Fortune tellers make the promise that that can allay our fears with their prognostication about what is coming.  Maybe, armed with their information, we can manipulate our path into the future so that what we fear can be avoided.  Or, better yet, they can assure us that what we fear doesn’t exist at all on the path of time we are traveling down. Their predictions can set us at peace in the present if they can reassure us that the fulfillment of our dreams is right around the corner.  All that energy we expend fretting about how things will turn out in the end can be saved with a few simple words from a seer that all will be well, we can relax.

Of course, the accuracy of our local forecaster’s claims aren’t always up to snuff.  In the end, they don’t really give us the confidence we are hoping to gain; they’re just another thing to doubt.

What we need is someone who has really seen the future.  Someone who has seen it and is willing to guide us from the here and now into the future that they know can be ours if we choose to walk the path to get there.  The truth is, there are people out there that have this ability.  They have the ability to see what is possible in the future.  But, not only can they see, they can also discern the paths that need to be traveled in order to arrive at the future in question.  In them, the combination of perception and passage are combined and we have better than a fortune teller.  We have a guide, an architect, and a seer that bridges the gap between us and tomorrow.

Do you remember The Terminator?  In that franchise of movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a cyborg that was constructed by computer driven machines to eradicate mankind.  To do so he was sent back in time to assassinate the mother of the future leader of the human resistance against the rule of machines on planet Earth.  If we can forgive the Terminator for his actions in the first movie we will find that in the second movie he has had a change of heart and now he desires to side with the humans in opposition to the machines.

Now this is the type of future seer we need.  Someone like the Terminator who knows the future like he’s been there.  But not only that.  That is the point where most fortunetellers stop, simple information.  He came equipped with the tools to communicate what tomorrow looked like and then to guide them into tomorrow.  Knowledge of tomorrow’s challenges doesn’t make the passage easy, but in the example of this movie the Terminator was there to assist in that process to ensure the safe survival of his human wards.  I don’t want to spoil the movie but, as future guides go, the Terminator did a pretty good job.

The Gallup StrengthsFinder calls this set of talents Futuristic, someone who can see tomorrow and then chart the path to get there.

Wondering what could be in your tomorrow, what is possible?  Find a Futuristic thinker to paint you a picture and draw you a map.

Maybe we call it a grind if we see it as a negative thing.  Maybe we call it the groove if we’re more concerned with the efficiency and effectiveness our schedule allows us to achieve.  The rigidity in our schedule, though sometimes aggravating, also provides us with a sense of security.  We can count on it.  To a degree, we like to know what is coming.

But the word “rigidity” also has a down side.  It hints at the fact that even strong objects will break when enough force is applied.  What if you were flexible to the point that you couldn’t be broken?

The leader of the Fantastic Four, Reed Richards, had exactly this quality.  He was known as Mr. Fantastic.  He had the ability to bend, twist, stretch, contort, shrink, expand, and flex his body to extremes.  There was no situation he couldn’t adapt to physically.  Something out of reach wasn’t a problem.  A small space to fit into wasn’t a problem.

Many of us have this quality in a more figurative sense.  The Gallup StrengthsFinder calls it adaptability.  This talent allows a person to react to a changing landscape.  Disrupt their schedule, they’ll adapt.  Change their routine, they’ll adapt.  Surprise them and you’ll swear they saw it coming.  Show up late, and they’ll be doing their best to forge ahead without help.  This isn’t to say that they don’t make plans – they do – The difference in this adaptability talent is that they are flexible.  Like Mr. Fantastic, they will adapt to their changing environment.

If you have this talent you may see your life as the ocean.  You may have ideas about what to expect in the next year, the next month, the next week, the next day, or even the next hour.  What makes you special is that you are okay if your forecasts aren’t entirely accurate.  You sit on your surfboard, floating on the ocean that is your life.  You wait for what comes next.  From the direction of the horizon a huge swell approaches the shore.  As you prepare to ride this next wave it doesn’t matter where it will take you because you can change your plan to fit any situation you encounter.  Every wave is different, but you’ll find a way to ride whatever hits you. Surf’s up!

