Acknowledging Your Creative Strengths and Abilities

By Dan Goodwin

Purpose: To help you to acknowledge the many creative strengths, resources, talents and abilities in other people and recognise they are also ones you have yourself.

Estimated time: 10-15 minutes +

Outline of exercise: With people we know well, it's often very easy to take them for granted and not realise the full extent of what they mean to us and the diversity and depth of their creative strengths and talents.

By a creative strength or talent, we don't necessarily mean they sing as well as Frank Sinatra or Luciano Pavarotti or paint masterpieces in the league of Van Gogh or Monet.

Everyone has their share of strengths in creative areas, which can include being open-minded, being able to support and inspire others to create, or being able to cook delicious meals and host a fantastic party!

Use this type of sentence:

"I acknowledge ______________ for __________________"

to write down as many things as possible that you recognise and thank people in your own life for.

For example you might write:

"I acknowledge Jo for being a supportive friend",

"I acknowledge Andy for being really funny and entertaining"

"I acknowledge Sarah for always being positive and encouraging."

Just write whatever comes to mind, and write as many different sentences as you can think of. Some people you may find you write a whole host of sentences about, while for others just one or two particular strengths and talents come immediately to mind.

When you've finished your list, read it out loud and in full.

How does it feel to verbally acknowledge these things in the people that are important to you?

Now read each sentence in your list out loud again, but this time instead of the person's name you wrote originally, say

"I acknowledge MYSELF for ___________________"

How does it feel now to acknowledge yourself for these positive qualities? Which ones resonated most strongly with you?

Consider the following statement:

"You can't acknowledge a quality in someone else unless you possess that same quality to some extent yourself"

How does this relate to the exercise you've just done?

Action Points:

What would be the benefits for you to regularly doing this exercise? How could you expand and develop it to benefit you even more?

How can your take what you've learnt about yourself and use it to help you in your creative projects and efforts?

How could you use the sentences your created to let those people know what an impact they have on you and what an important part of your life they are? •

© Copyright 2006 Dan Goodwin

7/5/06