To have a career that really suits you, you need to first understand your strengths. By that, I don’t mean your knowledge or skills. Those are things you’ve learned and developed and anyone else can do that too. Rather think of strengths as your natural attributes that give you a significant advantage over the next person. Or you could consider your strengths as the way you do things because you are naturally wired that way.
Reading this your immediate response might be something along the lines of, “I’m not particularly good at anything.” Nothing could be further from the truth! But as in most things, you do attract what you expect. If you expect to find your strengths, they’ll make themselves known. Everyone has natural abilities, including you!
Assess your strengths
Take a few minutes now and think about the things you can do better than at least 90% of the population. These may be mental things like mathematical skills or processing large amounts of information quickly. Maybe you have a talent for organization. Or perhaps you have an unusual ability to make friends, deal with children, influence people, or lead others.
Keep an open mind. You are better at something, even if it’s just one thing, that you can do better than nearly anyone you know. Starting today, allow yourself about a week to list the attributes that pop into your mind. It might a bit of time to get a complete picture of your natural abilities, so start as soon as possible, and have patience.
If you’re feeling stumped, think about times when you experienced these things simultaneously.
- You lost your sense of time i.e., chunks of time passed without you noticing;
- You lost your sense of self-consciousness. Often this happens when you become so engrossed in what you’re doing;
- It’s challenging, yet there’s no winner or loser.
If you can identify times when this is true for you, then this is where you are using your natural abilities and you’re wired to excel.
Get practical
Now you’ve taken some time to determine your strengths you can start to identify how to start using them in your career if you aren’t already. If you are then you may need to deepen your use of these strengths or increase the amount of time you use them.
Looking back five or ten years at previous jobs, ask yourself why you left them and often it’s because you were missing using your strengths. When you are doing a job that uses too little of your natural strengths you spend a lot of your time working ‘out of preference.’ This means you are using more of your skills outside of your strengths which can be exhausting and very tiresome. For this reason, it’s just as important to identify your struggles as well as your strengths. Consider what tasks cause you to struggle and why. Do you have a sense that you were able to mostly take on projects that you were good at? Or did you feel relegated to take on tasks that didn’t use your strengths?
Naturally, you’ll feel a much greater sense of fulfilment if your career allows you to utilize your strengths on a daily basis. And your fulfilment will be further enhanced if you get recognised for it. Rarely will you enjoy a job where you struggle more than excel and/or where the job requires you to spend a lot of time on your weaknesses.
Now you have a sense of what your strengths are, you can start your search for a career that will allow you to use them.
You’ll know that you’re in a job that uses your strengths when you begin to notice the following:
1. A great increase in productivity. When you’re doing something that you’re naturally good at, you’ll accomplish a lot more sooner.
2. Much better results with less effort. The results you see at work can be spectacular when you’re doing something that plays into your strengths.
3. A better income. How could you not get paid more when you’re doing something at which you excel?
4. Much more enjoyment. All the above helps to make life more pleasant. Plus, you may find that using your strengths is enjoyable in itself.
5. A greater sense of fulfilment. We all feel better when we’re providing more value to the world and experiencing success every day.
With all of these rewards waiting for you in the right job, you won’t want to let another day pass without looking for it! Find a career that allows you to use your strengths daily, and where there are opportunities to get recognised for it. That way you’ll maximise your use of your energy and start to find time and energy for all of those non-work activities that also bring you joy.
If you are stumped at what your strengths could possibly be, book in a confidential call and we can explore together what they might be and how you can start to get more of them in your current role or new role.
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Ways to develop your inner strength to protect you against burnout
Is it smarter to focus on your strengths or weaknesses?
