Find The Way - Leadership Insights from Lisa Marie

Because we're each wired for our own unique greatness, our interests and hobbies are different. When I was 6 years old, I enjoyed drawing and could entertain myself for hours with a box of Crayolas and a coloring book. My teachers and family alike rewarded me for staying between the lines. I wasn't encouraged to be creative; in fact, I was encouraged to be exact.

Fast forward to fifteen years later, and my hobby had become making lists. At the time in my life, it was important for me to be perceived as someone who could "do it all", so I became a skilled list-maker and did it so well that it could've had its own job description. I wrote lists about what I wanted to do, needed to do, and already did. I wrote down what I was going to do during the week, and on the weekend. I itemized where I wanted to eat and travel, who I wanted to see, and who I needed to call, write, and visit. My lists included who, what, where, when, why, and how ... and I began to suck the spontaneity out of my life. Even though I was rewarded by my co-workers and managers for being precise and organized, I came to the conclusion that something was missing.

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, said, "That which is used develops, and that which is not used wastes away." Whenever I hear this statement, I think about that part that was lost in the midst of the list-making. I focused on a skill that I have and developed it, but my talents fell to the wayside.

The Latin root of the word "talent" means "balance" or "sum of money". Hence, our talents are what make us individually valuable. Those innate abilities and personal gifts that I have - the ability to walk into a room and change the dynamics with my energy, to be present with a person and engage them at their level of need or want, to inspire them to design their destiny - were not used. Consequently, I found myself making lists but never really creating anything. And since I wasn't connected to that part of myself, the part that wanted to go outside of the lines, my measure of success was determined by what others expected from me.

Have you experienced this before? Are you experiencing it now? If you take inventory of how you spend your time, how much of this precious commodity do you use to focus on staying inside of the lines, and how much do you spend doing what only you can do the way you do it?

Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Each day in your life is an opportunity to create something meaningful. Remember to color outside the lines!

Did you know?

* Monday, August 26, is the 87th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women - the right to vote.

* Kids, ages 2-8, spend an average of 28 minutes each day coloring. Combined, children in the U.S. spend 6.3 billion hours coloring annually, almost 10,000 human lifetimes!

* Douglas Mehrens uses more crayons annually than anyone else in the world. The Phoenix-based artist goes through about 24,000 a year, many of them melted, to complete his contemporary abstract works.

* In 1990, after 37 years of service, Crayola products' most senior crayon maker Emerson Moser retired after molding a record 1.4 billion crayons. It was not until his retirement that he revealed a very well kept secret -- he was actually colorblind.