A few months ago I had lunch with a pastor. He wanted to write a book but didn’t know how to start. He said, “Should I take a month off and hole up in a cabin to write it? Should I write a page a day for year? Should I book one day each week to write it? I’m lost on what the best way to write my book is.”

I answered his questions with a question of my own.

I asked him, “How old are you?”

He replied, “42.”

I said, “Well then you’ve got 42 years of information available. It’s time to be a student of you. How do you prepare your sermons right now? What’s the greatest success you’ve had at accomplishing something?”

A light bulb went off.

He’d written hundreds of sermons. He had a method he loved to use in creating new stories and ideas for his sermons. But until we talked he hadn’t seen how what he was best at could inform in one area of his life could inform another area.

I promise you’re going to do the same thing. We all do.

You are amazing at something right now. The system you have to keep clean laundry flowing through your family of five makes the UPS tracking system look amateur. But when you sit down to think about writing a blog this year and arrange posts and hosting and links, you don’t know where to start.

The schedule you juggle at work is unbelievable. You’re brilliant. You can project manage a $10 million dollar software rollout across 4 departments and 7 continents with a Microsoft Project Planner printout that is bigger than a Blue Whale. But when you sit down to think about scheduling a training plan for a marathon this year, you don’t know where to begin.

It’s easy though.

Start where you’re already great! Play to your strengths. Be a student of you.

Taking what you’ve learned in one area of your life and applying it to another is the fastest way to move forward on a new goal.

Question:
Name one thing you’re great at. One skill or talent. Is there a way to adapt what you’ve learned to another part of your life?