The Gift in You: Discovering New Life Through Gifts Hidden in Your Mind (6 page)

For an example of the gift in action and how we all differ in such delightful ways, let me give you the "Persian Carpet" explanation.

Ulam
Stanislow
is a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician. As a young child, he was fascinated by the intricate patterns in Persian carpets. They seemed to produce a melody and a mathematical regularity to him. This demonstrates his strong Musical and Logical/ Mathematical thinking.

Someone with a different thinking sequence might have looked at the same carpet in a completely different way. For example, a person looks at the same rug and expresses it in poetic terms. That's the sign of a person whose Linguistic thinking is high.

Yet another looks at that same carpet and notices at once its placement in the room in relation to the furniture and color scheme. This person's Visual/Spatial thinking is high. A person with strong Interpersonal thinking might not notice the color of the carpet but focuses rather on the warmth and comfort it provides.

Finally, a person with strong Intrapersonal thinking might see the intricate patterns on the carpet as representing the intricacies of life - all the events from childhood to adulthood. We will all look at the rug differently and see different things because our perceptions are based on who we are, which, in turn, is determined by the unique sequence of the Seven Pillars that exist in each of us.

Now that you know a little about these seven different types of thinking, you can move on to working out your Gift Profile, which you will learn to do in the next chapter.

CHAPTER EIGHT:
{MAXIMIZING YOUR GIFT}

Understanding the structure of your gift is imperative to living out your gifting. Hosea 4:6 says: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (KJV). Let's not perish but rather soar as we move into a deeper understanding of our gifts and who we are.

You were wonderfully and beautifully made with specific intent and incredible purpose.

If you were meant to be the same as everyone else, everyone would have the exact same way of activating and expressing his or her genetic code. As I mentioned earlier, identical twins have the same genetic code, but the expression is different and is determined and influenced by the "I-factor" - our unique way of thinking. This is seen in how different twins are in their likes and dislikes and behavior and life choices and even in their susceptibility to disease. So twins have different experiences because of a factor, over and above the genes, that is called
epigenetics
.
Epigenetics
provides another scientific way of understanding how we are each so different. It tells us that externally-driven changes - like how we think and our reactions to the events of life - will influence the behavior of our genes.
⁶

As we reviewed in Chapter 7, there are seven different areas of the brain stimulated (see page 46) when we process a thought, resulting in seven different types of thinking:

1. Intrapersonal – introspection
   

1. Interpersonal – interaction
   

1. Linguistic – words spoken and written
   

1. Logical/Mathematical – scientific and strategic reasoning, order, planning
   

1. Kinesthetic – movement, experiential
   

1. Musical – instinct, reading between the lines, musical talent
   

1. Visual/Spatial – imagination, seeing in the mind’s eye
   

As we learned earlier, while all of us operate with all Seven Pillars of thought - the strength of each pillar is different for each one of us.

As we loop through the specific order of our gifts, the information goes through stages of processing. Like a photo has to be processed, our thoughts have to be developed into full-blown understanding or we won't use them properly.

It is good to process healthy thoughts using our gift, but when toxic thoughts are fully processed they can cause serious harm. Because they are negative they upset the electrical chemical balance in the brain because of the stress they cause. Along with a fixed structural change that now influences your thinking, they also bring a whole bunch of emotional and chemical toxic waste. This in turn starts hampering your gift in processing the good stuff, and the toxic thoughts will want to dominate and grow and influence your perceptions unless controlled. In Parts Three and Four we will explore this in more depth.

Let's first get a better understanding of how the gift develops:

• First, we receive the information from our five senses.
  

• Second, we build connections to this information from existing information and memories – helping our minds make sense of new information.
  Inside the Brain
  

• Third, we consolidate this information in the “trees” (neural networks) in the cortex of our brains.
  

• Fourth, we confirm this information and decide if we feel it is true.
  

• Fifth, we integrate the information into the networks of the memories.
  

• Sixth, we apply the information to the present circumstance.
  

• Seventh, we close the open loop.
  

Until we move though these levels of processing, the thought won't be fully processed or have meaning. Obviously, this happens incredibly fast so you won't "feel" all these things happening; you will normally only be aware of the first two types of thought and perhaps the last one in your order (that you will determine from your Gift Profile coming up).

However, as you are
looping
through the Seven Pillars of thought in your particular order (your gift), you might start noticing how you "think through" information. This is a good thing to become aware of because it will help you identify when you have a gift-blocker in action. If there are any disruptions along this pathway in the form of gift-blockers, then you won't think it through properly. This in turn will affect your attitude and the decisions you make.

That's why uniqueness of consciousness, the fact that you are totally different from anyone else and can do what no one else can, is considered one of the most difficult things to explain - it's often termed the "hard question" in science.
⁷

But if we take Proverbs 9 and principles from Scripture and pair them with ground-breaking brain science on which my "gift" theory is based, we can begin to explain this "hard question."

How does the order of the Seven Pillars of thought link to the processing of thought that is the same for each one of us?

Each step in the sequence of processing thought stimulates different areas of the brain - different pillars - in each one of us. The depth of stimulation in each area of the brain is also different for each of us.

