Leveraging Your Strengths to Fulfill Your Purpose
Daron emphasizes the importance of leveraging one’s strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses. He shares insights from his journey, highlighting the power of responding to divine purpose rather than initiating on one’s own. Through anecdotes and references to biblical teachings, Earlewine encourages listeners to maximize their unique potential, using assessments like StrengthsFinder to identify and develop exceptional talents. Learn how embracing your God-given strengths can lead to greater fulfillment and impact in life. Discover practical steps to becoming indispensable in your personal and professional endeavors.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️Understanding your purpose involves recognizing the unique potential hardwired into you by God.
⚡️Focus on strengths rather than weaknesses to become indispensable and exceptional.
⚡️Rejecting the myth of being well-rounded can increase your impact and effectiveness.
⚡️Leverage unique strengths to fulfill the potential for which you were created.
⚡️God’s focus is on the fulfillment of potential, not just the avoidance of mistakes.
Notable Quotes:
⚡️”You are created on purpose and for purpose.”
⚡️”Our life always has to be response, not initiative.”
⚡️”What I’ve begun to realize is that…God is really passionate about…all of the things he creates on purpose and for purpose.”
⚡️”People pay for tens. People promote tens.”
⚡️”If you operate in weakness long enough, you will begin to believe that you’re weak.”
Episode Resources:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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TRANSCRIPT
And what I’ve begun to realize is that I think one thing that God is really passionate about, about all of the things he creates on purpose and for purpose, is that they fulfill the potential for the purpose that they were creating. Created on purpose and for purpose. Everybody, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine here with you in person and so stoked that we’re jumping through another episode.
Been great to get a few messages from listeners about what you’re learning about this, the impact of this series in the past one. I’m so excited about what’s going on with the rogue collective in partnership in tandem with Blackbird Mission. Things are moving forward, and it’s just. It’s just really, really fulfilling for me. I was talking to my. To my boys this past week and talking to my wife is that, you know, when you have an idea and you get a vision of something that you think that you want to create, and if you feel like, you know, that God’s been nudging you towards it, there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of questions, there’s a lot of sense of, can I do that? Should I do that?
All those doubts, all those fears, or the imposter syndrome, all those things that come to mind, you know, I battled through those things for. For years. And some of this content that we’re teaching. If you’ve been a longtime listener to the podcast and follower of. Of. Of our. Of our ministry and of our mission, you know that most of this is not new. I’ve been teaching some of these things literally since, like, 2004, so.
And I think the thing that feels most fulfilling to me right now, and I wanted to encourage you, is, is I was just saying to my boys and my wife this week, like, wow, this is, like, this is really going to happen. Like, I had this idea, this vision, had this burden, and it’s just a kind of a continuation of this journey. I feel like I’ve been on for my whole adult life, really. And then it’s actually working and it’s happening. And I shouldn’t be so surprised because it’s like I’m doing my best to actually put into practice everything that I’m teaching you on this podcast.
And it works. And it makes me think about one of my favorite scriptures. I’ve shared it with you many times from the book of Ephesians, where it says that we’re the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he’s prepared in advance for you to Do. I was just coaching a group of four brothers this week as a part of what we’re doing with Rogue Collective. And. And when I said to them, I said, in the best way possible. What I want you to realize is that this whole deal is a setup in the best possible way, like your purpose, right? It’s been hardwired into who you’ve been created to be, and the plans for you to fulfill that are prepared in advance for you to do.
And so the distinction, I told them and got this from a mentor last year. He said, our life always has to be response, not initiative. Response, not initiative. And the context there is, if there is a God, and if he is for you and not against you, and if he is near you, not far away, and if he has created you on purpose and for purpose, then the trajectory and the whole operating system of your life is not you stirring up enough initiative, enough courage for you to go and make it happen on your own.
It’s all prepared in advance for you to do. And what you have to learn to do is become still silent, right? And then have enough solitude in your life where you can hear what it is that you’re supposed to do that you can follow those gentle nudges that we talk about all the time on the podcast. Because then what happens is you begin to respond to what he’s inviting you into, and you begin to step in what’s already been prepared for you.
And what that’s done for me is it’s given me a ton of confidence, it’s given me a ton of peace, and it’s given me boatloads of humility and dependence on the source. Right? I’m not alone in this. I’m not just making this up. I’m walking into what’s prepared in advance for me to do. And I want you to feel that same emotion. I want you to feel that same momentum. I want you to create the future that’s already on his heart, on his mind, that you’re prepared in advance for you to do. And I’m guessing that’s what you want for your life, too.