Have you ever reflected on your life and realized that at some point along your path you’ve forgotten what you set out to do?  Maybe you desired at one point to accomplish something great and noble, only to realize upon later reflection that you are no longer even moving remotely in the direction of the goal you set out to accomplish.

I’ve been there. At some point I always seem to lose focus. As the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment says, people with strength of focus stay on track, they follow through.

Frodo, from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, had focus.  Early in his life, as Tolkien described it, Frodo was adventurous.  Most of Frodo’s fellow hobbits were home-bodies.  They were, by and large, happy to cerncern themselves solely with their town, their garden, their food, and their hobbit hole. They happily lived in the present with few commitments and responsibilities.  Frodo was the exception. He would dream of traveling the world like his uncle, Bilbo, had done. He fantasized about it, pretending to be on epic journeys full of danger and glory.

Maybe for him, an agricultural environment wasn’t the best place to excel, because it wasn’t until Frodo embarked on a journey destined to change his life that his true strengths became apparent. When the day came that he was handed a quest, Frodo’s obsessive search for a mission became his greatest asset.

When Gandalf tasked Frodo with delivering the Ring of Power to Mount Doom it was then that Frodo discovered his true strength; focus.  And what did focus give him?  Focus gave him the drive to clearly see his goal no matter the potential distractions. Despite all the forces at work to distract and obstruct Frodo in his task, his focus drove him on.  His focus kept his goal first among his priorities despite hardship, time, enemies, hunger, pain, and imminent death.  In fact, his focus added value to enduring those hardships.  Each hurdle crossed was a rung on the ladder that led to the mountain in his sights.

Many of us struggle at times to keep a goal in our sights because of the many distractions we face, but someone with focus finds it easy to keep an eye on the prize.  They can be counted on to keep their vision clear.  They will assign value to actions and choices based on how efficiently they move them towards their final destination.  Their actions today are based on their goals tomorrow.  Like a bloodhound given a scent, there is only one end to their activity and that is when they find the source.  Until then, they are on the hunt.

You want to stay on track but have trouble wading through all those forces that pull most of us off the path?  Partner with someone like Frodo and they simply won’t let you forget where you are going.

If you are familiar with comic book heroes you may be able to relate this moment of regret to a character you remember.  The Hulk was known for many things.  His strength, his rage, his lack of intelligence, and his lack of predictability – not a great resume but certainly a force to be reckoned with when he arrived on the scene.  Now, he wasn’t always like that.  In fact, he began as Bruce Banner, a physicist, conducting experiments with gamma radiation.  During a testing, to save the life of a pedestrian, Bruce exposed himself to harmful doses of radiation.  This radiation enabled the transformation that created the monstrous Hulk.

Bruce was a scientist.  He made his decisions based on hard proven data.  His choices were well-founded on tested principles and formulas.  He didn’t rush into things.  His life was one of following the scientific process to arrive at solid scientific findings.  He was not rash.  He did not rush.  His methods were predictable.  He understood that time spent now would save time later unlocking a future built on solid decisions and facts.

What an ironic shift the gamma-induced transformation brought!  All that Bruce stood for, all that he practiced, all that he relied on was overcome in a tide of fury and confusion.  He would be plunged into a world overcome with impulses too strong to resist and fury that acted without thought.  It was his negative, his antithesis, his nightmare.

What did Bruce lose when the Hulk emerged?  He lost everything it took for him to be a careful decision maker.  He lost the discipline it took to put off hasty decisions that would reap a quick pay out in favor of carefully researched choices that would reap benefits over time.  He lost his talent to be deliberative.

Maybe we don’t feel exactly like the Hulk when we make a hasty decision.  Maybe we don’t turn green and terrorize all around us as we vent our fury at any target that presents itself but it is a fitting analogy to what we are left with, when our ability to deliberate is removed.

According to the Gallup Organization’s StrengthFinder Assessment those with the deliberative aptitude are known for the careful process they use to navigate as they make decisions.  If this is one of your talents it is quite possible that you see the rest of us as raging green behemoths as you coolly and carefully arrive at solid choice after solid choice. You may be right.

