Does your creativity have you going through life feeling like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole?

There are many things I appreciate about getting older.

Caring less what people think. Letting myself off the hook for stuff I’m not good at.

That’s why I related so well to this quote from Gretchen Rubin that I found on Instagram. She says, “People do best what comes naturally.”

When you’re going through school, everyone is trying to teach you to get better at stuff you’re weak at.

One of the joys of adulthood is that if you’re weak at spreadsheets and tax forms, you can give that stuff to a bookkeeper or accountant to handle for you.

I’ve deliberately structured my home staging business so I have a minimum of paperwork. It’s part of the home staging business model I share with my Staging Diva students.

If you have a flair for design and decorating, then don’t pack that away in the back of your heart and try and convince yourself that you’ll be happy selling insurance.

Not that I have anything against people who do that, I just know it would be soul sucking for me and I’ve met many home stagers who feel the same way.

Other jobs they’re happy to get out of before turning to a home staging career include: nursing, car rentals, and stock trader.

Simply put, you will do best when you’re working from your natural talents, or “zone of genius” as Gay Hendricks calls it in his book “Take the Big Leap.”

Everything is easier when you use your creativity.

You’re not struggling all the time, because you’re embracing who you really are and what you’re really good at.

My first sign that I might have superpowers when it came to color was when I was 10 or younger. My mother always had swatches of fabric in her purse from skirts or suits that she had had altered. She carried these samples around in case she was ever in a store. With the fabric swatch, she’d always know if the new blouse she had her eye on would match what she had at home.

I never understood why she couldn’t simply look at an item in a store and know. I could, and it wasn’t even my skirt. I didn’t have to memorize all the individual colors in her wardrobe, I just knew what they looked like because I had seen her rushing off to work in the morning.

I assumed everyone, except my mother, could remember colors or know which ones went together. Turns out they can’t!

By the way, I couldn’t sit here and explain how a color wheel works to you, but that’s never stopped me from choosing colors for a client.

I was even called “As color conscious as Matisse” in a magazine cover story years ago.

Once I became a home stager, I always marveled at how people lived with all their furniture in the “wrong” place. With rare exception, it was relatively easy for me to see where it all needed to be moved to for home staging.

How the couch in the middle of the room should move under the window. Or how the night table on one side of the bed in the master bedroom actually matched the one in the second bedroom.

How did my clients not notice that what was in their own room didn’t match? Didn’t it occur to them that their reading lamps were different heights on either side of their bed? Didn’t it bother them that it wasn’t symmetrical?

Turns out it didn’t, because like many people, they didn’t even notice! All they had was a vague awareness that something wasn’t quite “right.”

You see, that’s what happens when you do what comes naturally.

It lets you excel because you’re doing what you do best. And while you’re doing it you don’t feel like a square peg in a round hole. You feel like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

You’re embracing your creativity and god given talent, not leaving it to wither away while you force yourself to occupy your life with things you’re not good at.

Home stagers, do you have any examples to share of when you were doing best because you were doing what came naturally? When you were feeling like you were in exactly the right place? Please comment below, I know your experiences will empower others too!

For more on this topic read the articles and comments over at Addicted to Decorating or Born to Be a Home Stager.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Home Staging and Voice of Possibility Group Inc.

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing what they love. There are over 10,000 students in 23 countries learning her home staging business model. Debra is the best selling author of 5 guides including Staging Diva Ultimate Color Guide: The Easy Way to Pick Colors for Home Staging Projects.