Connectedness

For those of you who don’t believe in coincidence and prefer instead to call it Godincidence …

Here’s your sign.

Sometimes it’s a dream, a daydream even, an inaudible whisper of the Holy Spirit.

A name popping up over and over in weird places. Meeting you where you are.

Things you hadn’t thought of. Things that were not in your plan.

Several years ago I read a couple of Marcus Buckingham’s books about strengths. The women’s leadership group where I worked at the time was doing a lunchtime study of one of them. Bring your lunch, watch a video, discuss, maybe do some type of activity. The idea behind the books is that you should focus your work activities and personal development toward the areas of your greatest strengths. Weaknesses must indeed be managed, but your greatest growth will be in areas where you already excel.

Every annual review I’ve been subject to was more like two minutes of kudos for a job well done followed by an excruciatingly long discussion of things that “could have gone better”. And in most goal setting sessions … the bone they throw toward personal development is often to address a weakness, not a strength.

Buckingham’s premise is revolutionary for the Corporate America world from whence I came. A world where buttoned-up corporate ladies from big pharma get together over lunch to learn from this dude who’s been on Oprah. And ultimately learn that they do not in fact suck.

Miss Overachiever went above & beyond, and I took the strengths assessment. It helps you hone in on your top five from a list of, I don’t remember, maybe two or three dozen. My number one top above-all strength was communication. Ergo how I made a career out of project management and herding cats.

One of my top five was connectedness. The little description that goes along with each strength tells us that connectedness has a lot to do with faith and believing that “things happen for a reason” (secret code in the secular world sometimes for us Jesus freaks to identify each other). But it also just goes toward being able to see patterns and causes & effects and the overall big picture.

Guilty as charged.

I think it’s hilarious that my master’s thesis (yes, kids, I have one of those … nerd alert) had a lot to do with pattern recognition.

In an attempt to make this long story short and bring it home … fast forward to the last week or so. I started seeing a couple words all over the place. Directly and indirectly. Songs and scripture references. Random social media postings. Sometimes it required a leap or two of logic, but for Pattern Recognition Girl it was super obvious.

There were so many that I finally started writing them down. So many that it’s kind of ridiculous. So many that I think someone’s trying to tell me something.

When I figure out what that is I’ll let you know. J