The Accidental Professional

Isabelle Boulay was born in Sainte-Félicité (population 1175) in the Haute-Gaspésie region of Québec. (Haute-Gaspésie is one of my favourite regions in the world just because it is so remote, windblown, and wild. But “metropolitan” would never come to mind.)

In her early teens Isabelle went off to study literature in the nearby town of Matane (population 14,000 — still not quite metropolitan.)

Although she loved to sing, she never gave her voice a second thought. But when Isabelle was fifteen or sixteen, without her knowledge, her friends signed her up to a singing contest. She had no idea, until they dragged her on stage. Within two years she was entered into, and won, a province-wide festival, and by the time she was 21 she represented Canada at an international festival in France, where she took first prize in the “chanson francophone” category.

Soon she was “noticed” by Luc Plamondon, one of the deities of the French Canadian music scene, and the rest is history. If you know the first thing about music in French, you know Isabelle Boulay. She’s the Celine Dion who didn’t want to do Vegas.

The instances of the “accidental professional” are legion. This is not to suggest for a moment that it’s a good plan to sit around until you are “discovered”, but there remains a key lesson: we are often oblivious to our own star qualities, and we need to hear third-party evidence on the subject.

As we struggle with our ordinariness and anonymity and wish we could make more of a difference, more of an impact, somehow stand out as unique, we often come to a personal impasse. How am I different? Seriously, do I have any star qualities?

Too often we are too modest. We are too close to our own talents. Because we can do something so easily and so naturally, we assume that everyone else can, too. But of course this isn’t true.

Each one of us has capacities and talents which are unique in the world. But because we’re so close to those talents, we’re often blind to them.

But our friends are not. They know what is special about you. The questions are, are you asking them, and are you listening to them?

Do you need some help kick-starting this?