How do I discover my strength and harness them to have a fruitful career? Is this a question you’ve been asking yourself? If yes, then this article could help you in unlocking your abilities and become invaluable.
One of the wonderful things in living today’s world is we have almost infinite opportunities, we have so many things at our disposal that could help us make the best use of our abilities and become instrumental. In this post we’ll be looking at ‘TALENT’, things that constitute talent and how you could possibly unlock the talents in you.
What is Talent?
Your talent is your natural abilities or qualities that you’ve possessed in a field or activity. I believe talent consists of three things, which are Gift, Love and Skill. So if you have a gift and then you love that gift and then learn more skills to improve on that gift then you’re TALENTED. Now let’s look at each in details.
-Your Natural Gifts
Your gifts are the things that you were born with, things that you can do naturally, and things that are effortless to you. Some people have one or two gifts and others may have many gifts. Some Gifts might appear earlier in life while others will appear later as you grow.
Everyone was born with a gift and as we grow, our parents, siblings or people around us could easily notice our gifts and sometimes help us harness them. But there a times people grow finding it hard in discovering their gifts or it takes time before they could actually unlock the natural gifts in them.
If you think that you haven’t yet discovered your natural gifts try to ask yourself these questions:
-What comes easily to you?
-When you were a child what sort of things came easily to you?
-What are the areas where you have received awards or public praise?
-What are the areas where others have said, I wish I could do that as well as you?
Taking a few minutes of your leisure time and answering these questions could give you a clear view of what your natural gifts are.
-What Do You Love Doing?
Love are things that you’re passionate about doing, things that you enjoy doing. You could have a gift and have no love for that gift or you don’t enjoy doing it.
Finding out what your gifts are is not enough, there is a key element that can help you harness that gift, which is love. If you love doing what you do best you could have a blissful career. Loving what you do could also help you endure the moments of your job that you dislike. For example, I love teaching people but I dislike the process of preparing exams and marking scripts, but because I love the job I’ll be ready to endure that little annoyance.
There are many people who are in a career in pursuit of the money but they don’t actually love that job. This might not benefit both you and your employer, and you could end up being frustrated or less successful in that job and you might end up quitting or changing a career over time. However, the reality is, many people have difficulties making a living doing what they love. Sometimes they lack the physique necessary or doing something that is over-saturated, for instance, many people love sports but lack the athleticism, physical strength or skills to do sport. So love alone does not guaranty a successful career but it’s a critical element.
Ask yourself this question:
-What would I do if money is no object or if at all you don’t need to worry about paying the bills? Taking a moment to answer this question could also help you in unlocking your abilities.
-Skills Acquired
Now that you’ve understood what gift and love are, let’s talk about skills. Your skills are the things that you learn over time. They’re the things that you’ve been trained to do. You could learn skills to harness your gifts so that you can be more competent. You can get skills from education, mentorship, on-the-job-training or through self-taught.
We undergo education our entire lives to improve on our skills and that education can come from a variety of sources. While school provides a great skills training but it’s not the only source, our family, friends, mentors and people around us also provide skills training.
Every job that you have had has provided an on-the-job-training or your employer might also provide you with an opportunity to attend some training courses to improve your skills. If you’re a student, every training or seminar you’ve attended has increased your skills.
Personally, every job that I took adds up my skills and experience. I always make sure that my employers provide me with the opportunity to study so that I can acquire more skills which will actually benefit me and the employer. If you’re unemployed or you’ve a job that doesn’t provide those opportunities you may use your own earnings to pay for courses or get a mentor who will help and train you to improve on your skills or you could teach yourself.
Throughout my life I have acquired different skills from Computing, Producing Videos, Teaching, Blogging and Tailoring etc. and surprisingly, I’m beginning to see other talents popping up. Most of these I didn’t acquire from school but via self-taught. “The secret of self-taught is the ability to know how to know”.
In this section you will need to answer these questions:
-What did you focused on in your educational career?
-What was your best subject in secondary school?
-If you went to college or university what was your major? What was your minor?
-If you attended a trade school what trade did you learn?
This places a big development in your skills. Next, what careers were you exposed to growing up? You might have heard your parents always discussing about something or you spend time with someone at their work place or listened to conversations, this could naturally influence your skills. For instance, my father and brother are both fashion designers and that actually influenced me to become creative in whatever I do. Hearing my dad or brother talking about patterns, fabrics and quality, consistency really helped me in my career and makes me to become result oriented.
If you look around you will realise that most people unlocked their abilities when they were very young. Some in secondary and others in university, others were helped or encouraged by people around them and others via self-taught. Whatever the case may be, try to spend more time trying to improve on your strength instead of wasting a lot of time trying to improve your weakness.
-Improve On Your Technological Skills Regularly
Now let’s talk about how important technology is in your chosen career. Technology can play a vital role in whatever career you’re in. Compare the phone that you’re using today and the one you were using as recently as 5 years ago, the increase in power and sophistication is staggering. Without a commitment to regularly improve on your technological skills is easy to fall behind.
You will need to always try and get up to date with new technological improvements. One of the greatest gifts that we have in the 21st century is the opportunity to learn almost anything online. You also may need to take lectures on at least basic computer user skills like file management, word processing, spreadsheet, database, creating presentations, using the internet and emailing. These few technological skills will definitely play a vital role in whatever career you’re in.
Final Thoughts
Look up to someone who is already successful in his/her career or trying be successful in what they do. This could motivate you to follow their footsteps and even do better.
Try rating yourself from 0-10 every month, like it’s said, when performance is measured; performance improves. Don’t let a month go by without learning something new. If you’re not improving, then you’re stagnating and that’s the last thing you want for yourself. People always keep asking me these questions: When did you know how to do that? You did that? I never thought you know how to that. Well, I learn anything I could easily grab and I have the ability to learn things without being taught and that’s the reason I got many talents.
Try to always identify the areas that you need to improve on, and see how best you could improve on them. You have to jump over from just being good and become better. Let’s say you need to do a better job on accomplishing tasks on time. To improve on that you will need to try and exceed your boss’s or customer’s expectations by getting things done earlier. This definitely makes you the go-to-person in your industry.
I hope this article was insightful, that’s for reading and see you next time.
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