This is a continuation of the series on discovering, developing, and deploying your talent. Last week, I the following statement:

"To ignore your talent, is to ignore God in your life. To attempt to succeed apart from your talent, is to insult the wisdom of God. He made things that way. Just fall in line."

A friend of mine that leads a ministry in the UK later commented that, “To me, this is like walking into work without Him and still expecting to be blessed.” Her comment hit the nail on the head: If you want to be significantly distinguished in life, you must discover, develop, and deploy your talent.

In last week’s post, I focused primarily on how to discover your talent. I will move on now to how to develop your talent.

Here’s what Paul said to Timothy:

"For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands."
~2 Timothy 1:6

To fan into flame means to fully develop something to its maximum capacity. It is one thing to discover your talent, it is another thing to fully develop it. Until your talent is fully developed, you won’t become significantly distinguished in life. Here are 3 simple but effective ways to develop your talent:

#1. Feed Your Passion

Your passion is the life and energy of your talent.
When you feed it, your talent grows.

There are things you enjoy experiencing; things you enjoy watching, observing, listening to, smelling, and taking in in various ways. What are these things? Movies? Books? Sights and sounds? Interactions? Whatever they are, surround yourself with them. That’s how to feed your passion. Invest your resources here; it is one of the smartest ways to spend your money. This is an investment in yourself.

#2. Share Your Passion

When you consume your passion, you experience joy.
When you share your passion, you experience double joy, or fulfillment.

Say you enjoy reading novels. The easiest way to share this passion, of course is with people of like passion; give the novel to others in your book club to read. But you can also share your pleasure with others who do not like reading novels: this is actually where your ability comes in – sharing the blessings of your passion with those who do not have the same passion as you.

For instance:

#1. You could tell the story yourself to someone else who may not be able to read that novel.

#2. You may decide to do something even more elaborate: dramatize the novel with a cast!

#3. You might opt to distill the essential lessons of the novel and share it with others in your own words via a class, an article, or twitter quote.

Essentially, join a passion group related to your passion. Here you interact with others of like passion. You discuss new sources and channels. You learn new and diverse things about your passion. Create and embrace opportunities that allow you to share the blessings of your passion with others. Set up personal passion-sharing projects to enhance sharing. Choose businesses, industries, and careers that enable the sharing of your passion.

#3. Sharpen Your Foremost Ability

Your foremost ability is the servant of your talent.
As you sharpen it, your talent grows.

Sharpening the essential elements of that ability happens automatically as you use them to share your passion. However, you must deliberately work on it too through study and training. Actually, as you begin to share your passion with others using your dominant ability, you will notice serious skill deficiencies in that ability.

For instance, if you enjoy imaginations of beautiful realities and inspiring human experiences – you would want to share these imaginations – or dreams – with others. Now, say your foremost ability is writing, you would definitely need to build up your vocabulary and use of language.

This is where continuous education comes in. Go to school to get extra education if you can afford it. Read books. Attend seminars.

The development of your talent is too important to be left to chance.
Invest time, energy, and money to fan your talent into raging flame that transforms your world.