And to do so, and to do so effectively, we have to understand what we’re going to dive into in this. In this podcast, which is leveraging what you do better than millions of other people to become indispensable and exceptional in your life. Right on. So stoked you’re with us once again. If you’re. If you’re digging what we’re going through and you’re like, I didn’t know they had coaching that we could get involved, involved in a group who can just go to roguecollectivecoaching.com,
click on the link to schedule a 30 minute discovery call with me. We’ll jump on the phone, talk about what you want to accomplish, where you want to grow and do our best to put you in a group. To begin this process, we’re going to jump into the third of the four core questions. We’ve talked about who you are, your identity, an image bearer, that you’re a pioneer, you’re a creative, you’re a connector, you’re a nurturer, you’re a guardian. We’ve talked about why you do what you do, those motivations that are creating expectations in your life and looking at the enneagram, those nine personality types so you can understand that and understand your specific way to leverage those motivations to grow and also to connect in powerful ways. And then we get to this third core question, which is, what do I do? Harrison, I want you to think about this.
You know who you are, you know what’s motivating you. Now I want you to image. Imagine what we’re talking about is almost like you’re, you know, think about Batman in his awesome like utility belt of all of his gadgets, the things that help him do Batman type of things. This is what we’re discovering as you’re understanding your strengths. These are the unique superpowers that have been hardwired into my brain that if I grow in my skill and on these talents, I add skill and I add knowledge and I add experience.
I can get to the place in my life where I’m, I’m performing practically perfectly in these areas and I’m becoming indispensable to my world. Okay? The story that I usually use to, to start this off with, if I’m, if I’m speaking in a corporate world or if I’m speaking at a, at a public school, I’ll use the context of the story of a financial manager, financial advisor who comes together, runs a big firm. He pulls together his top three people and he says, hey, here’s the deal. I’m taking a year vacation, going to go, you know, cruise the Caribbean. I’m going to do a worldwide cruise. I’m gone for a year and here’s all I want you to do. I want you to manage my resources.
And so he gives one guy 5 million, he gives another guy 2 million, he gives another guy 1 million. He says, take care of it, I’ll be back In a year, the first guy goes out and he’s ambitious, right? He’s ready to go. He’s using his strengths. He takes it. Takes some risks, right? He wants to make it happen, and he doubles the money. Second guy does the exact same thing. And the third guy is overwhelmed with fear.
Got a little imposter syndrome going in there. Doesn’t trust, right? The financial advisor. And so he just takes it and he buries it in his backyard so nothing can happen to him. After a year, the guy comes back and he says, hey, let’s figure out what we did with the investment. And the first guy says, hey, listen, I doubled it. And the final financial advisor is going nuts. He’s so happy. He’s like, yes, it’s exactly what I wanted to see happen.
Tell me how it happened. He’s telling him stories. You took this risk. We did this we didn’t think was going to work out, but then it did. And we had to get his team together, give them all the detail. And the guy goes, man, that’s phenomenal. Listen, we’re having a huge party on Friday night. I want you to be there. We’re going to celebrate. Second guy, same exact story, gets to the third guy, and he says, hey, listen, man, I didn’t want to lose your money.
I was afraid of making mistakes. Like, I didn’t feel like maybe I, you know, you only gave me a million. You gave that guy 5. Maybe you don’t believe in me. Like, I just. Ah, man. So here’s what I did. I want to make sure I didn’t screw anything up. I want to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. So I just. Buried in the backyard, here you go, man. Here’s your million dollars back. And he’s shocked because his boss loses it, right?
He says, you’re so lazy, right? You’re so lazy. And even, almost like. There’s just almost like a wickedness to what you’re doing. You were given this opportunity, you were given such resource, and you just. You squandered. And he says, listen, we’re having a big party Friday night, but you’re not invited. In fact, you’re fired. And the question I ask on that is, like, what was the financial advisor? What was he the most passionate about? Was he most passionate about the.
And the reason he got angry with that guy, was it because he made mistakes? Did he do a bunch of things wrong? And the answer is no, he didn’t do anything wrong. The anger and the passion from the financial advisor was because he Absolutely squandered and wasted the potential. When I’m talking about this in a faith based space, right? If you are, you know, a follower of Jesus and you’re in the scriptures, often, you’ll know that’s just the story of the parable of talents where Jesus gives this example of the Father giving, right, giving us these resources.
