The Gift in You: Discovering New Life Through Gifts Hidden in Your Mind (7 page)

Recently I was working with a teacher in a school and midway through her lesson she commanded all the children to look at her and would not move on until they all did. I watched the class and noticed a couple of children look but their eyes glazed over, and I knew immediate-
ly
they were looking but not seeing and were moving into their own mental maps to process what the teacher was about to say.

As you can see, when we can recognize these things, we can recognize how best to operate in our own gifts and how best to help others grow in theirs.

Jeffrey

My son Jeffrey has Logical/Mathematical and Visual/Spatial at the top of his thinking cycle. So, when he's playing or thinking, I know he's logically imagining in his mind. He comes up with the most incredible questions - firing them at the speed of light because the Linguistic type of thinking is his third pillar in the cycle and he expresses - often out loud - the thoughts he is logically visualizing. He consolidates memory and he builds thoughts through words. We can talk to him when he's ready to further process. I often catch myself trying to answer his questions as fast as he asks them and get frustrated in the process because he isn't really looking for the answer yet. I often made this mistake in the past. I would say things like, "Jeffrey, let me finish answering your question," and he would look at me all surprised because he hadn't even heard what I was saying. Once ready, he would then pause and look at me. Now I know that means, "I actually do now want an answer." We know that he is operating very deeply, so we allow him to have that space now, because we understand him.

Alexandria
 

I love describing my daughter Alexandria's gift, because so many people who have Kinesthetic at the top as their dominant pillar are misunderstood. If we had understood her gift earlier, we would also have had a much more peaceful household when she was young.

Out of the Seven Pillars, the dominant pillar for my youngest child Alexandria is Kinesthetic. When I try to teach her something or communicate with her, I always keep in mind that if there is any way to integrate movement or show her hands-on, she will learn bet-
ter
with something along those lines. If I just describe something to her with loads of words, I won't touch her soul or get through to who she really is and how she thinks. She may be able to repeat what I said, but for her to truly process it deeply there needs to be some hands-on learning, movement or "showing how" involved.

However, when she was very young - around 2 - her way of troubleshooting in any situation, or her approach to problem management was to use physical means to express her frustration. You know, if her brothers or sisters irritated her, she'd just kick whoever might be standing nearby.

Needless to say, as a parent, it was challenging.

Because she didn't have the verbal skills to reason at such a young age and because she's so Kinesthetic dominant, I now know that her process was something along the lines of, "I can't say it, so I'll just
physi
-
cally
show you you're irritating me." As she got older and more verbal, we were able to teach her other ways to express herself.

Now
Alexy
is 11, so she's obviously older and can deal with issues really well. She is still physically expressive, which is apparent in her facial expressions. Now we can recognize when it's best to talk something out and when it's best to hit the deck. We'll say, "Oh,
Alexy's
having a Kinesthetic moment. Let's leave her alone." I have also found that giving her a hug and talking her through the situation works absolute wonders. The physical touch of the hug releases endorphins and
oxytocin
which helps calm her down.

Her Kinesthetic and Interpersonal types of thinking in her top two pillars make her an incredibly sensitive child. She is compassionate and feels others' pain and sorrow and will do everything in her power to help solve their problems. She is also very loyal and serious.

Because we now understand the structure of our own
giftings
and our children's, our family has a deeper understanding of how we can work together. When you operate in your gift, you free others to operate in theirs.

To help you discover the structure of your gift, I have designed a 210-question Gift Profile to help determine the order of your thought sequence.

At this point, there is no surefire way of measuring precisely how much you use each pillar of thought, but there are ways to get a very good idea and the profile I have developed is one. Even if we used brain scanning and imaging techniques, what we would see on them is not the real-time unique thinking pattern. Instead it would be showing the result of the main thinking pattern that brought a thought into conscious awareness in the first place. These scans would show the main focus of the task, reading or drawing for example, but not the thought process leading up to the task. This is because thinking in real-time is extraordinarily fast. We see the fruit, not the process; however, the fruit reflects the process.

The simple "yes" or "no" answer questions in the Gift Profile have been developed over twenty years - based on my doctoral research and years of clinical experience and research on the science of thought and the brain. These questions are designed to help identify a close approximation of your thought pattern.

Once scored, the Gift Profile will have ranked the Seven Pillars from highest to lowest, showing us the order of your pillars - the structure of your gift. Understanding the structure of your gift helps you understand how you can maximize your gift and if there are any gift-blockers you need to overcome.

If you don't maximize the potential of your structure of thought because of gift-blockers, you
caisse
great opportunities. In Part Four, we will be discussing gift-blockers and how to recognize and deal with them.

In the meantime, the science of thought is fascinating and an integral part of understanding how your gift operates.

Science of Thought

As you process information, it loops through your Seven Pillars and each loop contributes to a deeper understanding of the information. All the loops start at the front of the brain, then loop over to the dominant type of thought and then back to the frontal lobe. Then the second loop starts from the frontal lobe to the next highest pillar and so on (see diagram on page 46).
⁸

What is the result? You use all seven types of thinking in your "hardwired" order - if you don't have gift-blockers, this order is like a well-worn pathway that is a shortcut home.

