Talent shows and career assessments

Well my comments today revolve around some ups and downs and deep thoughts (okay maybe not so deep, but moments of appreciation anyways). For FHE in my singles ward tonight we had a talent show. I'm sure many of you can relate to singles ward talent shows as they inevitable have some good, some bad, and some just plain funny. Well, I don't know about anyone else, but they always tend to make me a bit sad too, as my talents don't seem to be as strong in the performance arenas. It's always tempting to let the little voice inside you say "Hey, you have no talent". Now of course I know that's not true, and had to laugh at myself a bit today, when that thought came to my head, followed by a very contradictory one from earlier today. . . . . I guess this is the point where I should back up and tell you that I had my 6 month evaluation at my job today, and it went very well. (they love me, of course!) Well one of the things I've been doing lately as part of my professional development plan is research possible graduate programs and take some career assessment tests. So I was sitting in this review with my boss and telling her about the different things I'd been working on when she asked what kind of results I'd been getting on the career assessments. So I shared with her some of my highest scoring areas and she exclaimed, "Now doesn't that just describe you to a tee!?" Needless to say I was a little surprised at her reaction, but pleased with the compliment, and doubly pleased when that thought came back to me this evening when the little pessimistic voice inside me was trying to get the better of me. So the moral of the story in case you can't decipher it through all my ramblings is negative thoughts can never win if we keep enough positive ones in our heads too.