Page 107 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

STEP 4: IDENTIFY YOUR NATURAL TALENTS AND ABILITIES 95

my mother’s attic. They are full of misspellings and are written in
block letters, as I hadn’t learned how to write in cursive yet. My sis-
ters were big readers, so I always thought
that they were the smart ones and that I
was the dumb one in the family. As I got If children grew up
older, my sisters both won spelling bee according to early
championships, and I never even tried indications, we should
to enter, since I was a terrible speller. have nothing but
Nevertheless, I was the one who always geniuses.
kept a journal, complete with all its mis-
spellings. I still do. And funny enough, —JOHANN WOLFGANG
VON GOETHE
adopting the daily practice of writing is
one of the best ways to write a book.
I never thought that I could write
well, because my father is an excellent writer and has written a
novel; I knew I’d never be able to write the way he could. To com-
pound matters, I was a slow reader as well as a rotten speller. In
spite of that handicap, the English classes were my favorites, and
after graduating from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, I
went on to get a master’s in English at Georgetown (for fun). In
one of those courses, the professor asked to see me in his office
about the paper I had written. I was worried I had done something
wrong. He told me my paper was excellent, gave me an A+ for it,
and said it was worthy of submitting for publication. He offered to
help me get it published, and I declined.
Looking back on it now, I can’t believe I didn’t say yes to his gener-
ous offer of support. Partly I didn’t want to take his time, and partly
I was just so convinced I wasn’t a good writer that I couldn’t imag-
ine anyone’s wanting to publish my paper. It wasn’t until years later
after reading a little book, Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James, that
it occurred to me to write a book about coaching. St. James’s book
is a short, square gift book containing one hundred tips on how to
slow down and enjoy life—an excellent read, by the way. Each tip
is about three paragraphs long. It inspired me to write a little tiny
coaching book (at the time, there were no coaching books on the
market) in the same style. I sat down and started to write and, over