Candace Spears
- Nov 10, 2019
- 4 min read

Ep 144: Our difference is our God given GREATNESS

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Isn't it super easy to find our flaws and note that they make us different from someone else in some way? Now the maturity comes when we can look at those flaws and celebrate them as a difference that will help us on our journey. I'd call this serious maturity, but necessary. I'm working on this level of maturity myself, and to hear my father utter some words from the pulpit that confirmed how we should be looking at our differences, was mind-blowing. We have some greatness, God has given us and we should be paying super close attention to how it shows up.

In this episode, we'll talk about...

How to identify the advantage in your difference
How to use our differences to grow our business
When and how to celebrate our differences

I was sitting on the bench at church listening to my father preach a Sunday sermon, and as I'm listening to him talk, he says a statement that stops me and instantly makes me pick up my phone and write it down. And what he said was that "Our difference is the greatness that God has given us." And I'm sure I'm not completely quoting that correctly, but basically what he's saying is the differences that we have, God has given that to us as a gift.

Our difference is the greatness that God has given us. (Click to tweet)

And he was talking about, when he was younger, around a teenager, his friends would drink beer. They'd all sit around, they'd drink beer and he went and he tried it and he hated it. As he got older, even at his work functions and things like that, everybody would always say, "Hey! CJ, you're going to have a beer. You're going to do this." He never liked it, didn't touch it. He was always the different one and the odd one out. And so he talked about that difference that we have, God will use that. You have something different from anyone else around you. And so in his case, he was able to talk about not only his experiences but about how he leans on God to sort of getting that energy that he needs, that high, that feeling that they may use alcohol for, that he has sorta from a natural standpoint because God has given it to him. It's given him that opportunity to share his story because of the difference.

That statement just made me think about how many times do we have our own differences, but we're so down on ourselves about our differences or we're comparing ourselves to other people. I think one of the things if we can begin to understand the differences that we have, and I think that's pretty easy, right? If you think about how many times have you said, "I don't like this about myself, or I wish I had this, or if only this was different." It's easy to find your differences. Sometimes if you think about where you are and you look around, for instance, in my 9-to-5, when it comes to black females in leadership, in management, I am only the second of, I dunno, maybe about 90 managers and I appear to most likely be the youngest. I can see the different differences that I have. Once you can identify those differences, you can start to think about how you can use them to your advantage. They're a gift in some way. It's about us looking at it differently.

Once you can identify those differences, you can start to think about how you can use them to your advantage. (Click to tweet)

If you think about using it as an advantage in your business, so I myself speak a lot to mompreneurs, moms who are entrepreneurs and I am a mompreneur myself, but I'm not just any mompreneur. I happen to also be a mompreneur who has a child that has special needs and that's a whole another category of women entrepreneurs, raising children that have special needs, have a whole another set of issues and complexities that we deal with. So I am my business, have the opportunity that perhaps most don't, to speak directly to the chaos that sometimes comes with that, the beauty that sometimes comes with that. I can use that to my advantage to help me grow my business, to speak to a demographic that amongst all the people that talk to mompreneurs that only a smaller percentage can speak to. Just using that as an example, I bet if you reflect on who you are, not only what your values are, think about the relationships that you have, the situations that you find yourself in life, you think about how you can serve people that are in the similar situation or how you have knowledge that someone else doesn't, but you can use as an advantage for your business. And so overall, I think the differences, if you were to sit down and write them all out, these are the things I have that make me unique, that make me different.

You will see a ton of opportunities to use those differences in a new way to your advantage. Whatever you do, the differences that we have, I want you to make a promise to me right now that you stop looking at them like deficiencies, that you stopped looking at them as things that need to be corrected, something that you need more of to overcome that difference, but look at them as advantages and start celebrating them. Okay? Start celebrating the heck out of them. And don't just celebrate alone. Get yourself attached to other people who also share those differences and celebrate. And in those conversations, you will learn how you can serve, how you can be an advantage and have an advantage over others that don't possess those wonderful differences that you have.