And in that story, he comes back and the one that squanders, the one that wastes his potential, he says, you wicked and lazy servant. And that always bothered me because I’m like, wicked lazy. Like, what’s the big deal? He just, you know, he gave you back what you gave him. And what it’s shown me is that the financial advisor in my fake story and God in the real story, he’s actually more passionate about your potential than he is about the mistakes or I would say even the sin that you may have in your life. I’m not making an excuse for that. It can ruin your life. In fact, it will.
But I lived a lot of my life being really afraid of God, that all he was doing was watching me with like, you know, a little scorecard and failure, failure, failure. And that’s the thing he was really, really upset about in my life. And what I’ve begun to realize is that I think one thing that God is really passionate about, about all of the things he creates on purpose and for purpose, is that they fulfill the potential for the purpose that they were created.
And that might be a new paradigm for you, that might be a new thought for you, but I want you to get passionately curious about it and go, how do I actually view, right the source? How do I view his view and his passion for me? Because if you realize that you’ve been given amazing potential, you’ve been given everything you need for the life that you were created to live, are you leveraging the best of you to actually fulfill that potential? Or are you sitting back afraid that you might make some mistakes?
And so what I want to do in this session is help you get clearer on those strengths so that you can begin to leverage them and begin to create the future. And the question is, are you focused on your strengths? Are you focused on your strengths? Gallup did a huge survey when they came up with the now discover your strengths book and the whole course and the strength finders test. And they found that usually 8 in 10 people say, no, I do not use my strengths regularly on a regular basis at work, 8 and 10, 80% of people are like, no, I’m not using my strengths. And we could unpack a lot of those reasons, but I think one of them starts really, really early in life for us. Cause think about this, think about how we’ve all grown up in a weakness based culture.
Think about coming back from, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, whatever. It didn’t matter what grade it was. You come home and you bring a report card home and you got an A, a B, a C and a D. The conversation with your parents after you come home with the D. Maybe it’s a D minus, right? What is the focus of that conversation? Oh man. Son, you have such an amazing math brain. Like I don’t think you even ask for help. And you got an A, like a strong A in math. That’s phenomenal.
You know, you had to work a little harder in your science class, but you got a B. I know you, but man, that was great. And then you know, your speech class, A plus. I mean you are a phenomenal communicator. Like how long does that conversation happen? My guess is not very long because my guess is the question. And the question comes to is what in the world were you doing to get the D right? Like you got a D in trying to think of another subject.
You know, you got a D&PE right. That would, that would not be, that would be really hard to get. I would, I would say is a fail PE but whatever the course is, my guess is for the next three to six months, your parents are getting you a tutor, you’re going to do extra work in that subject and they’re going to say, listen, I’m great that you got that A plus. But here’s your focus for the next six months you’re going to focus on fixing your weaknesses.
And here’s the reality John Maxwell talks about. Then at a scale of like 1 to 10 as far as growth in a lifetime. John Maxwell author, a great leadership coach that most people can grow about two points with a lot of effort, you can grow about 2 points. So you look at that for me. Math is a disaster for me. I failed math twice in college. I’ve told you guys that. It was, it was, it’s not good. Okay?
It’s, it’s the joke around my house because my boys are killing it in math and I can’t even figure out how to tip people 10, you know, 20% when I’m out for dinner. And so let’s say I’m a three in math, which is being real generous if I go and start really working and doing a lot of extra work, getting Tutors, podcasts, watching things, studying, doing everything I can. Here’s the good news. In a couple years, I might be a 5 out of 10 for math.
If you were looking for an accountant, would you hire me? Hey, Daron’s got a great personality, mate. He tells great stories, really great communicator. Yeah, but he is unbelievably average in actually doing math. Would you want me as your cpa? Let me answer the question. No. No one. As John Maxwell says, no one pays for average. So why in the world would we spend the majority of our life for one, focused on our weaknesses and then helping them bump up two points? So that we could say, hey, look, I’m mediocre. Would you like to promote me?
No, they don’t want to promote you. They’re thinking about firing you. But what if you were to find the five things that you do better than millions and millions of other people and you poured your life into making those exceptional? You gained, you gained skill and knowledge and experience and you poured into that. Check it out. If you’re an eight, you could become a ten. A ten out of ten. And guess what? People pay for tens. People promote tens.
