Enhance Your Dance and Share It

By Allen Thomas

When you bring what is within--strengths, skils and talents--out into the world, miracles can happen. Enhance Your Dance & Share It and the LifeCompass Guidance System enhance your Journey and bring purpose to your life. Life Balance depends on the attention paid daily to your life values: Family, Work, Spiritual, Health, Dreams and Leisure. A recent Gallup survey concerning job happiness indicates that it is at an all time low and carer angst at an all time high causing people to explore career options when they go through several stages of searching, struggling, stopping and possible solutions requiring a thorough analysis of their talents.  Historically career changing is painful . The struggle step is difficult when many people come to the conclusion that someting is wrong with them and it shouldn't be so difficult finding work/life satiafaction as well as better undrstanding of their talents. In a new book, Next,  the power of Reinvention in Life, Author Joanne Lipman writes ahout changing careers and the importance of seeking a "Career Companion" who has an objective view of the seekeer's talents and weaknesses.    

 

The business of employment couseling, coaching and career guidance has improved it's expertise and is experiencening succss in job placements but the gap between talents, gifts and job requirements is growing wider adding pressure to the need for careeer companions.  

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen Thomas
• Release date: Apr 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223518754

Allen Thomas

A Strength Finding, mind changing, experiential journey of a Creativity Wrestler, twelve stepping, book reading, word jockey.

Book preview

1

Why? Answers please! -

MANY BOOKS, coaches and employment counselors spend their careers helping people find meaningful work. Part of their process involves assessing the candidates’ strengths and skills in conjunction with their experiences.

There must be many good reasons, why we get to experience fabulous joy, struggle with loads of hard, hard work, experience, love, sadness, hilarious laughter, ripping tears, sickness, success, soft skin, sweet lips, and on and on. 

No definitive answers, some maybe’s, a few wild guesses.

Except As Far As I’m Concerned – One Decent Answer, One That Joins Us With Others.

We are not alone. We’re in good company. We share and agree on many of the same questions, and we agree that there are no definitive, absolute, set in stone, guaranteed answers – except one agreement:

TOGETHER  IS WHAT WE NEED.

We have to agree that we’re in it together. We are all in it together and our agreeing on this answer is critical because it keeps us together and it keeps us from killing each other (eventually it will) and it keeps us living peacefully with each other in spite of the issue that we are very different in temperament, different skills and strengths, different likes and dislikes but only to the degree that these differences can be tolerated and enjoyed and laughed about because we do enjoy the differences as long as they don’t hurt us or ours hurts them. Life is all about celebrating the differences - together.

Just knowing we are together helps us share without fear of criticism. Understanding this acceptance makes us brave, able to try new ideas, reach for goals we’ve dreamed about but fear has stopped us from taking the first step. If we’re together, not criticizing or judging we can go for it, GOFERIT!

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!

To do this we must understand and instruct ourselves that differences are the joy of life. The spice of life is made up of differences as long as we don’t harm each other with our differences. And truthfully, we don’t want to cause harm. We don’t like the same food but so what? We don’t like the same music but so what? We might like their food or music if we take a deep breath and give it a try and work hard to understand what it is about the food and music that they like. This is easy and rewarding when we accept that we’re all in it together. 

The differences go away when babies are born, when funerals are held, when vows of love are pledged, when volunteers show up to shovel mud out of houses hit by hurricanes.

These activities hold us together, hold us to the agreement – we are all in this together. The more, the better.

And together means together, peas in a pod. Young just getting started on this trip, looking for directions, mid aged on a path but maybe questioning if it’s the right path and others like me - old but not too old to keep on keeping on but old enough to be comfortable with different paths. These different ingredients can be mixed in a large bowl with the  understanding that we are all in it together and the final main course will be well done and delicious.  

So to sum up, this book is a collection of tools to help us through each of life’s stages: young, middle and old. The trip can be fun and can be dangerous and can be joyful. Agreeing to be one of the players is what is being asked of us. 

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It was high counsel I heard given to a young person. Always Do What You Are Afraid To Do.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Got talent?

Share it, millions are sharing with enthusiasm, sharing with the Internet.

Music, dance, comedy, Ideas, shared for free, almost for free. The world is being connected. Communication, cell phones, laptops, iPads, fiber optic cables, wireless transmitters, worldwide connectivity so we can share each other’s talents, ideas, hopes and dreams.

Content is king, talent is king. Playing for change, "Got Talent" to share with the world that is eager and willing to share, joyfully, sharing the music of each other from England, America, France,  Japan, India, Africa.

