Why I call myself a chaos whisperer: Showing love to my natural skills

Originally published on Substack

I’ve been on a personal development journey and a big part of that is realizing my natural skills are Actually Skills. Because it’s easy for me, I thought it was easy for everyone. But it’s not.

And my main skill?

I’m a chaos whisperer. I coax meaning out of the chaos. I see the chaos as ignored energy waiting for us to pay attention and do something about it.

And I like doing something about it using my pattern recognition. I like the process of taking overwhelming masses of info and deciphering meaning into clear concepts.

I’m still realizing the power of my pattern recognition.

I used that skill when I Konmari’d my belongings years ago. I used that skill to study in college without late night or weekend study sessions and without giving up my personal activities.

I use it now

• to ruin movies - I can predict what’s going to happen next

• to grow my natural hair - I note what’s working and what isn’t to update my routine

• to write - I read widely and synthesize info into one idea

• to cleanup messy bookkeeping - I can see what‘s wrong and what needs to be cleaned up

• to manage my business - I can see what to improve for it to run better

So now I know my pattern recognition is a skill.

Now what?

At this point in my personal journey, I’m shifting from discovery to experimentation. What else can I do?