We’ve got to focus on our strengths and to focus on them, we actually have to know what they are. And here’s the danger of this is that if you operate in your weaknesses long enough, you will begin to believe that you’re weak. If you operate in weakness long enough, you will begin to believe that you’re weak. I’ve seen it happen in my life. I’ve seen it happen in other people’s lives. I’ve seen it happen in the life of elephants. Okay, so I’ve got this picture when I do this presentation, this huge elephant and he’s chained to this tree by this, you know, not a very strong chain.
And I’ve heard it said that the way they train elephants in captivity is that they, they put a chain on the baby elephant that is strong enough to keep them there, to keep them captive, and they never have to change the size of the chain. Why? Because elephants have a great memory and they remember when they were a six month old elephant, they couldn’t break that chain. So when they become a six year old elephant that is massive and could just probably think about it and step on the chain and break it, they don’t. You want to know why?
Because they believe they’re weak. Because they’ve been sitting in the thought of their weakness for too long. Don’t let that be what you do. Don’t let that be your life. You look back, you get one amazing, divinely gifted life. Don’t look back on it and go, wow, I wasted that because the whole time I thought I was weak. If we’re going to step into this, we have to do. We’ve got to reject the myth of becoming well rounded.
You know, I’m just looking to be a real well rounded person, Daron. Well, you’re not going to have much impact. Here’s the thought. If I told you, right, that we had 12 hours to cut down 100 foot tree, we got to cut this tree down. We’ve got to, you know, make it into a house or whatever for your family, but you got to do it in 12 hours or else, you know, everyone you know dies in the winter storm. I don’t know what it is. It’s a serious situation and I gave you an option between two tools, a basketball or an ax. Which one would you choose?
So, wow, that basketball sure is well rounded, Daron. In fact, it’s a circle. I want to be well rounded like the basketball. Give me the basketball. Go outside and throw that basketball as hard as you can against that tree and come back in 12 hours and tell me what happened. Your arm is tired. The tree is still there and the basketball probably broke because it’s well rounded. But the axe, it’s all edges.
It’s all edges. But guess what? The sharpness, the focus of its edges actually makes it impactful and effective in doing what it needs to do. And so if your whole life you’ve been trying to become super well rounded, stop. Because you are lessening your impact. You need to be all edges. And when I teach this, I have people say, well, Daron, I don’t know if you know about the Bible, but it talks about there that, you know, God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. And so I think what you’re saying is unbiblical.
No, I’m not saying that. You can ignore your character, right? Well, I’m just focused on my strengths. My character’s, you know, just a garbage heap, but just no big deal. I’m just. That’s not what I’m saying. I agree. Is weakness and suffering, right? They are so often the pathway of growth. I’m not saying you don’t grow. What I’m talking is about the actual gifts that you’ve been given, like the things that you’ve been hardwired into who you are to make the impact that you need to make.
Right? That’s the one how we bring in A lot of ways how we bring glory to God by saying, these are the gifts you’ve given me and I’m going to give them back to you tenfold. Yeah, you’re going to show up in the weaknesses of where I need to grow, right? I’m not saying that you don’t. Like I said, especially in your character, like you can’t be like, hey, I’m just, I don’t ever show up on time, right. Focusing on my strengths. I’m just late all the time. No, you’ll probably get fired.
I’m not talking about discipline, I’m not talking about character. I’m talking about finding the things that you do, the unique strengths you have and dedicating yourself to that and become a very, very edgy person. Okay. So this whole understanding comes from strength finders. You may have taken that at work before. Maybe someone’s taken you through it. If you haven’t, I want to strongly encourage you to head over to Strengthfinders. Dot buy the assessment and go through it. If you want to go through it with some online training from me, go to spiritualDNA me buy the online course.
You get an access code to take the assessment. There’s lots of other information on the spiritual DNA course that you can take. Very faith based course. If that’s not your jam and you want to actually have some coaching with me, go to roguecollectivecoaching.com Discover, schedule a discovery call and we can put you together in a group and we can start going through this as a group. If you want to do it on your own, totally cool.
But that’s the resource you would go through. And in the book it talks about our talents, right? And a skill is the combination of a skill, right? A talent that you bring actually skill and knowledge together. But it talks about the brain science of our talents, which I think is fascinating to read this for you. Talents are enduring and developed very early in our life. Your talents are knit together in your brain by synaptic connections, right? Called neurons.
