Yes, I have a superpower
I'm just now figuring it out
Encouragement, Be Super Again !
We all have superpowers. Things we’re good at, things we can do with no practice, and with no effort, it’s just natural. Life is the only requirement for these superpowers, we’re born this way. Have you turned off your awareness of these gifts? Do you take them for granted because they're ‘normal’? Or, did you hide them away because they weren’t accepted in your social circles? My hope for you today is that you remember your superpowers, dust them off, and embrace them again.
Reuniting with your gifts is important for you and for those around you. When we exercise our superpowers conscientiously we empower those around us. Our gifts may help us survive and at times thrive, but when we exercise them we can help those around us as well. How would it feel to release that superpower, to let it flow, to stop wrestling with it? Embracing your superpowers also means embracing the consequences that come along with using them? Scary? Yes, absolutely. But, also exciting…?
If you’ve stifled your gift, have you investigated why? Was that action taken in response to perceived jealousy, anger, annoyance, or frustration? Do you feel like you're doing everyone else a favor by not allowing your superpower to show? Maybe you can’t hide your gift, not all gifts are the same and some of them are just more noticeable than others. Think about the X-Men, Professor Xavier can hide in plain sight, on the other hand Thing, from Fantastic 4 would have to stay out of sight to hide his gift.
Tell me about your superpowers!
Can you name your superpowers?
What superpowers are you hiding?
My Superpower
One of my superpowers is deep listening, I mean that literally. It isn’t just active listening, I can hear the things you aren’t saying. I can hear the subtext, the strain, the hesitation, and the inner turmoil. I can hear what the silence says, and I can hear the pause. This superpower isn’t auditory, technically, but it’s the best sense I can think of to capture the fact that I understand you, and not just the ‘you’ that I can see with my eyes.
Naturally, these powers are enhanced with proximity and time. The longer I’m around you the more I understand. Often, I’ll ask my wife what she was telling me or what she wanted. *I wasn’t talking, I didn’t say anything, are you listening to my thoughts again, is there no privacy?!*
I can’t turn it off.
I’ve been asked not to, ‘read faces’, this is a polite way to ask me to hide my superpower. I’d have to walk around with earplugs and a blindfold to oblige. I don’t know where these powers came from, but it was probably the usual concoction of DNA and childhood trauma. Bada-boom, bada-bing, voilà, superpowers.
Throughout my life, I’ve attracted and been attracted to people who needed or wanted to be heard. Whether it was over something immediate like an idea they needed to share or a feeling they wanted to express. Or, whether it was to break a long cycle of feeling ignored or neglected, these people found me, and I found them.
Misunderstanding My Superpower
Have you seen the movie Inception? It's a great film. I encourage you to investigate it for yourself. I used to think that’s the way my superpower manifested. I practiced the art of inception, I thought. Minus the super complex tech and brain invasion techniques deployed in the film.
I recall countless times when my words and ideas would verbatim come out of the mouths of others, with no recollection or admission that those words and ideas came from me. Sometimes they would be attributed to someone else altogether. I’ve seen this with sermons after conversations with pastors, I’ve seen this with businesses after conversations with entrepreneurs, and I’ve seen this with friends and family. I was once annoyed by the lack of recognition, where’s my shout out?!, you know?
But I’ve learned something about my superpower that dissolved my frustration. Before I share what’s next I do want to share an observation.
When I thought I was practicing the art of inception, here’s what I noticed:
If you're sharing a vision with someone and you want them to take an action or support you or at least agree with you, and they’re resisting, you’re actually in a good place. The stronger the resistance the better, vehement resistance is the type of soil that allows growth, it’s all broken up. Before you can plant a seed you have to dig up the ground. Initial rejection and subsequent acceptance of an idea isn’t a ‘180’, like plants, it takes ideas a little time to grow.
A Mature Superpower
Back to what I learned. I learned I never planted any ideas. Our ideas don’t originate in our minds. Ideas are the results of how our brains process information gathered from our experiences. The way we process our experiences is unique but the ingredients we use are pervasive. The result is we have really similar ideas and very similar expressions of those ideas,but our ideas still maintain their novelty, it’s a Venn diagram. My superpower isn’t planting the idea, it is saying the idea out loud, first, so that whoever I talk with can hear it.
With my deep listening power I can hear the whole idea amidst all the inner chatter. When I hear it clearly, I speak it, hearing those words is like a green light, like a permission slip. It’s real, it’s been put out into the world. So my superpower isn’t inception, it’s permission. It’s like hearing, “definitely proceed”.
What Superpower Do You Need?
Have you been wrestling with an idea for a while, and do you feel like you’re waiting for permission to move forward? I may have the superpower you need.