Finding your Internal Gift

In August of 1999 I went to a self improvement workshop called “The Road Adventure” in Richardson TX (www.theroadadventure.org ). This program is a multi weekend seminar that is like Dr. Phil on steroids. It had a different format than anything I had been to so I wanted to know more and went through Part 1 – Part 4 over the next few months. I liked the program and the people so I kept coming back to volunteer. In the third weekend I took a short 7 question test to find my Primary Internal Gift. I wasn’t real sure how accurate it would be at the time and when I completed the exercises it said that my Primary Internal Gift was Teaching. This confused the heck out of me because when I went to college the first thing my academic advisor said was “Mr. Dougher do you realize that 99% of all the Freshman enrolled are placed above you… Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to a Junior College to make sure that College is your cup of tea…” Well I had never been called an idiot so proficiently in all my life. My thought was “That may be so, but I will never quit”.

I went on from college with a firm desire to never be called an idiot again. I spent years with a hobby of accelerated Learning. Every year I would read 50 to 70 books, listen to thousands of hours of audio programs and eat Church history as if I was eating chocolate. I just loved to learn and found that I have a memory that was pretty good. So as you can imagine being told I had the gift of Teaching was a paradox for me. My memory said I was an idiot but my history said something different. So I began to test it out. I went to a church that I was attending and told the Sunday school coordinators that if they ever needed a teacher I would always have a lesson prepared. Well in normal Churchianity form their response was “How about this Sunday?”I swallowed hard and my eyes had to look like as large as saucers with fear, but I squeezed out a almost silent “ok”. I started with 10 people in the group and it quickly grew to over 100. I began to be asked to speak at several other organizations throughout the DFW area and within 6 months was placed as a Director of the Part 3 and Part 4 weekend Seminars of “The Road Adventure”. I am now the Senior Director for these Seminars and on the Board of Directors for this non profit organization. But wait there is more… I know that is corny but it is true. I began to use this gift of teaching in my profession and rose very quickly to a Coordinator for the division I was in and began to make a name for myself in the industry I was in ( Wholesaling Cellular Phones and Accessories).

I found that I could spend 20 minutes helping someone unlock their gifts and walk in their Destiny and it was extacy to me… but mean while back at the office I could sell $100K in phones and I would just go “cool”… The difference in intensity was so extrema that I would come home after a 3 day Seminar with so much energy that my wife would wonder how to shut me up at 11:30pm on the Sunday after the weekend. All that I could think about was how could I do this tomorrow and the next day. I was so enthusiastic about this I had to find a way to make my Passion my Profession. One day about 3 years ago my life took a huge shift…( that just means the I was laid off) I figured that I knew how to present and speak why not just see what would happen if I used the time to create a couple of workshops. After just 4 months I sent a DVD sample of some of my work to Zig Ziglar’s company and the next day had an email with a contract asking if I would like to present Zig’s work!

I was blown away. I jumped on that wagon like a tick on a dog. I thought Zig has been a remote mentor of my life sinse I got out of college and there is no better name to align myself with, so I took the contract. It was a great experience and learned a ton. About a year later I knew I needed to learn Marketing so I connected with the Glazer-Kennedy group and became the Director for the North Texas Area. I helped them grow the chapters to 4 chapters, 2 mastermind groups for coaching and started my own Radio show called the Implementers Corner. ( You can listen to several shows on www.PatrickDougher.com ) And then also created a workshop on Accelerated Learning, How to learn twice as much in half the time. These are in DVD and CD form.

All this to say I used the internal gift and everything in my life was kicked into high gear. If you would like the questionnaire that I took and the MP3 explanation on this material email me at Pat@PatrickDougher.com and I will send it to you.

I will be adding to this Blog Frequently. If you have a story of how you dove into your Passion and have created wealth and happiness for your self please email me your story and I will put it on this Blog. Thanks for reading my story and I hope to hear from you soon. Until next time this is Patrick Dougher encouraging you to Manifest Success using the gifts in of you.

Tags: business, success, team, wealth