or produced by very talented individuals who are masters in their craft and bring joy to people through their art. Whether it is in the form of a song or a piece of clothing, all are representations of someone’s talent that have enriched our lives.

Now imagine a world without Beethoven’s 5^th symphony? I guess if he hadn’t exist we wouldn’t know any better and probably life would have gone on, but how tragic it would be not to have the joy of listening to such master piece! I guess everything around us, if it hadn’t been written, produced or invented, we wouldn’t know we were missing out on such magnificent things, and perhaps others would be available to us.

But what does it all mean to us? And why is it important to know that talents should be shared? A few months ago I wrote a blog called “talent, gift or ability” in which I debated that you cannot learn talent, it is something you cannot teach and you are born with it. We all have talents, and they range from writing a master piece to managing a team or even driving a car or cooking a meal, whatever your talents are, these are the things you are good at and makes you who you are.

But talent’s worst enemy is lack of self-confidence and fear of failure. These stop even the greatest from bringing their talent to the world. If Mozart thought his music was rubbish and he was not good at it, we would not have the pleasure of enjoying his work today. Yet he knew he had a talent and wanted to share this with others, but was there another “Mozart” out there, just as talented but with a lack of self-confidence; I guess well we will never know and perhaps we have all be deprived of the joy of enjoying his/her work.

The real debate here is - if you have someone who has a real talent and enjoys his or her gift but lacks self confidence and does not wish to share it with others because of fear of rejection or failing, is that ok?

Everything we have and enjoy today is because a talented person wanted to share their gift with the world. If Michael Jackson had decided he loved signing but would confine it to the shower, the pop world would be very different today and non of us would have made a fool of ourselves dancing to Thriller pretending to be a corps!

We all have different talents, and as long as we are aware of these, it is our duty to share these with the world.

If you know you have a talent, but doubt yourselves I implore you to go out there and don’t let fear kill your gift, and share with the world what you are good at. We all have a role to play in life and after all talent is a gift we have been given, a gift we have to share with the world.

Week Forty-nine – Highs & Lows!

One minute you are up, then the next you are down; life can be such a roller coaster!

Have you ever got out of bed and felt like you were right on top of the world? Some times we do, we “get out of bed on the right side” and we feel the world is at our feet. Some times we also have important events which we work hard for and when you reach the end result and you’ve done a good job, again you feel on top of the world; what a lovely feeling that is, the “Highs” in our lives.

But on the other side some times we also encounter the “Lows” that brings us right back down and you may even hit “rock bottom”. These events often take place right at the start of our day, and we get that feeling of “getting out of bed on the wrong side” setting us off to have a series of disasters which makes our day get worse and worse. We may even look for the 3^rd event to take place so we can get out of this bad patch; you know, the “things come in three” feeling.

We all go through these feelings and emotions in our lives; it’s part of being a human. But have you ever experienced Highs and Lows on the same day? Yes I am talking about hitting high and low in 24 hours, and I mean very high and then rock bottom! If you’ve never experienced this, it can be emotionally draining and leave you feeling completely disoriented! One moment is good and then it all goes bad! So how do you deal with this? How do you keep your wits about you and survive? Not easy as it all happens too quickly and that feeling of disorientation and dizziness lingers for a long time. I guess it’s what they call in show business “your 15 minutes of fame”; one moment you are the talk of town and then no one wants to know you!

So if think you’ve never experience this before let me give you some examples to help you understand what I am talking about. I guess the most obvious one would be when you get some good news in the morning follow by bad news! You get that phone call from your boss informing you will be getting a pay rise for all your hard work and dedication to the company; you hit a High here. And then you get a call from home to let you know the house is flooded and it’s not covered by your insurance! You’re on a Low now. That would be a real rollercoaster of emotions all in a very short space of time!

We often experience this at work too; I know I have. You’ve been working hard on a piece of work or a project, which you hand in and get praised for the excellent effort. At that moment you feel good, accomplished and ready to take on the world! You are on top of your game and you can’t get enough of it! And then boom! Something goes wrong, you make a mistake, something that should have been done or looked at was not and now you find yourself having to own up to it and fix it! All the “high” from the good work you did is gone and you are scratching the bottom of the barrel trying to get out of the situation you find yourself in! You no longer have the glory but the guilt, no longer the praise but the questions, you now feel emotionally drained because your adrenaline has gone from very high levels of excitement to very high levels of stress and your body can’t take it any more! Talk about a rollercoaster! You have just been on one and you had a front row seat!

But you know what they say? Life is a rollercoaster and you have to ride it. Remember that which does not kill you can only make you stronger! To get through these emotions in one day and come out the other side in one piece you need to stay together and focus on the task ahead. Get off your high ride and focus on your low drive. At the end of the day you only have one option – fix it and move on. Don’t dwell on the past and what you could have done, that’s all gone.  Your passed successes are there to support your mistakes, don’t just ride on the glory days, but drive the tough times too. Everything is a balance, and ok you are now deep down, but surely someone will remember what you did this morning too!

