Today I Choose to be Gifted – How to be Gifted

I’ve spent six decades believing I’m not artistic. Not creative. Not the kind of person who makes beautiful things with her hands. This wasn’t self-deprecation – it was fact, confirmed by years of evidence. Stick figures that looked like accidents. Crafts that appeared to have been assembled during an earthquake. A complete absence of what I considered artistic talent.

Then I saw a video of Dutch pour painting.

Something about watching paint flow across canvas in unpredictable, gorgeous patterns caught my attention in a way I couldn’t explain. It looked like something I might be able to do, even with my complete lack of artistic credentials. More intriguingly, it looked like something I wanted to try, despite decades of avoiding anything that required creative ability.

I approached my first attempt trepidatiously, expecting the usual outcome: visible proof that some people are artistic and I’m not one of them. Instead, something magical happened. The paint cooperated. Colors blended in ways that surprised and delighted me. By the end of that first session, I was staring at something beautiful that had somehow emerged from my supposedly non-artistic hands.

That’s when I realized that being gifted isn’t about having talents – it’s about being open to discovering gifts you didn’t know you carried.

The Myth of Fixed Abilities

For sixty years, I’d operated under the assumption that abilities are fixed, especially creative ones. You’re either born artistic or you’re not. You either have the gift or you don’t. This binary thinking kept me from even attempting most creative pursuits because I’d already decided I lacked the prerequisite talent.

But Dutch pour painting taught me something profound: the gift isn’t the ability – it’s the willingness to begin despite not knowing if you have the ability. The gift is curiosity strong enough to overcome the fear of being bad at something. The gift is trying something because it calls to you, not because you’re confident you’ll excel at it.

Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset reveals that believing abilities can be developed actually makes development more likely. But what her research doesn’t fully capture is how this mindset shift can happen suddenly, unexpectedly, through a single experience that contradicts decades of self-limiting beliefs.

The Permission of Imperfection

Dutch pour painting became my gateway to creativity precisely because it embraces imperfection as part of the process. You can’t control exactly how the paint flows, where the colors blend, what patterns emerge. The beauty comes from working with the medium rather than trying to dominate it, from accepting surprises rather than demanding predetermined outcomes.

This was revolutionary for someone who’d avoided art because I couldn’t guarantee I’d be good at it. With Dutch pouring, “good” wasn’t about technical skill or realistic representation – it was about creating something beautiful through a process that included elements beyond my control. I could be part of the creative process without having to be solely responsible for the creative outcome.

The permission to be imperfect, to work with rather than against the unpredictable nature of the medium, opened a door I’d kept locked for decades. It turns out I wasn’t ungifted – I’d just been trying to express creativity in ways that didn’t align with how my particular gifts wanted to emerge.

Gifts That Arrive with Age

There’s something profound about discovering new capabilities in your sixties. It challenges everything our culture teaches about aging being about decline rather than development. While my body might not be as strong or quick as it once was, my willingness to experiment, to be vulnerable, to try things that might not work has actually increased with age.

The gift of creativity after sixty comes with advantages I didn’t have when I was younger: I’m less concerned with what others think, more interested in personal satisfaction than external validation, more patient with the learning process because I understand that mastery takes time and practice, not just natural talent.

I also have more appreciation for the process itself rather than just the outcome. When you’re young, creative pursuits often feel like they need to lead somewhere – to a career, to recognition, to some external measure of success. At sixty, the joy of mixing paint and watching it flow is enough. The process itself is the gift.

The Ripple Effect of One Creative Discovery

That first successful Dutch pour painting didn’t just give me a new hobby – it fundamentally shifted how I see my own capabilities. If I could be wrong about my artistic abilities for sixty years, what else might I be wrong about? What other gifts might be waiting for the right invitation to emerge?

The confidence from creating something beautiful spilled over into other areas of my life. I started approaching challenges with more curiosity and less certainty about my limitations. I became more willing to try things that interested me regardless of whether I had previous experience or obvious talent in those areas.

This is the compound effect of recognizing your gifts: each discovery makes the next one more likely because you learn to trust your curiosity over your assumptions about your capabilities.

Recognizing Gifts in Disguise

Looking back, I can see that my creative gifts were always there, just disguised as other things. My ability to see patterns in financial data wasn’t separate from the aesthetic sense that helps me create beautiful paint flows – they were the same gift applied to different mediums. My problem-solving abilities at work weren’t unrelated to the creative problem-solving required in art – they were training for each other.

We often think of gifts as obvious, innate talents that announce themselves early and clearly. But many gifts are subtle, requiring the right circumstances and sufficient courage to reveal themselves. Some gifts only emerge when we stop trying so hard to identify them and start following what genuinely interests us.

**Follow Your Fascination** – Pay attention to what captures your attention, even if it seems unrelated to your established identity or abilities. Fascination is often a gift trying to get your attention.

**Embrace Beginner’s Mind** – Approach new interests with the understanding that you don’t need to be good at something to benefit from trying it. Sometimes the gift is in the attempting, not the achieving.

**Look for Your Unique Angle** – You might not be gifted in the conventional way, but you might have a unique perspective or approach that creates something valuable. Your “limitations” might actually be features, not bugs.

The Gift of Starting

Perhaps the most important gift I discovered through Dutch pour painting isn’t artistic ability – it’s the gift of beginning. The willingness to start something new despite not knowing if you’ll be any good at it. The courage to be publicly bad at something in service of potentially being privately fulfilled by it.

This gift of starting has applications far beyond art. It’s the gift that allows you to have conversations with people who intimidate you, to try foods that seem unfamiliar, to travel to places where you don’t speak the language, to learn skills that don’t relate to your professional identity.

The gift of starting is really the gift of staying curious about what’s possible for you, even when that possibility contradicts everything you thought you knew about yourself.

Today I Choose to Discover

Today, I choose to be gifted not by claiming talents I’ve always had, but by remaining open to gifts I haven’t discovered yet. I choose to trust that my curiosity about something is often a better indicator of potential than my assumptions about my abilities.

I choose to remember that being gifted isn’t about being naturally excellent at something – it’s about being willing to explore what wants to emerge through you when you create the right conditions for discovery.

Because sometimes the most profound gift you can give yourself is permission to try something you’ve convinced yourself you can’t do, and discover that you were only right about half of that equation – you can’t predict what you can do until you actually try doing it.

**Connect with me:**
Instagram: @enlightenzz
Facebook: Enlightenzz
Website: enlightenzz.com