On your 42nd day of life, you create your first neuron and 120 days later, you have a hundred billion of them. Mind blowing, right? Six days before you’re born, your neurons start trying to communicate with one another. When they do, a synaptic connection is formed. And by the age of three, each of your hundred billion neurons has formed 15,000 synaptic connections with other neurons. This network that’s happening in your brain, okay, by the age of 3 is unreal.
But check this out. From age 3 to age 15, something somewhat strange happens. You actually begin to lose billions and billions of those connection. And as you ring in your sweet 16th birthday, half of your brain’s synaptic network is gone. That’s why when you’re, when you’re, you know, if you’re raising teenagers, when you got a 16 year old and you’re like, I think you’re kind of brain dead, they are right, they just lost most of their brain.
But what’s left, right, the connections that are left become like six lane super highways of connectivity in your brain. These are your strength, your less developed and forgotten connections. They look like gravel roads. So if you get a little zoom in microscope into the brain, you know, science of Daron’s brain, you find the road labeled math. It is a pothole filled gravel road. You find communication.
Now that looks like Highway 5 in LA, right? That looks like 465 around Indianapolis. It’s a superhighway. Because it was a natural talent that was in my brain that stayed there in the synaptic connections and the neurons, the both sides of the hemispheres of my brain. And I’ve dedicated my life to gain skill and knowledge and experience using that strength and that talent. And now I can perform practically perfectly when I do it.
And it’s become the essence of a lot of my life. The same can be true about you and your strengths. Okay? That’s why it’s so important. That’s why I’m so passionate about this. Because you were created to be exceptional. You are not a rerun, you are not a rehash of someone else. You’re not an imposter. You can be unique. 1 in 33 million people. That’s actually the breakdown of the 34 strengths that you can that your order of your five strengths that you could line up 33 million people before you find somebody with your, with your strength DNA.
Think about that for a minute. Think about how valuable you are to the world and how much the world needs your unique strength DNA mix. We got to find 33 million. We had to interview 33 million people. And then we go, okay, now there’s another, there’s another Bill, there’s another Tom, there’s another straight. You know, Tracy, you are so amazingly created and have such exceptional potential. But you got to discover your strengths and you got to begin to leverage them. Okay?
Now as you go through, you’re going to see, excuse me. The strengths are broken up into four domains of talent. They are executing, influencing, relationship building and strategic thinking, which is a really Cool thing to dig into to start seeing. Like, okay, if I have, you know, three strengths that are in the executing domain, that’s going to be a real sweet spot for me. If I have zero strengths in executing, I know that’s going to be someone like I don’t probably want to be put in a role in my job or in my family where it’s my job to be the person that’s responsible for all the actual things getting finished and the person that’s going to bring a lot of discipline and structure and systems and follow through. I’m going to not be, I’m not going to be good at that.
Right? If you have three or four strengths that are in the relationship building domain, then your life needs to be with people. If you’re spending 40 hours of your job in a cubicle not actually engaging with people, you’re going to hate your job. And guess what? You’re not exceptional probably at your job. I remember talking to somebody I was coaching years ago and they had so many influencing and relationship building strengths and they drove, they drove a truck by themselves all day long.
They never interacted with people during their workday and they were good at their job. And I think that’s something that can sometimes be like. I mean curse might be too strong of a word, but you know, the curse of ability where there are certain things where like, yeah, I can do that and I can do it proficiently enough to not get fired. But am I exceptional at it? Am I world class at it? No. So there’s, you might say, well, I feel like that’s being selfish.
I think it’s being responsible. I think it’s being a good steward of the exceptional abilities that you’ve been given. Right? So once you go take the, take the assessment, check it out. Or you can go to spiritual DNA me or you can go to roguecollectivecoaching.com and we can help coach you up on it. But the world needs your strength and guess what? So do you imagine ending your work weeks and knowing 80% of this week and there’s going to be some mundane stuff that you hate, right?
It is what it is. But 80% of my life is spent using what is exceptional about me and making the greatest possible impact I can on this world. How about that, right? That is what it looks like. To answer this third core question, what do I do better than millions of other people? Appreciate you listening. Would love to hear your feedback and comments. You can always email me Daron@Blackbirdmission.com or Daron@daronearlewine.com or you can text me 317-550-5570 and until we talk again, remember this. You are created on purpose and for purpose, and God’s for you. He’s not against you, and he’s near you. He’s not far away. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast.