What's Your Shine?

Claudia Beeny

📚 GENRE: Personal Development

📃 PAGES: 139

✅ COMPLETED: May 6, 2022

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

Using her 10-point Shine Framework, Claudia Beeny reveals why having a deep understanding of your unique combination of strengths, hobbies, interests, needs, and talents can help you make the world a better place. Beeny explains why tuning into your strengths and passions comes down to effort and asking yourself the right questions.

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Feed Your Strengths — Once you’ve identified your unique set of strengths and talents, feed them with knowledge and training. Try to develop those skills and become great at them. This is how you can provide maximum value.

2️⃣ Make an Impact — Use your talent to make the world a better place. Everyone is unique and has their own set of skills and strengths. Look for these in people and encourage them to use their gifts. Build people up. Do little things to show your appreciation.

3️⃣ Do the Little Things Well — Pay attention to detail and execute the little things just as well as you execute the big things. Go the extra mile at all times. Be prepared. Attention to detail is a difference-maker. Consistently going above and beyond and doing the little things really well adds up over time. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Favorite Quote

"When you shine, you treat small opportunities with as much importance as the big ones. It means your presentation for 10 people warrants just as much preparation as the keynote address for hundreds."

Book Notes 📑

Introduction

  • Claudia Beeny is a PhD and a former university professor who started writing a blog and realized that was her passion. 
    • She came to this realization after an incident where she was about to do a virtual interview for a teaching job and couldn’t pull herself away from her blog.
      • She knew it was a sign that the blog is what she really wanted to pursue. 
    • The blog aligned well with her strengths of creativity, focus, and achievement. 
  • Claudia credits three activities in particular for helping her come to this light-bulb moment:
    1. Making Good Use of Free Time
      • She used any available free time to reflect on where she was and where she wanted to go. 
    2. Walking
      • Going for a daily walk helped her gather important thoughts and reflect on them. 
    3. Journaling 
      • She started a journal where she jotted down almost anything. 
  • Quote (P. 9): “That’s when I realized for the first time that my feelings of energy, enthusiasm, passion, joy, and fulfillment are feelings anyone could have about their life. That is, provided that they had useful information about themselves and understood how to apply it toward confident decision-making in the future.”
    • When you know yourself well, it can help you make decisions that will steer you toward what you’re most passionate about. 
  • House of Shine — A non-profit organization in Grapevine, Texas that Claudia started in 2008. House of Shine was originally the title of Claudia’s blog. 
    • House of Shine Mission Statement — There are contributions inside every person just waiting to be made; irresistible ways of using our talents and gifts that make us feel motivated. 
      • House of Shine tries to help people reflect on their strengths/passions and use them. 
    • Quote (P. 10): “Years working in higher education convinced me that most students did not arrive on campus knowing how to build lives around the kind of work that tapped into their unique combination of talents and gifts… Worse yet, I was doing leadership development for employees in my husband’s business, and most of the seasoned professionals had also devoted precious little time to thinking about who they were and how they could use what they knew about themselves to optimize the life they were living.”
  • Quote (P. 12): “Lastly, I see a need for a worldview focused more on what is right than what is wrong, focused more on what we have than what we don’t, and focused more on what is good than what is bad.”
    • Practice gratitude. Keep your focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have. 
  • This book lays out the House of Shine framework that is designed to help people of all ages learn to understand themselves and what they bring to the table. 

Ch. 1: Shhhhh.... Quiet

  • There are two things everyone needs to develop better self-awareness:
    1. Quiet — With all of the technology that we have access to now, our lives have become so noisy and distracting. 
    2. Time For Self-Reflection — Most of us don’t take the time to engage in deep thinking and self-reflection.
    • Quote (P. 26): “With more noise and less time for reflection, it has never been more important to intentionally create space for discovering who we are and why it matters.”
  • Quote (P. 27): “You were born to contribute to this world in a way that is different from anyone else and the nature of those contributions is deeply embedded in the unique combination of talents and gifts with which you were born.”
    • Identifying the gifts and talents you have isn’t easy, but the effort is worth it. When you find them, it gives you direction and purpose. 
      • Once you’ve identified them, you can work on improving those areas over time and becoming great at them. 
    • Discovering your unique gifts and talents requires deep thought. You have to take the time to reflect on the things that you’re good at and you enjoy doing the most.

Ch. 2: Be

  • SHINE Framework — Comprised of five elements. These are key to developing self-awareness. 
    • S — Strengths
    • H — Hobbies
    • I — Interests and Irritants 
    • N — Needs
    • E — Experiences  
  • S — Strengths
    • We are drawn to what we’re best at. Pay attention to what you’re passionate about and what you do better than most people. 
    • Once you’ve identified your strengths, it’s about feeding your talent with the skills and knowledge to continuously improve. 
    • Quote (P. 40): “Focusing on your strengths can be helpful when deciding where to best invest limited resources of time and energy.”
  • H — Hobbies
    • Hobbies provide clues to our natural inclinations. 
    • Rather than look at the activity associated with a hobby, look at the underlying commonalities between your hobbies. 
      • Ex. Reading and Journaling — A person that enjoys these activities likes being along and having quiet time. 
    • Think about why you enjoy your favorite hobbies. This information can help you make better decision for yourself because you know your tendencies and preferences.
  • I — Interests and Irritants 
    • Interests are things that you enjoy but have limited access to. 
      • Ex. Sports — I enjoy watching and following sports, but I don’t play them regularly. 
    • Quote (P. 49): “When we view topics we are curious about as clues to our uniqueness, we can start to integrate our interests into the work we do and the contributions we make to the world.”
    • Things that irritate you can inspire you to action. This was the case with Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, Bill Gates, and more. 
      • What has you irritated? What do you want to change about our current society? 
  • N — Needs
    • Needs are what you would prefer to be doing right now. What are some activities you want to do more of but aren’t?
      • Focus on trying to make more time for these activities. The more you do them, the more opportunities open up for you in those areas. 
  • E — Experiences 
    • Our past experiences shape who we are, what we like and dislike, what we’re good at, and the decisions we make. 
      • It’s important to reflect on your experiences and think about how they’ve shaped you into the person you are today. 
  • Quote (P. 60): “Values help us realize that our lives are a series of choices. Every day we are called upon to make decisions, large and small, that either support the idea of the person we envision ourselves to be; or they contradict the idea.”
    • Everyone has a set of core values. And every day, we need to live in alignment with those values and make decisions that are in alignment with those values, even if it’s an unpopular choice. 

