Using Your Strengths

First, I apologize for not posting more regularly recently. I had a week of travel come up that I hadn’t expected and it threw a small wrench in some work plans. I’m not complaining though, I’d much rather be busy than idle.

A friend of mine connected me to a video titled Look at Yourself after Watching This that I think is a must-see. It’s just over four minutes and worth your time. It got me thinking about how much in life we take for granted.

Some experiences about a year ago really brought me down emotionally. Instead of looking at the opportunities that resulted, I focused on the problems. I didn’t look for solutions, I got stuck just thinking about how complicated the whole future looked.

Watch the video and think about how even in the midst of adversity you can turn a lousy hand into a winning one. Think of the number of lives that Nick Vujicic has touched by turning some incredible difficulties into a blessing for those around him. All you have to do is watch some of the expressions in the video.

That led me to thinking about how we often focus on the things in which we struggle instead of those in which we excel. Why is that? Shouldn’t we be taking our natural talents and abilities and making the most of them instead of trying to fix things in which we aren’t gifted? That’s kind of the point of Strength’s Finder 2.0. Tom Rath examines this phenomenon and makes a clear argument on why we should be spending much more time focusing on where we excel. Each copy of the book has a unique code to allow you to take an online assessment test (you will need to purchase a NEW copy of the book to get your code) that will help you find your top five strengths.

A couple of friends of mine read the output from this assessment. What was really surprising was that independently of each other and without knowledge of what the other said, they both indicated that reading it was like reading my biography. I was a bit stunned. This is incredibly powerful material.

Take a chance and find out what your unique gifts are to the world. Turn things that you may have thought of as challenges into something that makes you a power and force to be reckoned with. Become an agent for change in the world around you.

Please let me know if you’ve tackled this. It’s really a very small investment of time that will help you understand yourself better, help you show others what you can do, and make you more effective in the world. I’d love to know about your results either by posting comments here or by letting me know privately.