You CAN'T be anything you want to be!

“You can’t be anything you want to be, but you can be a whole lot more of who you already are.” ~Tom Rath

Valeyne Grotrian is one of our senior faculty members with Awaken Coach Institute. She offered a fantastic CliftonStrengths workshop within our community about being even more fully yourself. She said, 

"The first time I heard this Tom Rath quote about 15 years ago, I was in disbelief at its claims. Maybe even a little ready to pick a fight with whomever Tom Rath was. How dare you discourage me from my dreams, Tom!

When I realized Tom was referring to ME, not just my career, his quote brought on an even stronger disagreement for me.

Because that meant Tom is saying that WHO I am, ME with all my quirks, my “too muchness”, my naturally recurring patterns of thought and behavior, no matter how much they had been encouraged or discouraged or even made fun of... is ENOUGH.

And not only am I ENOUGH, the world needs me to be a whole lot more of who I am, not less.

Tom, in his sassy genius, was calling me out for playing small. For hiding. For not believing that my unique gifts were good enough.

I wasn’t ready to be MORE of who I already was, because that got in the way of my plan to be more like and to be liked by other people! And I didn’t like being called out on that one bit.

One of the workshop participants said, “What if I chose to love this part of myself?” And further mused, ”What if I stopped hiding this talent because I’ve felt ashamed of it and instead saw it for what it is - a source of strength?”

WOW! THAT is what this quote does for me nowadays. It inspires me to lean into what I uniquely have and realize there is nobody else in this world just like me. Nobody can bring what I bring in the unique way that only I bring it."