I don’t know if there is a name for that space of time between deciding to act and the actual action but there should be.  My best suggestion is the “post decision pre-action buffer” and though that is descriptive it surely isn’t concise.

Many of us, even if we can’t name it, know all about that space of time.  It is the deep breath before the plunge and the moment of silence before the battle.  But not everybody knows about it.  There are those who skip that moment altogether.

A few weeks ago I was watching Die Hard with Bruce Willis again.  I’ve seen it many times but the character played by Willis, John McClane, always intrigues me.  I think what intrigues me most is how uniquely qualified he is for the situation in which he finds himself.  A quick thumbnail of the plot shows he is the lone police officer in a high rise office building that is being taken over by terrorists.  Alone he takes on this small force and secures the release of their hostages though it wasn’t an easy task.  What made him uniquely qualified was the lack of time between his decisions to act and his actions.  It almost appears as if his decision to act was the trigger that initiated action.

One scene really brings this to mind for me.  McClane was being pinned down by automatic gunfire from two of the terrorists.  In the process, broken glass from the nearby offices was strewn all over the ground.  McClane knew he had to get out of that area if he was to survive.  One problem was that sometime earlier he had lost his shoes.  This meant that his run to safety would be in bare feet across a minefield of shattered shards of glass.  But, he didn’t pause.  He got up and ran.  In fact, a pause there might have meant his life even if the purpose for the pause was to try to preserve his feet.  Decision to act followed by immediate action.  That was John McClane.

I think this quality in somebody is succinctly stated by the Human Torch in the movie, The Fantastic Four.  As he was learning to use his new found powers he started to suspect that the ability to burst into flames would also give him the ability to fly.  To test this theory he went to a balcony dozens of stories above the ground and planned on jumping off.  His sister, wanting him to pause to reconsider his choice yelled out to him “Don’t even think about it!!”.  Over his shoulder, as he jumped from the balcony, the Human Torch answered back with a smile, “I never do!”.  Decision to act and then action.

The Gallup StrenthsFinder labels this talent Activator.  For those of us who decide to act, then pause to collect our thoughts, and then act this may not make much sense.  For us the learning is in the preparation and the thinking.  For Activators learning is in the doing.

This article is from the Super Powers Center Series on “Pop Culture Perspectives on Talent”. Be sure to listen to Alex McManus and Dale Swinburne on the Super Powers Center, Saturday evenings at 6PM (ET).

The Merovingian was one of the latter.  Hopefully, you’ll remember his character from The Matrix: Reloaded.  He didn’t see the world as a random collection of disconnected events.  He saw the world as intimately connected and lacking coincidence.  He saw a network of choice and cost…or action and reaction.  At one point, he says, “Where some see coincidence, I see consequence.  Where you see chance, I see cost.”  He rejected the view that life just happened to you.  Instead, he viewed the world as a series of actions and choices that led to the results (or costs) of those same actions.  He understood the effects that the choices we make today have on events tomorrow.  We don’t have the luxury of considering our actions in a figurative vacuum.  Every choice we make acts like a pebble in a pond with a rippling impact on our lives and the lives of others.  And just like our choices of today affect our lives tomorrow, so today is shaped by the actions and choices made yesterday.

Imagine Spider Man,  a superhero ingrained in the consciousness of so many of us since we were children.  One of the tools he uses in his campaign against crime is his spiderweb.  He uses it for travel, swinging from building to building like an urban Tarzan.  He uses it for safety, shielding himself and innocents from the bad guy’s attacks.  He uses it for restraint, preventing the escape and securing the capture of his enemies.

But instead of looking at the function of this particular tool lets look at its form.  We know what a spiderweb looks like.  Radiating strands of silk spiraling out from a central hub.  Individually, a strand of silk doesn’t serve as much purpose as when it is skillfully inter-connected with many other strands in a web.  Imagine any one choice or action we make is the hub and radiating out from it, like the silken strands of a spiderweb, are the ramifications and repercussions of the choice.

Seeing our lives through that imagery would reveal to us a life intricately woven.  Webs of connection spun from our actions intersecting and integrating with webs from others’ actions.