They Got Talent television shows are powerful examples of performers, judges and audiences enthusiastically sharing strengths and skills.

When performers display talents they have perfected over years of deliberate practice and audiences respond with emotional, standing ovations, and judges comment on the outstanding performances, the viewing audience, connected by the Internet, shares the best of human capabilities.  These events bring different cultures together in harmony overpowering differences in attitude about how day-to-day living needs to be conducted. Doors are opened encouraging people to smile and agree and solve problems rather than allowing them to escalate into violence.

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You are what you do,

not what you say you'll do.

Carl Jung

When causes and candidates are being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize I think the "Got Talent" shows should be considered.

500 cell phones a second are being manufactured to satisfy the world's demand to share with each other. Human beings are eager to share each other‘s talents. When a beautiful song is heard, a dance is viewed, a talent is displayed, ideas expressed, The magic is in the sharing, emotional sharing, smiles, tears of gratitude, wild applause, heartfelt passions from the sharing of the talents.

Music, dance, comedy, acrobatics, the essential talents in all of mankind are being shared on a new scale made possible by communications.  The massive increase in our ability to share, to appreciate the practice that performers have obviously worked on with love and devotion for many years is being appreciated on a scale that is payment far exceeding a wad of money.

YouTube, streaming content over fiber optic networks, standing ovations, thankful applause, sobbing performers accepting the enthusiastic response for their talents are what we all appreciate — the human sharing we are desperate to be a part of.

For over 50 years, psychologists, coaches, teachers, have labored and developed tools to help individuals discover their strengths and talents.

The growth of the Internet is creating efficient communication abilities to share these talents and strengths and the response confirms the importance and appreciation of the effort.

Civilization has grown, has brought us to our current situation where we are making progress, one small step at a time. The Human Progress Foundation monitors this progress worldwide:

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HUMAN PROGRESS DATA:

Nicholas Kristoff - The big lesson of history is that things change. The scale of these changes is hard to grasp. The living conditions in today’s poorest countries are now in many ways much better than they were even in the richest countries of the past: Child mortality in today’s worst-off places is between 10-13%  In all regions of the world it was more than three-times as high as 30-50% until a few generations ago.

At the beginning of the 19th century, it’s estimated that 43% of the world’s children died by the age of five. If we still suffered the poor health of our ancestors more than 60 million children would die every year; 166,000 every day.²

▪  Every day, on average, 295,000 people around the world gained access to electricity for the first time. Every day, another 305,000 were able to access clean drinking water for the first time. And each day an additional 620,000 people were able to get online for the first time.

▪  Never before has such a large portion of humanity been literate, enjoyed a middle-class cushion, lived such long lives, had access to family planning or been confident that their children would survive. Only about 4 percent of children worldwide now die by the age of 5, down from 19 percent in 1960 and 7 percent in 2003. 15,000 children died around the world in the last 24 hours. But in the 1990s, it was 30,000 kids dying each day.

▪  Nine out of 10 Americans say in polls that global poverty is worsening or staying the same, when in fact the most important trend in the world is arguably a huge reduction in poverty. Until about the 1950s, a majority of humans had always lived in ‘extreme poverty,’ defined as less than about $2 a person per day. In the early 1980s, 44 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty.

▪  Now, fewer than 10 percent of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, as adjusted for inflation.

▪  Likewise, Americans estimate that 35 percent of the world’s children have been vaccinated. In fact, 86 percent of all 1-year-olds have been vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

▪  Everyone seems to get the world devastatingly wrong, Dr. Hans Rosling, a brilliant scholar of international health, wrote in Factfulness, published in 2018, after his death. Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent and more hopeless – in short, more dramatic – than it really is.

▪  No doubt there are major challenges ahead. But a failure to acknowledge progress can leave us feeling hopeless and ready to give up. In fact, the gains show us what is possible and spur greater efforts to improve opportunity worldwide.

QUANTIFIED LIFE—Remarkable things add up. And you control the score card. Progress is the result of urges to make things better. Jonas Salk took many steps to develop the inoculations to prevent polio. You might ask, what is remarkable?

No one knows until they do it. The secret to progress is to take the first step and see where it goes. Hope motivates us to take the steps. For many brave ones the journey is the best reward.

Progress results from sharing talents and strengths. The Internet, the emotional appreciation  for our strengths and talents will continue making progress for humanity.

