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I recently applied to a job at Lulu Publishing. They sent me a polite email saying that there were other more qualified candidates for the position. Have you ever gotten that letter? Did you think you were qualified for the job?

What makes a person qualified anyway? Companies usually base the answer to that question on an assessment of talent, training, and time - or experience, but they miss a key factor.

Talent

Talent is like the rock in the mines that have not undergone pressure or polish. It’s raw materials. You may have analytical talents like programming or figuring out complex math problems. You may have creative talents like singing, or painting. You may have athletic talent. Most of us have some quirky combination.

Talent alone won’t get you very far though. Untrained talent remains in its infancy stage. Compared to honed talent, it seems amateurish. You need to add some training to the mix.

Training

In a study of musicians in their 20’s, K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology, found that talented musicians identified as great practiced an average 10,000 hours in their lifetime, those identified as good practiced an average of 8,000, and those identified as mediocre practiced an average of 5,000 hours.

Continued training creates ruts in our brain that allows us to do a task by rote. We no longer think about doing the task. It becomes effortless. Training can be gained formally through education and apprenticeship, or it can be gained informally through trial and error.

Time (Experience)

Time, or experience, differs from training in that this is the period where you show off what you have. Experience is measured by the time put in to produce value from the combination of your talent and training. It may happen at the same time as gaining training or it may happen linearly. Experience sets you apart as a professional in your field. It gives you the springboard to become an expert.

Heart, the Missing Factor

Talent, training, and experience will give you what you need to become an expert. Heart, however, gives you the passion and fuel to become an attractor in your field.

I’m not talking here about the drive to succeed. You know those people, you might be one. You’re good at everything you set your mind to because you must succeed. You are so good that you’ve forgotten what you really love. You’ve forgotten where your passion lies. You mistake success for heart.

Heart is the measure missing from most career matrices and evaluations. In fact, it is the oft ignored, key ingredient of assessing qualification.

Heart is a passion that comes from within. It’s what drives you to do something regardless of the outcome. You spend hours at the sewing machine ensuring that the hem of a dress is just so. Rather than step away exhausted and spent, you feel refreshed and energized. Heart fuels you. Drive drains you.

Heart, also known as le cœur in French, is the root of courage. When we are engaged with heart, we have the willingness and courage to press forward. We take risks that the talented, trained, and experienced are not willing to take.

Heart also provides an ease and enduring harmony to our undertakings. It is like a silk cloth that both contains and covers our talent, training, and time to give our work a polished feel.

In the movie Center Stage, Maureen, one of the lead characters is the top dancer of her class. She’s assured a space in the prestigious, fictitious American Ballet Company. She has the feet or the talent and has spent here life in training and gaining experience for this position. Near the end of the movie, Maureen gives up the lead role in the audition ballet to a friend. Upon seeing the lead ballerina, her mother is perplexed and rushes out of the theater. In the lobby, Maureen and her mother meet. Her mother is going on about her missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Maureen begs her mother to listen, explaining to her that this is not her dream. Her mother argues that she just wants her to be happy. She doesn’t want Maureen to live a life of regret. Finally Maureen says, “That’s what this will be. You didn’t have the feet Mom. I don’t have the heart.”

In Spirit,
Nneka

And the shame of not choosing higher
And all the disappointing moments fade into God

(Chorus)
No mistakes have been made in God,
All the ways that we seem to fail,
In God all fade, all fades into God

– Rickie Byars Beckwith, All Fades Into God

Having learned about the Law of Attraction growing up, I knew that my thoughts created my life. As a result, I spent a good bit of time beating myself over the head for “choosing” wrong, or thinking wrong. Thankfully, I also learned about the Law of Attraction as part of a theology, not a philosophy for living unto itself. However, I never really got it until I heard those lyrics from Rickie Byars’ song, All Fades Into God.

See, try as we might to manipulate our world, first by external force, now through the influence of our thoughts, we may still make mistakes. You may turn right when every fiber of your Being told you to turn left. You can spend a good bit of time sitting at a crossroads, beating yourself over the head saying that you should have turned right back there. What you miss is the opportunity to choose again, the opportunity to go a different way.

Forgiveness allows you to take from the mistake what you need and leave the rest. It allows you to move past the “mistake” and into a state of grace. From that state you can experience love and wholeness. Better than that, it allows you to move into action.

Whatever choices you made that brought you to this place in your life, take responsibility for them. Taking responsibility means that you acknowledge that you made the choice. Let go of it then. That time is past, there is nothing that you can do about it now. What you can do now is choose in this moment. Every time you choose, make it with all the courage that you can muster based on everything you know in that moment. Know that that was what you did in the past. Put down the stick. You can forgive yourself.

In Spirit,
Nneka

PS. If this post looks familiar, it’s because it was originally posted as a guest post on Kara Leah’s site.