For example, my dominant pillar is Interpersonal, and the first step in the sequence of thought (for everyone) is gathering information.

That means, if I were to be in a classroom, I would do best if I were gathering information while interacting with the teacher or the people around me. I would better process information if I asked questions, because it would jump start my brain's sequence of processing incoming information. Working on my own, I "ask" a lot of questions from books and research articles.

However, if your first pillar were Intrapersonal, you would most likely feel very frustrated if you were required to ask questions at this step in the process. This is because you would be listening deeply to receive the information you need to process and think through to understanding. Questions would interrupt this.

When we determine the structure of your gift - the order of the pillars that your brain uses to process information according to the proper sequence - we can determine triggers to maximize your brain function during every step.

Another important factor to consider when interpreting the results of the Gift Profile is how high the score is in each area. Remember, there isn't a "correct" score and no one score is better than another. In fact, the difference in each one of our scores is what is so amazing. This nuance is where each of our gifting lies - our strength is in our differences.

How high your score is for each of the pillars simply determines how profound that trait is in your gift and the order in which that loop works. If you have a really high score in one area, most likely those traits are very profound elements of your personality.

For example, if I were to score in the 70s on the Interpersonal Questionnaire, I most likely wouldn't need as much interaction during this step in the thinking sequence as I would need if my score were in the 90s.

If your first pillar were Intrapersonal and you scored in the 90s on the Intrapersonal Questionnaire, you most likely would need a lot of time at first to process information internally. If your score were in the 70s, you would need less time.

Perhaps the most important part of understanding the structure of your gift is freedom. When you understand, you will be free from any label - any label you've given yourself, any label the world has given you and, especially, any label you think the world has given you.

Unique Combinations

In my own family, I see every day how each one of our unique combinations really does have a powerful impact on how we function.

My husband Mac and I have four children. Although we all have common values and a lot of other things in common, it is our differences that add interest and adventure to how we work together as a family. When we reached the point of being able to recognize that our differences were our strengths, we were able to reach a level of peace and trust with one another - a level I don't think we would have otherwise been able to reach.

This is a reality for any family and any organization. The gift concept helps us to see each other through Jesus' eyes because otherwise we see everything from our own perspective and expect everyone to conform to our way of thinking.

I love to share examples about our children. Even if you don't have a spouse or children, as you move through these exercises, think about those you work with and anyone who is in your immediate support net- work and your friends - you'll be amazed at the revelation of why they do what they do. Remember:
Its
not just about you; it's about serving others.

Jessica

Our eldest daughter, Jessica, has Intrapersonal and Linguistic as her top two types of thinking, which means that the doorway into her soul is through thinking deeply and using words to build her temporary memories in the networks of her mind. Jessica is a very deep thinker, and as she has matured (she is now 18), she expresses herself through poetry and devours classic novels as her soul food.

She loves people, but needs lots of space to have alone time to intro-
spect
. Sometimes when her brothers and sisters invade her space too much she gets frustrated and in their words "bossy." She also loves order and cleanliness, which is largely a part of the third type of think-
ing
in her order - Logical/Mathematical. She consolidates her thinking with logic and order.

Intrapersonal in the top position will often be the person who is the quietest in the group, the one reluctant to say much but who comes up with pearls of wisdom and deep insight when you least expect it.

Dominique

My second daughter, Dominique, has Visual/Spatial and Interpersonal as the top two in her order. An interesting pattern because Dominique's doorway into her mind consists of picturing what people are saying in her mind's eye and then asking loads of questions to build her temporary memory. She shifts between seeing, questioning, seeing, questioning and so on as she receives and builds the memory.

When Dominique was little and I spoke to her, she wouldn't look at me while I was speaking, and before I could finish, she would start asking questions. That was before my research on the gift was fully developed, and sometimes I would get quite frustrated because I thought that in order to really pay attention, eye contact was necessary. This is the thinking I had grown up with. But more than that, this is the way I begin to process - through eye contact and direct Interpersonal questioning. But this is not true and is actually an example of a perception being a gift-blocker, because someone who has Visual/Spatial in the top of his or her order sees things in his or her mind's eye, often making eye contact distracting as they receive the information. As she shifts to her second pillar to build the temporary memory, which in Dominique's case is Interpersonal thinking, she then begins to ask questions.

I'd always say, "Dominique, look at me and let me finish" - until I better understood the Seven Pillars and realized I should profile her. I'm so glad that I profiled my children early on. It really helped me understand who they are as individuals so we could understand who we are as a family.

After profiling Dominique and learning she had a very strong Visual/ Spatial pillar, I understood why she doesn't look at me when I speak. She sees things in her mind's eye and mental map as she is being spoken to - that's how her brain processes. This enables Dominique to be very in control and think clearly in a crisis situation - she is a star at this because she "sees" solutions and communicates them, calming everyone.

In a classroom, Visual/Spatial children are often the ones looking down at their paper and drawing and doodling, even staring out the window while they listen. Visual/Spatial children might be very distracting to work with, until you realize that they are processing the information at the deepest level even when they don't make eye contact. When they look away, they are able to visualize in their heads what you're saying - looking away actually helps them build memory.