The progress we are making is impossible to deny but at this time in history the improvement in communication also puts on display the problems that still exist. And unfortunately we have not progressed emotionally to the point where the good outweighs the bad — we’re getting there but progress is slow — but progress is underway, tune in to the got talent Shows on YouTube and share the joy – you will sleep better and dream about how you can do to add to this progress.

Tom Vander Ark, an advocate for innovations in learning writes: "A fitness tracker changed my life—it changed how I think about goal setting and monitoring my exercise, it changed the intentionality of my travels, and it created a new global community of people who share my interests.

"I’m not alone; about a quarter of U.S. adults use some kind of tracker. The Quantified Life is one of four new trends influencing education.

The quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology into a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in. Self-knowledge through numbers. "

"Quantified self-practices overlap with the practice of life logging and other trends that incorporate technology and data acquisition into daily life, often with the goal of improving physical, mental, and emotional performance.

The widespread adoption in recent years of wearable fitness and sleep trackers such as the Fitbit or the Apple Watch. Combined with the increased presence of Internet of Things In Healthcare. And in exercise equipment, have made self-tracking accessible to a large segment of the population. Other terms for using self-tracking data to improve daily functioning are auto analytics, body hacking, self-quantifying, self-surveillance, and personal informatics.

"Lifelong Learning. About 10 years ago, there was a widespread recognition that learning for a period of 15 years and then working for 40 years didn't work anymore.—that learning must be ongoing to adapt to the innovation economy.

"In 2015, Learners for life was one. Of five learner goals framing the big grant competition that sought to reinvent high school. They defined the goal as self-driven, self-directed, curious learners—about themselves and the world, Inventors of their own learning paths, careers, and lives.

"Schools Worldwide. Are adopting broader goals that frequently incorporate social and emotional learning and that can often incorporate practices of mindfulness.

"A well-respected example in secondary education is. Compass, a holistic human development program from Valor Collegiate Academies in Nashville, TN. And now adopted by networks across the country. Compass has four directions: Aligned Actions, Big Heart, Sharp Minds, Noble Purpose, culminating in, True North.

The school day starts in circles, a safe place to build trust, allow people to fully be themselves and to create community. It includes mindfulness and intentional facilitation that helps learners gain control of their own behavior and collaborate with others.

These four trends: Inclusion, Lifelong Learning, Quantified Self And Mindfulness, are becoming ubiquitous in the media and becoming part of the culture. Many schools are trying to understand what they mean for practices and reporting.

This book includes many free practical steps.  The cost is your commitment to sharing your talents, strengths, skills and gifts to increase awareness of how they need to be included in the Quantification of the soft aspects of man.

A real life example of grateful sharing took place about five years ago in Orlando, Fl. during a workshop being held for a group of men participating in a program of Strengths and Skills awareness. The one-day program started with each participant having completed the Values In Action, Strengths Finder Test. The primary exercises during the day involved participants gathering in small groups of three or four and sharing their top five strengths and associated skills and how they had used them in real life experiences where their awareness had helped them make career choices, important decisions, and choose learning paths. As the day progressed it became apparent that the men were forming shared interest bonds.

The primary purpose of the workshop was to Increase the individual’s awareness of their strengths. The opening remarks had made it clear that the participants probably had some dim understanding of the situation but the test, based on proven research, provided more details on specific strengths and increased the credibility of the exercise.

At the conclusion of the workshop a video was shown of two brothers singing a beautiful rendition of the song "The Impossible Dream." This performance had taken place a few years earlier during one of Britain’s Got Talent shows when the performance had received a standing ovation. And that earlier enthusiasm was transferred to the meeting room in Orlando Florida where it was clear that a transformational experience had taken place. The Orlando workshop participants repeated the standing ovation.

We all have talents, skills and strengths and opportunities to use them: Rotary clubs, the Weavers foundation, church service projects are all available in our local communities.

When we use our talents as part of the show — progress depends on us. 

Life GUIDANCE POSITIONING System—L/GPS

www.mylifeguide.me

●  Logging the use of your skills and abilities with the L/GPS will clarify the values and the skills you experience daily.

●  Balancing your daily routine, according to your values, is a primary goal of the exercise.

●  Create a schedule for deliberate practice of skills.  Improving a skill produces joy.

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Awareness and Practice reveals your path to mastery

L/GPS Charts Show How You Spend Your Time

http://mylifeguide.me

We Long To Be Seen And Understood,

To Be Valued And Honored,

And To Be Loved

For Exactly Who We Are—The Result Of Our Daily Decisions.

We need directions to find our way through life. When we look back, to see how we got here, we realize our journey has been directed by our decision compass: door A or door B, married or