You Are A Specialist (Or At Least You Should Be) | Becky Castle Miller

A month after we moved to the Netherlands, I heard Katherine howling outside the bathroom while I was trying to shower. (This is not unusual.) I hollered at her to calm down and went back to shampooing my hair. Then my friend Rebecca, visiting us from the States, knocked on the door and said, ?I really think you should come out here,? very calmly, ?there?s blood.? (THIS is unusual.)

You know how head wounds bleed.

Joshua had shoved Katherine off the top bunk, and she had split the back of her head on the radiator edge. We had no Dutch health insurance and no Dutch doctor and very few Dutch words. When I called the hospital, they said to take her to a general practitioner instead of the emergency room. So we called a local doctor friend for a GP recommendation in Maastricht. Matthew grabbed a Green Wheels car (did I mention the part about how we don?t own a car?) and we hurried K in to the city center.

In spite of all the blood, the injury wasn?t serious, so the very friendly family doctor (also named Katherine) made quick work of the four stitches.

When I was 18, I hit a tree. And knocked myself out. You should know that A. my parents had only one tree in their front yard, and B. I was on foot. I don?t actually remember what happened, but somehow I literally ran into the tree on my way back from the mailbox. The part I do remember is waking up, on the ground, facing away from the tree, checking to make sure all my teeth were still there.

I stumbled up the hill to the house where my little brother Daniel was home alone. He kept calm and carried on quite well in the face of his sister?s bloody face?he says when he answered the door, I was hunched over and catching the blood in my cupped hands.

Daniel got me a wet washcloth before calling a pediatrician whose kids we babysat. It seemed like Joel arrived in seconds. After one glance at my mangled face, he knew the right member of the local medical community to call: a plastic surgeon.

With delicate stitchery and the right topical medicines and follow up, the gashes healed completely. Though I spent weeks after the accident?an eternity for an already-awkward teen girl?doing a solid impression of a scary Halloween mask, today you can?t even see the scars. (The ones on my face. I think the emotional ones might still be there; certain family and friends know they can still get a reaction by bringing up The Tree.)

A general practitioner would not have been able to do the intricate stitches on my face. I needed a specialist, and the first responder knew exactly what kind of specialty to look for. Because he had specialized, the plastic surgeon was able to help me in a way that my daughter?s GP could not.

Specializing. It?s not just for doctors anymore.

I need to become a specialist in my career and life, and so do you.

I am?scared to specialize, because it means I?ll say no to all the other possibilities.?But it means I?ll get better at what I?m really (and uniquely) good at. Getting better at what I do well and love doing means I?ll help more people, and that?s what I really want anyway.

You need to become a specialist because you have particular gifts and talents, and to help others, you want people to be able to find you when they need you.

So, what?s the process of narrowing down your skill set to arrive at the niche where you can most flourish personally and most help others? (Hint: Your purpose is at the intersection of??help people + your talent?)

1. What are you generally interested in?

What field of study trips your trigger??What concepts get you excited?

I have always been very relationally focused and have been particularly interested in helping women. Most of the work and volunteering that has gotten me really excited has involved helping women. Like leading multiple groups through sexual trauma recovery workshops and editing a manuscript about frugal homemaking.

2. What complementary interests do you have?

?Doing more of what you already do well yields only incremental improvement. To get appreciably better at it, you have to work on complementary skills?what we call?nonlinear?development. This has long been familiar to athletes as cross-training.? Making Yourself Indispensable from the Harvard Business Review

Teaching is a skill I?ve developed since I was in high school and taught junior high girls in Sunday school and homeschoolers in a creative writing class.

Even in non-people-focused jobs, the parts I have liked best have been the people-and-idea-focused parts. As a newspaper editor, I liked helping writers develop their best work. As an education coordinator at a non-profit, I enjoyed mentoring our interns.

The goal of teaching is helping people improve in some area,?so I could narrow down my focus to helping women make better lives.

3. What practical skills do you have?

I?m really good at organizing information. I?ve coordinated curriculum development for a national youth camp project and redone the content structure for websites. One of the most valuable ways I help my husband is organizing concepts for him: he paces around and talks while I take notes, then I structure it all so it makes sense.

(I am terrible at organizing spaces, though. Bemoaning the state of our bedroom a few days ago, my husband decided what he would write on my tombstone: ?Here lies Becky Miller. At least she had an organized head.?)

The combination of teaching and structuring information makes me good at the practical skills of writing and public speaking.

I could further refine my purpose statement as?writing and speaking focused on helping women make better lives

4. What is your personal context?

I?m 31, married, a mom of three,?American, living in Western Europe.?While I can speak on some general themes applicable to most women, I probably can?t give a lot of advice to those significantly older than me.?I?m familiar with Western concepts of emotional health but would have no idea where to start in addressing an Eastern perspective.

Narrowing my target demographic, as it were, helps in specializing: writing and speaking to help Western women between the ages of 24-40 make better lives

5. What difficulties have shaped you?

I?ve moved around a lot in life and have dealt with the resulting loneliness and?lack of rootedness in a ?home.??I?ve loved and lost?and healed from a broken heart. I?ve birthed babies and come back from the brink of postpartum depression.

The strongest empathies I feel are for women dealing with emotional brokenness and mental health problems. This is where I can comfort others with the comfort I?ve been given.

It makes sense, then, for me to focus on those aspects of ?making better lives.?

My specialty is writing and speaking to help Western women between the ages of 24-40 find emotional and mental health.

?

This is where I can focus my efforts and my strengths and help other people. And it turns out that being?well-rounded isn?t that valuable anyway.

What are you good at, and how can you specialize in work and life? And please tell me if you?ve done something more humiliating than knocking yourself out by walking into a tree. Because God knows my family will keep reminding me about it?like such as this LOL Cat Daniel made for me:

Source: http://www.beckycastlemiller.com/index.php/you-are-a-specialist-or-at-least-you-should-be/

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