Ch. 3: Do

  • Depending on if you’re counting only skeletal muscles (the muscles that move our bodies) or all muscles (like the heart), there are between 650-800 muscles in the human body.
    • Muscles are made up of hundreds or even thousands of muscle fibers. 
  • Shine Muscles — These dictate how we think, feel, and behave. When they’re strong, we move through life with less effort.
  • Shine Principles — There are 10 of these characteristics that were formed after years of observing and interviewing people who stood out in their communities. Not all of these fire at the same time; they work in combination. 
      1. Be Present — Whatever you are doing, do it fully and with complete focus. Don’t allow your mind to wander or wish you were doing something else. Give yourself completely to the task at hand. 
      2. Create — Push boundaries and don’t be afraid to take risks and create. Creators are catalysts for improvement. Creators are always trying to think of new ways to do things and improve the process. 
      • Quote (P. 79): “People who shine plow through the fear and uncertainty of taking risks, because they are excited by the idea of breaking ground on something new.” 
      1. Use Your Strengths — We all have a unique combination of strengths. Focus on those strengths and work on developing them. Become excellent at them.
      • Quote (P. 80): “People who shine realize that each of us possess a unique combination of strengths and when we feed those qualities with knowledge and skills, we develop talents we can then use to make a significant contribution in the world.”
      1. Keep Perspective — It’s really important to keep things in perspective and be grateful for all that we have, because what we have is A LOT.
      • Quote (P. 81): “Lacking perspective on the real scale of our concerns, we can wallow in our own misery until it becomes an excuse for not helping.”
      1. Realize the Impact of Little Things — Doing all the little things just as well as you do the big things. Paying attention to detail. Going the extra mile to get the small details right. How you do one thing is how you do everything. 
      • Quote (P. 81): “When you shine, you treat small opportunities with as much importance as the big ones. It means your presentation for 10 people warrants just as much preparation as the keynote address for hundreds.”
      1. Bring Out the Best in Others — Everyone around you has unique skills and strengths. Encourage them to use those strengths and develop those strengths. 
      2. Reject Mediocrity — Show up day in and day out looking to do your best and provide value. Do not look to skate by. 
      • Quote (P. 83): “People who shine don’t just check boxes or look for how to squeak by doing as little as possible. Instead, they take pride in their work and give their best effort in what they choose to do.”
      1. Be Relentlessly Passionate — Be self-motivated and dedicated to achieving your goals. 
      • Quote (P. 83): “People who shine are relentless; fixated on their passions, they work tirelessly to reach their goals.”
      1. Be Accountable — Take responsibility when you mess up. Own it and look to fix it. Hold yourself accountable to the standards and expectations you set for yourself.
      2. Spread Shine — Appreciate people and do little things to show your appreciation.
  • Quote (P. 87): “The success we experience correlates with the frequency and intensity of effort we exert doing what it takes to live out the 10 Shine Principles.”
    • Effort is a huge component of success. You have to be willing to put in the effort to achieve your goals and get where you want to get. You will never get there without maximum effort. 
  • Quote (P. 88): “The key is to make a daily decision that you will show up to do something — anything — that gets you closer to living the life you envision for yourself.”
    • Look to get a little better every day. Get 1% better every day. Keep your focus on progress and improvement. 
    • Be disciplined to your daily habits. These are what lead to huge growth over time. 
  • Quote (P. 101): “It is through repeat successes that we find fulfillment and confidence.”
    • Win. Win. And win again. 

Ch. 4: Share

  • Share your talents, interests, and strengths with the world. Look to raise people up and make the world a better place using your unique skills and talents. 
    • There are years of positive psychology research that has found that people are happier and more fulfilled when they are using their strengths to help people. 
    • It’s a cycle — when you help other people using your skills, you feel a deep sense of purpose and happiness.
  • Before you can share effectively, you need to answer three key questions: 
    1. What are my talents?
    2. What are my interests?
    3. What need do I see in the world around me? 
    • Effective sharing happens when you use your unique skills and interests to serve a certain need.
  • Point of Intersection — Where your talents and interests meet to fill a need. It’s the sweet spot — the point of convergence between your talents and interests, and a need in the world you would like to fill.
    • Ex. Claudia | House of Shine
  • Shineology — The study of self. Involves constantly looking inward and monitoring our likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, and more so you can fully understand yourself. 
    • Journaling is a good way to carry this out. 
  • Start With Why — Book by Simon Sinek in which he states that the most successful organizations create inspired work by starting with their ‘Why’, the higher purpose they are pursuing beyond simply making a profit. 
    • Success organizations then identify the ‘How’ and ‘What’ to carry out their ‘Why.’ This concept is called the ‘Golden Circle.’