What makes you beautifully different?

This morning, as I was filling my teacup, I was thinking about how we all have themes in our work that are easy and themes in our work that are hard. And how the things that we long to do are not always the things people respond to.I was asking myself: How can we mesh the two, make the best match - where do they meet? Because finding that sweet spot, where the thing we love to do, long to do meets the thing people are asking for, and respond to in our work is the key to a happy - and successful life.For example:

• Each time I try to write 'teaching' copy; it sits there, ignored, no comments. No one needs that from me. We are all teachers, all aware of the basics. It is when I reveal, through story telling, my own journey, that people respond. Just as when others reveal their journeys, I respond to them.
• Each time I think I'd like to be the next high-energy, super-powered conference presenter, I burn out five hours into the project; but when I sit quietly, in my sunny corner of the cafe, people come to me.

So I love the question Karen Walrond asked: Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. Cuz it's not asking: What are your qualities? It's asking, what makes you NOT like everyone else? It's feeling around for those qualities that make us stand out - the same weird, strange, differences that the kids back in grade school, and high school, instantly discerned (and pointed to, often painfully.)This is at the core of the work that I do with the clients who come, asking about mission and purpose. Talking with them taught me that:1. The things that make us unique are often the things we've spent a lifetime trying to concealAnd a lot of mission work comes down to peeling away the layers of self-judgment, and the panic that arises whenever we risk revealing those things2. The things that make us unique will not be ignoredBecause, ultimately, the things that make us unique are an intrinsic part of our calling; they're the tools and skills and qualities we will need to accomplish our mission.As such, they continue to call to us - and when we don't listen, they make trouble by, among other things, making us feel unsettled and incomplete in everything else we do.3. The things that make us unique are often the things we write off with, "Oh, that. That came too easily. That couldn't be the mission."But more often than not, it is. My writing gift arrived immediately. My ability to weave and conjure stories, my love of books. All of that landed with the spaceship the day I was born. My husband, an architect, was drawing little cities from the time he could hold a pencil; our daughter, destined to be a filmmaker, has been telling stories all of her life; Our son, whose path is not clear cut, will, no matter what he decides to 'become,' be helping other people sort their issues into solutions in a healthy and straightforward way.4. It takes time to transform differences into giftsBut they are: These differences are the unique skills, abilities and qualities that you'll need to live 'on purpose', to conceive and to develop what Oprah calls, 'Your Best Life."These are mine:

• I see patterns - in particular things (stories, psyche, life itself) and I see them in a particular way (as meaningful, powerful evidence of our interconnectivity, and interwoven-ness with All That Is).
• I seem to be able to articulate the patterns I see so that others can see them, too.
• I learn from everything - every single thing. To me, life is a crazy quilt of meaning, color, and symbol - a great, cosmic story that is telling itself through all things.
• I see and experience the world as energy: Light, Love and Life energy. As such, I see this energy in all things - clouds, rocks, insects - birds, animals, shells, trees - and people.
• I can genuinely find something to love in everyone - even the people who push every button I've got. Especially those people. :) At the same time, I am, at my friend Kat Jaibur described it to me, 'fierce."
• As a person who spent the first 25 years of her life lying about everything to everyone, I am, today, a warrior for the truth. As such, I try not to spend too much time parsing every sentence into perfection.
• I try to let things breathe.
• I crave and need freedom; i cannot stand being bound by schedules, external authority or convention.  Yet, like a mismatched sock, I have been "blessed" with the gift of acute sensitivity to other people's energy. So, while I need to make my own choices; it is VERY clear to me when my choices meet with your disapproval.
• I am learning to manage my projections about that. Learning that it's okay if not EVERYONE likes me.
• I live between worlds in every part of my life. One foot here, the other there. Christian and Jewish; Mainstream and Woo Woo; Raw Food and (cooked) meat eater. I make my living translating spiritual experience to a mainstream audience. I have taught creative visualization to corporate executives; I have taught healers and mystics to use computers.

Bottom line: I am a bridge.Oh, and I write in cafes.So, here's a question for you, inspired by today's Reverb 10 prompt: What do you keep doing no matter where you land? What calls to you? What is that one thing that, when you are doing it, transports you out of yourself, straight into purpose?