As you think in the way that your brain was designed to function, your brain kicks into high gear and you operate like a fine-tuned piano with all seven types of thought tuned into thinking "it" through. When this happens, all kinds of great chemicals shoot through your brain and a frenzy of memory building begins!

The firing of electrical impulses through your brain is fast, efficient and organized. The brain is not a conglomerate of interconnected parts but an infinitely integrated and exceptionally organized self-regulating system. The thought circuits in the brain are altered by experience, so the more you think in the way you were designed to think, operating in your gift, the more you develop your brain. In fact, as the proficiency of your brain improves, so does your brain health and intelligence.

As we've reviewed, each one of us has seven steps that our thoughts must sequence through in order to develop and complete a thought loop and process the thought (see diagram on page 46):

1. In development stage one, information comes in through your five senses and activates existing thoughts in your mind. This is experienced as the awareness of gathering information and the activation of thoughts in your mind just on the tip of consciousness.
   

1. In development stage two, you start to build a temporary memory. You experience this as a thought of new information that you may or may not remember.
   

1. In development stage three, the information is consolidated. Yu experience this as thinking, “This is or isn’t starting to make sense.”
   

1. In development stage four, as though to confirm accuracy, more connections are invoked. You experience this as a feeling of “This is correct or something is missing,” or “It’s not quite right or it is almost right.”
   

1. In development stage five, integration into existing circuits starts and continues. You begin to feel you are gaining a level of proficiency.
   

1. In development stage six, a level of application begins and you experience this as a feeling of “This is meaningful; I can use this or do this.”
   

1. In development stage seven, the thought completes its first cycle. You experience this as “I am starting to get a handle on what this means,” or “I really don’t understand and need to think this
   through some more.”
   

Although the steps are the same for each one of us, the area of the brain - the pillar of thought - that is stimulated in each step is different.

Let's look at an example of a real Gift Profile. Remember, this is simply an example and your sequence will be unique to you.

Here is Kim's Gift Profile, the structure of her gift:

1. Linguistic
   

1. Intrapersonal
   

1. Interpersonal
   

1. Musical
   

1. Visual/Spatial
   

1. Kinesthetic
   

1. Logical/Mathematical
   

When information cycles through Kim's brain, here is the applied process (see diagram on page 46):

1. Development stage one – Linguistic: The information comes in through one of her five senses and activates existing thoughts in her mind. She best absorbs information through words – speaking, writing, reading and seeing words in her mind.
   

1. Development stage two – Intrapersonal: She starts to build a temporary memory. As her brain begins to introspect and go “quiet,” she will experience this as a thought that she might or might not remember.
   

1. Development stage three – Interpersonal: As the information is consolidated, Kim might start to share and communicate using interpersonal skills, helping her brain to make sense of her thoughts.
   

1. Development stage four – Musical: In order to confirm accuracy, more connections are invoked, and Kim may experience this as a very instinctive feeling that something is correct or something is missing, it’s not quite right or it is almost right. Because of the musical nature of this type of thought, Kim may tap her foot, or click a pen rhythmically – all of these help her brain to confirm the accuracy of the information.
   

1. Development stage five – Visual/Spatial: The integration of the new information into existing circuits starts and continues. Kim may experience this as the feeling of a level of proficiency that she sees in her mind’s eye.
   

1. Development stage six – Kinesthetic: At this point, a level of application begins. Kim may experience this through movement may be rocking in a chair, tracing her finger along her notes or standing up and walking around – as a feeling of “this is meaningful, I can use this or do this.” She is quite literally moving in a focused way at this point.
   

1. Development stage seven – Logical/Mathematical: The thought completes its first cycle, applying logical reasoning and thinking. Kim may experience this as “I am starting to get a handle on what this means” or “I really don’t understand and need to think this through some more.” She may create an action plan,
   written or thought out, on the steps to move forward.
   

Then, Kim will reopen the thought and go through the process again straight away, and maybe an hour or day or week later, and so on, in order to establish the circuit that she built, and again after that and as many times as she wants or needs or chooses to. It is up to her.

Once the neural circuit becomes established, fewer neurons are required to perform the task and the circuit becomes available to other circuits in an integrative and interconnected way.

Through life, that truth-value, that uniqueness, that gift will be developed to whatever level of intellect you desire. So your intelligence is in whose hands? Yours!

See, God hardwired you to be an incredibly gifted, intelligent person. The level of your gifting, the level of your intelligence that He's given you is developed by using your brain correctly and reaching the level of intelligence that you desire.

If Logical/Mathematical happens to be at the bottom of the order of your gift, and you aren't that great
atth
, it doesn't matter. If you develop your gifting, the others will naturally follow.

We have had math students who have been failing math. I am thinking of one of my students back in South Africa who was dominant Musical and Kinesthetic thinking and failing math.

He was desperate to play a musical instrument, but his parents wouldn't allow him to until he improved his math grade. Well, I profiled him and showed his parents that the way to get his gift going and pull all of his grades up was through his Musical pillar, since it was the highest. So we got him going on keyboard, we got him playing the drums, we got him singing, and we got him playing in a little band.