This is third in a series of real life stories of how knowing what's behind your passion will help you get into a career you'll love. This was one of the more intense clients we’ve ever had the pleasure of helping. It’s a story Dan (not his real name) and his experience disabling IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices... bombs) in Iraq.
Dan contacted us from San Diego when he was on home leave from his military service. Dan spent the first half of his career as a Navy Seal. When he called us, he was in the Marines as an IED Tech in Iraq. IED Techs are the people who are called to disable IED's.
Dan was considered the best IED Tech in all of Iraq for the two years he was there, but he desperately wanted something different. Dan had enough of that job for obvious reasons. He wanted our help in finding a new career. The only life he could see was one in the military or maybe in the police force afterward.
When we take clients through The Clarifier interview, we ask them to remember a day or two when the time flew by. Most people describe a vacation day, or a play day, or an isolated day at work. In Dan’s case, he remembered two days. One was his very first day in Fallujah, and the other was when he was a teenager engaged in a martial arts session.
Dan began by telling us about his day in Fallujah. Five minutes after he arrived in the city, he was called out to disable three IEDs (bombs) in a local neighborhood. When he arrived, not only was he disabling bombs, but he was also dodging bullets and grenades being sent his way by the local insurgents. This would not be an energizing day to most of us, but it was to Dan...
Dan was surrounded by swarms and swarms of Should Bees on that day. “I should stay low. I should trust nobody. I should make sure I know my ingress and egress.” Even though Dan’s Given Talent was evident on that day, it was buried underneath layers and layers of Should Bees which made seeing his Given Talent a bit more difficult (but not impossible). We decided to explore his other energizing day.
So off we went, taking Dan through another energizing day when he was doing martial arts as a teenager. He recollected a day he sparred an opponent who was bigger and more trained than him. As we dug further and further into how he was thinking on that day, Dan’s Given Talent became crystal clear and it was fascinating (as they all are).
It turns out Dan is fascinated with motion, especially human motion, because he believes it is a glimpse into how the other person is thinking. The sequence of motions of others is like his roadmap into their mind. As he watches how others physically move, he is able to (with uncanny accuracy) predict what is going through the other person’s mind. That whole process happens within Dan in nanno-seconds. He’s been doing it since he was a kid, he did it as a soldier, and he’ll even do it in retirement. He can’t help but do it because after all, that is him.
That’s why he was able to defeat much larger and more skilled martial arts opponents. That’s why he was so successful disabling IED’s in Iraq. In effect, when he disabled a bomb, he wasn’t disabling the bomb…he was actually disabling the bomb maker by knowing exactly what they were thinking when they were putting that bomb together.
That is why Dan was alive when some of his friends were not.
When we pointed Dan’s Given Talent out to him, he didn’t think it was any big deal. He said, “Doesn’t everybody think that way?” (Yeah, right!! That actually is a very common thing that happens with our clients. When their Given Talent is uncovered, they discount it because it’s so much a part of them.) We knew differently. Our job was merely to point his Given Talent out to him and help him see the great things that happen as the result of it.
Dan went back to finish his tour of Iraq, and he used this knowledge to know exactly how to become an even more effective IED Tech. But that isn’t the end of the story…
When his tour ended, Dan immediately enrolled in law school. Today, he is whizzing through law school to become a litigating attorney. It’s easy to see how Dan’s ability to get into the mind of his opponent will serve him well in his newfound career. He is excelling and loving his new sense of direction.
Dan is an example of someone who is blossoming, even though he lived through more tough times most of us can imagine. He found out what energized him at his core, and found that he had tons of ways he could use that core way of thinking. He’ll be a natural litigator.
I hope this story provides a spark within you. There are lots of great things happening out there today, and many of them are happening within you without you even knowing about it.
If you'd like to know how much you're using your Given Talent at work and at home today, try our free Reality Check by clicking HERE
Have some fun with just being YOU!!
Author:
Dave Dutton - Founder of stuckinarut.com - “Answering the question for all ages, "What do I want to be when I grow up?”
