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Welcome to the gift library!


A collection of more than 180 quotes, videos, links to articles, and books about discovering your gifts and living a purposeful life.

 

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Gifts and purpose videos and articles

(click on the title to watch, read or find out more)

 

 

Videos:

 

Embracing Your Gifts

Sobonfu Somé was a healer and teacher from the Dagara people in Burkina Faso, Africa. In this video, she says Westerners spend little time and attention finding and embracing the gift—the real reason we are born in this world. As a result, most of us cannot make sense of the various events in our life. Drawing on Dagara wisdom, this talk brings to light how everyone has a personal gift that is vital to the well-being of the individual and the community.

 

How Do We Move Forward?

Charles Eisenstein writes about the shift from money economics to gift economics, explores the question ‘how do we move forwards?” and explains how this is a flawed question, because we are all individuals with a multitude of choices. In the end, we have to listen to what calls us.

 

The Theory of Gift Exchange

Alex Gendler and Avi Ofer have created a short animation that describes the theory of gift exchange and offers examples from around the world.

 

Everyone Has a Gift

John McKnight. Toronto, Canada. Inclusion Press. 

A timeless video of the master storyteller describing the differences between seeing deficiencies and seeing gifts in those around us. Particularly pointed at helping professionals, but applicable to everyone.

 

Safe Communities

The Safe Communities Task Force in Clark County, Washington partners with youth to help them discover their Core Gift and purpose in life.

 

Choose Must: 10 Hands-on Exercises to Find and Pursue Your Passion

Join Elle Luna, artist, designer, and author of The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion for a tactical and inspiring exploration into identifying and following your Must. Elle walks you through a series of 10-minute, self-exploration exercises and tactical practices that will help you connect the dots and surface insights for your journey to Must. (Note: requires establishing a free account with Skillshare, an online learning collaborative)

 

7 Ways to Identify Your Calling

Tara Mohr is a writer and personal growth coach. In this short video, she doesn’t use the word “gift”, but she identifies seven clues you’re focused on your Core Gift as a calling you must pursue.

 

Best of Connecting Point: James Hillman on Your Calling

We come into this world with a companion that knows who we are. We find clues to our Gift through our suffering and our calls.

 

Community Living St. Mary's

Community Living St Mary's, a helping organization in a small town in rural Ontario, Canada, have been learning about and applying gift practices for several years now. They created a video that includes some of the theory and how they are using gifts.

 

Recognizing Gifts

John McKnight’s approach gathers all of the people who live in a community, and the wealth of their combined gifts, abilities, and skills, in order to create a welcoming and wholly inclusive environment.

 

Three Different Kinds of Gifts

Bruce Anderson, Director of the Core Gift Institute, describes the three different kinds of gifts.

 

The Core Gift Discovery Interview

Bruce Anderson, Director of the Core Gift Institute, describes how the Core Gift Discovery Interview is different from usual strength inventories, and the three reasons why it’s useful.

 

What is a Core Gift?

Bruce Anderson, Director of the Core Gift Institute, describes a Core Gift.

 

The Diversity of Gifts

John McKnight approaches community believing that the diversity of gifts is often unrecognized, and that diversity contains the capacity to create community change.

 

Your Genius is Calling

Michael Meade says much has been written about having a vocation or calling in life; but often overlooked is the idea that a true calling is aimed at the genius qualities already set within each person. Most know that the call to awaken to a genuine path in life begins in youth; but fewer know that the calling keeps calling even in later life. Not only that, but in mythic terms, the Fountain of Youth that people have roamed the earth seeking waits to be found within oneself.

 

Fate and Destiny Part IV: Gifts and Wounds

Michael Meade reads from his book, Fate and Destiny. Describing how everyone is gifted. It’s part of a person’s fate and is intended to be given. In order to give our gifts, we have to heal from our wounds.

 

Your Calling Keeps Calling

“Because what calls to us is timeless, the calling can come at any time. At each turn in the road our life’s work awaits us; thus, our calling keeps calling no matter our age or position or condition in life.” A video by Michael Meade.

 

Unconditional Basic Income

Orland Bishop, founder of Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation, talks about the idea of unconditional basic income for everyone, and the importance of living out the contribution you are meant to be making.

 

Articles:

 

Covid-19 Cannot Harm Your Gifts

Covid 19 Cannot Harm Your Gifts. Bruce Anderson, Director of the Core Gift Institute, writes about the opportunity for us to act in this time of coronavirus pandemic by being aware of and using our gifts.

 

Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition

*Highly recommended. This link will take you to the archives of more than 150 single-theme issues over 40 years. Purchase and download. Examples of issues that relate to gifts include Rites of Passage, Initiation, Pilgrimage, Crossroads, The Shadow, Thresholds and The Path.

 

Opening the Neighborhood Treasure Chest

John McKnight speaks to the need to rebuild neighborhoods based on the gifts of residents.

 

Community Building Through Gifts

One way of thinking about how communities get built, according to John McKnight, is by seeing that the principal resource people have for the task is their gifts. So, when we ask, “How could this neighborhood be built?,” the answer is not about bringing in institutions to label people with their deficiencies and provide programs that enable their dependency. Building strong neighborhoods becomes a matter of everybody contributing as many of their gifts as they can to each other and to the whole.

 

To Build Community, an Economy of Gifts

Charles Eisenstein describes Gift Circles and the underlying shift from a money to gift economy.

 

We Come Bearing Gifts: The Most Commonly Asked Questions About Using Gifts to Navigate Change

An article by Bruce Anderson for Community Activators.

 

When Gifts Come Dressed as Trouble: Using gifts as a tool for understanding and reducing undesirable student behavior

An article by Bruce Anderson for Community Activators.

 

New Possibilities for Recovery-Based Employment: The Gifted Job-Seeker

An article by Bruce Anderson for Community Activators.

 

Seeds for Recovery: Using Core Gifts to Inspire Hope and Action 

An article by Bruce Anderson for Community Activators.

 

Going Through a Pandemic the GIFTED Way 

An article by Bruce Anderson at the Core Gift Institute.

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