People that possess the strength of connectedness don’t see the world like a grid of polka dots with every life neatly compartmentalized in its own private space.  More accurately, they see the world with all those dots connected by lines going every which way.  The result of these connections would look very much like a spiderweb.

We live in a big world, but it isn’t so big that our actions can’t affect the lives of everyone else here, both today and in the future.

You may know her as “the bride”, or Beatrix Kiddo, or the Black Mamba. She was the central character of Kill Bill 1 and 2, a film by Quentin Tarantino, played by actress Uma Thurman. A core characteristic of the Black Mamba was that she was a keeper of lists. Specifically, death lists…but, lists none the less. Not only did she keep lists but we know that her death list had been revised at least 5 times. Macabre, though it was, she followed her lists, ticking items off one at a time upon completion, and driven to achieve what was next. She spent little time resting on her laurels but instead saw clearly what remained to be done. And get things done was what she did…emphasis on the done.

What does this have to do with you? Some of you share a talent that manifests the same qualities as the list-keeping Black Mamba’s. To make this point, let’s turn from the world of film and fiction to the real world and get another angle on this “drive to complete” and “to achieve”. National Geographic broadcast a special program titled King Lines that highlighted the world’s foremost rock climber, Chris Sharma.   Peers say that Sharma has pushed the sport farther and faster than anybody else in recent history. His genius on a rock face make him a true maestro.

What drives him forward? A desire to be the best? The ultimate thrill? Let me set the stage.

Always in search for the most challenging climb, a friend of Chris’, suggested a 70 foot limestone arch spanning across deep water located off of the coast of Mallorca, Spain. It had never been climbed before. One problem was that in the climb there was a 7 foot blank spot with no foot or hand holds. To get past that spot required a 7 foot leap to the next nearest hold. If he missed it he would plummet 35 feet to the water below, swim to the support boat, dry off, change clothes, repeat the approximately 25 moves to get back up to that difficult spot, and try again. Chris estimated that he fell at that spot 100 times. He invested 4 months of his life underneath that arch trying and trying and trying to beat it. When he did conquer the jump and complete the climb here is what he said.

“Climbing is this ever evolving thing, although it really is about the goal and succeeding and getting to the top, at the same time it’s a never ending cycle of finding something that you’re really motivated on, obsessing over it and then, once you get to the top, celebrating for a little while and then moving on to the next thing.”

“Obviously really I was ecstatic, really psyched. But climbing is this thing that happens in the process. Once you do it, you’re psyched, but that’s the end of the process. When you complete it, that’s great. But then it’s like, ‘What’s next?’”

What drives Chris? The same thing that drives the Black Mamba: The next item on the list.

That climb in Mallorca has never been repeated. The items on the Black Mamba’s list? She didn’t quit until she was finished. They share the attribute sometimes abbreviated as GTD, that is, Getting Things Done.

In the parlance of the Strengths Finder, the attributes of stamina, hard work, and ticking off completed items parallels the talent theme of Achiever.

Ok, let’s turn to you and your extraordinary powers. Do you suffer from GTD? Maybe you have a method for going through your list of “to-do’s”. Maybe your method is efficient and polished, or maybe your method is madness. If madness is your method you’ll forgive me if I don’t turn to you for help getting through my personal list of “to-do’s”. Instead, I’ll turn to those among us who shine. I’ll turn to those have a proven track record of accomplishing. We aren’t talking about accomplishing things in a certain arena. We are talking about someone who is so good at wiping out their “to-do” list that we’d go so far as to call them an achiever.

You ask an achiever if they’ve gotten anything done yet today and they’ll give you a list of exactly what accomplishments they’ve gotten under their belt. They will also be able to list what they have left to do. In fact, what they’ve done they don’t see half as brightly as what is yet to do. They are driven forward to the next item on the list. It drives them forward to achieve.

There are people all around us with this talent. Some of us, like the fictional assassin, the Black Mamba, or the real world rock climber, Chris Sharma, have nurtured it to the level of a strength. If you have this talent, so can you. So put it on your list.

Dale Swinburne
Senior IMN Operative
Baltimore, MD

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