What is your Giss?
Author: Anita Jefferson, M.Ed

What is Your Giss?

We all have giss? The true discovery is in finding out what it is. Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, giss is your essence; it is what makes you unique, outstanding, and distinct from the rest.

A mother knows her child’s giss instinctively. A father intuitively knows his offspring too. Parents, like the mammals in the wild, instantly recognize the essence, or giss, of those they love and know. That is good, what a stronger question is, do you know your giss?

Have you ever stopped and pondered the question, who am I? At some point in all of our lives, we pause and ask ourselves the question that is the same as what is my giss. If you have not reached that stage in your life where you’ve undergone a time of introspection, I urge you to stop what you are doing right now and take a few minutes to begin your self-discovery. Even those of us who have asked ourselves the question before will benefit from this exercise. You will find, like I have, that over time your responses have shifted.

Take a few minutes and write in vivid, descriptive words what you think your inner essence is. Don’t shortchange yourself by using bland, ordinary words that are overused. Instead really take the time to describe who you are and what you know about yourself.

If this is the first time you have thought about your inner essence, it may take you a bit longer to complete this part of the exercise, but challenge yourself for your own growth, to fluidly write at least ten words. Stay with it, don’t stop. Understanding yourself is worth taking the time. Keep thinking about yourself, for once, only from your own perspective and not from external suppositions and let the words flow.

If you have done a similar self-growth exercise to this before, do it again today with me. It will be exciting to compare what you have written before once you re-visit your old list. But, today I want you to go deeper within and write in detail what is your giss.

What is interesting about self-discovery is that we utilize our inner essence all of the time. Who we are, what we have experienced, and what we do is nothing but our giss condensed. Every decision you make is fundamentally a by-product of your giss. Think about how often you “size up” a person or situation with dead-on accuracy. There is no way you could do this with a blank slate. Malcolm Gladstone, in his book, Blink, affirms that we are old hands at this. He calls this seemingly innate ability “thin-slicing”-the ability to make snap decisions or have exact impressions about others derived from somewhere in our history.

History is alterable. You have the chance everyday to revise your history. Because of each new fresh experience that you have, your history is mutable. Your giss, or essence, can and does change. The question is, how good are you at gassing yourself? Are you an old hand at sizing up yourself? Can you truly say, I know myself like the back of my hand. How intimate are you with you? If you giss-guess is off, all you need is more conscious practice.
As part of your practice, I suggest these actions:
1. Repeat this exercise every day for one week for 10-20 minutes. As yourself, what is my giss? Build up to longer durations until you make this a daily practice.
2. Write your responses in clear, vivid detail
3. Add pictures and symbols to portray your inner essence
4. Broaden your experiences by doing something new or thinking differently every day.
5. Test your giss by monitoring your decisions, impressions about others, and your accuracy
6. Reward yourself for accuracy and examine each misread.

We all need to blink more. Blinking, or being aware of our inner essence, can be used to complement and extend the rapid-fire reactions so necessary today in the fast paced, hectic, frenetic lifestyles we live. The need for an internal pavlovian-like giss to immediately access is vital to a calmer state of mind. Your focus is sharper because you know what is important to you. Thus, in spite of what is going on around you, you can gauge your response from an internal governor-your giss. Goldman has found that it doesn’t take extensive evaluations or analysis to improve. “It’s ability that improves with time”, he says. The broader your experiences, the better your giss.

Business leadership requires more giss so that each blink is accurate. A home life full of harmony is based on our ability to blink well with each other. Actually, the ability to rapidly “read” what is really going on and make snap decisions based on your inner truths is essential to business, social, spiritual, and family growth.

You can sharpen your intuition. You can make accurate, snap decisions. You can giss your way to bliss.

Article written by Anita Jefferson, M.Ed.
Author of Climb Every Obstacle: Eliminate Your Limits
Anita@anitajefferson.com
(678) 406-9195








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Anita Jefferson is the author of Climb Every Obstacle: Eliminate Your Limits! and as the owner of WordSmith Revisions Communications is a professional speaker and trainer whose expertise is in leadersehip and personal development.

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