Photo by John Gibbons on Unsplash
‘Know your strengths and discover your potential’.
We explored our VALUES in Part-I of the ‘Who Am I’ series and tried understanding how they can be a guiding force in our life.
Let us now focus on our STRENGTHS and understand what they are and how we can benefit from them.
We often hear from our peers and superiors to work on our weaknesses and close our gaps. But, isn’t it crucial to look at our natural abilities too and focus on turning our talents and potential into strengths?
Our strengths are the guiding forces of our lives. When we focus on them, we tend to lead more satisfying and fulfilled lives.
Strengths are nothing but a combination of our natural talents, knowledge, and skills, applied over time.
Hold on-When I say our strength is our talent, it doesn’t mean we define strength by considering talent alone. We all know, if we do not nurture and practice our talent, we may not realize our true strength. For instance, we may have a natural aptitude and skill for drawing, but if we don’t practice drawing, we may never master our craft.
The blend of talent, knowledge, skill, and practice is what creates ‘Strength’.
Very often in life, we focus on closing our gaps and working only on the improvement areas that we ignore on building our strengths. Be it school, college or workplace, performance reviews focus on the development plan on areas that need the most improvement.
While it is a good thing to improve in areas, the problem occurs when this is our only focus.
Most of the successful people have attributed their success in life to building upon their strengths rather than focusing solely only on addressing their weaknesses.
When we understand our strengths, we can channelize our energy into tasks and activities that bring us the utmost satisfaction. While it aids us in attaining our goals and gaining perspectives in challenging situations, on the personal and professional front, it also helps us to improve our relationships with others.
But how do we know or understand our strengths?
While we can do some introspection and reflection or take feedback from our family, friends or colleagues- the preferred approach should be to take an unbiased online assessment that will help identify your strengths.
For students, this is the most crucial parameter as it also helps you in channelizing your efforts in choosing the apt subjects/career path.
While you understand your strengths, it is good to not only ‘Reflect’ but ‘Act’ to realize the true benefit of this knowledge about yourselves.
Students should work on building a concrete plan (aim initially for the short term) -think of the actions you will take over the next month, write them down, commit to doing them. After a month, reflect on how you have performed as a result of this increased focus on your strengths. Observe the euphoric feelings of accomplishment and reward yourself for applying a ‘Strengths’ mindset.
It works as a dual advantage for students, especially budding teenagers. It helps them build focus and motivates them to attain an achievable goal that they have set for themselves-building on their STRENGTHS.
So, do you know your Strengths?
Manjula Ovalekar – Career Guidance Coach
Nurturemycareer 