That’s the balance in life; “Highs” and “Lows” are there to help you be better at what you do. Highs remind us of what we can do well and achieve, it is a way to re-charge the batteries and leave evidence that there is something good we have to offer. Lows help us remember we are also human and sometimes things will go wrong, we will make mistakes and we need to learn from them using the experiences to better ourselves. In a way the lows permit us to learn and produce more highs as a result of these experiences, they need to exits for highs to be created. Without one the other does not exist. I guess no one can ride a rollercoaster that only goes up, it will eventually run out of track and then you face a massive drop. I rather have lots of reasonable highs and lows to make it fun and more interesting!

I’m grateful for all the experiences I have in my life. Not only do they help me learn and become better but also they are great sources of inspiration for my writing! This is week forty-nine of my yearly blog challenge, I only have three more to write before I am done, and believe me when you have written forty-eight weeks, it seems that subjects are begging to dry up! Thank goodness for that rollercoaster called life with its Highs and Lows, without it I’d be thinking, “what am I going to write about this week?”

Week Thirty-two – Doors!

Everything in our lives seems to revolve around doors, and I don’t mean just physical doors but metaphorical ones too!

Mexico's Pop Sensation Emmanuel 

This week I had another “door” slammed on my face, and I don’t mean an actual door, wooden, metal, glass or any other material, but a metaphorical door. In my pursuit to becoming a full time writer I have been working to get one of my musicals, "El Rey Azul", noticed by the artist whose music I have used to create the story, and let me tell you, it’s not been an easy task. For the last two years I have been looking for ways to contact Mexican Pop Star sensation “Emmanuel”, who began his artistic career in the late 70’s becoming one of Mexico’s iconic signing heroes. I decided to take some of his best-known songs and turn them into a musical in the style of “Mama Mia” and “We Will Rock You”. However, everywhere I’ve searched I have not been able to get in contact with him. About a year ago a friend of mine in a conversation mentioned that her mother’s cousin happened to work for Emmanuel as some sort of accountant, and when you lease expect it, a door of opportunity had open for me. Since then we’ve been going backwards and forwards, he has been busy touring and I guess an unknown Mexican writer with a wacky idea for a musical may not have been his priority. However I kept in contact with someone who worked for him and ever so often I would give him the “e-mail nudge” to remind him I never give up on an idea. I noticed in Facebook that Emmanuel had gone quieter and I though it was time to “nudge” this guy again. To my surprise he replied almost immediately and my heart started to pound hard with excitement thinking I’m in!

This blog is about the metaphorical doors in our lives and as you guessed, sadly a door was shut right in my face! He wrote to inform me that he no longer worked for Emmanuel. As I stared at that door firmly shut in front of my eyes, I began to reflect on what to do when someone shuts a door in your face, literally. I guess in life if you are going somewhere and you want to get in/out and a door is shut, the first thing you do is try to open it again right? Most of us in real life when real doors are shut we nock, shake and try to open it again; we don’t just walk away. So I did, I knocked, shook and try to open it again.

After the initial disappointment I decided to reply to him, first of all thanking him for letting me know and asking him if he would know whom I could contact instead to continue with my proposal. You can see here I am “metaphorically” grasping onto the doorknob and trying to open that door again! He, very politely, replied that he didn’t know. In this industry when doors are shut usually they are bolted on the other side! And I imagine he was not prepared to help me, there is nothing in it for him and probably left in not such good terms.

Ok that door is shut, firmly and perhaps bolted, but it doesn’t mean that there are no other doors to let me in, not just to Emmanuel but to fulfilling my career dream as a writer.

I noticed in his e-mail signature the web address of his new company so I went and searched it, an impressive entertainment organisation that also does theatrical productions. Now here is a door I want to keep, if not open, at least ajar! So very politely I thank him for his help and slipped in that I had seen the website of his new company and would always welcome the opportunity to work with them and share some of my work; I supplied him my website address and moved on. I don’t expect that the door will suddenly swing wide open, but I have at least knocked on it and left a note underneath. Some times you have to do a lot of knocking to be heard, so now I have his attention, I will continue to knock on that door until one day it may open up! I also went back to my friend and ask her to try and get me a new contact through her mum’s cousin; an old door that opened before and I know it can open again.

And I will continue to knock on doors, until one of them will open.

But the idea of doorways, doors and knocking is one that we should all take seriously and use this metaphor in our every day lives to help us get to where we want to. I found this week that by using this metaphor my spirits really lifted and I am more energised that ever to continue looking for those doors that will open up and fulfil my dream to see my work on stage. And life is all about opening those doors. Think of all the expression we use related to this; “opening doors” “key to your success” “opportunity knocks” “one door shuts, anther door opens “ and perhaps being successful is about understanding how we open those doors, and making sure we open the right ones. It’s about being in the right room, where there may be other doors leading to the right place, it’s about being in and not out, it’s about shutting doors that lead to nowhere and looking for those that takes us where we want to be. It’s about knocking time after time, and loud so we are heard and someone will open that door. In the end, the great thing about this metaphor is that there are as many doors as you want there to be. If you think positively you can create doors, look for doors and knock as hard as you can in the hope that the person on the other side will open it for you. Don’t be afraid to move away from a door that’s closed, but not before you try to open it again, and try as many door as you can. Some will be slammed on your face, and trust me, it hurts, but you have to move on, and don’t let that “moral nose bleed” stop you from carrying on.

Success only comes from failing, and I guess doors will only open once you’ve had a few slammed on your face!