Identifying your strengths and building your life based on them are essential for success. Without knowing how to recognize your strengths and maximize them, you may waste a lot of time doing the wrong things. Can you imagine spending years of hard work only to realize at the end that you have poured your time and energy (not to mention money) into the wrong things? That’s why I believe these 12 lessons on maximizing your personal strengths are important. I summarized these lessons from the bookNow, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. Rather than writing a review of the book, I’ll directly give you the gems in the form of these 12 lessons. First of all, let’s be clear about the definition of strength used here: a strength is consistent near perfect performance in an activity. You have strength in something if you consistently achieve near perfect performance in it. This definition is important to bear in mind, as we go through the lessons. So here are the 12 essential lessons to maximize your personal strengths: 1. Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses You will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses. Capitalize on your strengths, and manage around your weaknesses. Managing around your weaknesses will free you up to hone your strengths to a sharper point. 2. An ability is a strength only if you can fathom yourself doing it repeatedly, happily, and successfully Besides consistently performing it successfully, you should also derive some intrinsic satisfaction from the activity. 3. Organize your life around your strengths Organize your life around your strengths so that these strengths can be applied. Find or carve out a role that draws on these strengths every day. This will make your life more productive and fulfilled. 4. There are three raw materials of strengths: talents, knowledge, and skills Talents are your naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior (more in lesson #6). 5. The most important of the three raw materials are talents Talents are the most important because they are innate whereas skills and knowledge can be acquired through learning and practice. 6. Your talents are enduring because they are somehow “hardwired” into your brain Basically, your talents are the strongest synaptic connections in your brain. It is the path of “least resistance” in your brain which makes you naturally tend to go that way. 7. There are two kinds of knowledge: factual and experiential Factual knowledge is content. For example, when you start to learn a language, factual knowledge is the vocabulary. Factual knowledge won’t guarantee excellence, but excellence is impossible without it. It gets you into the game. Experiential knowledge is the knowledge that can be acquired only through experiences. It teaches you what works and what doesn’t. It cannot be taught in classrooms. Instead, it’s something that you must discipline yourself to pick up along the way and retain. To build your strengths, you need both kinds of knowledge. 8. Skills bring structure to experiential knowledge A skill basically is the formulation of all the accumulated knowledge into a sequence of steps that, if followed, will lead to performance – not necessarily great performance but at least acceptable performance. It enables you to avoid trial and error and incorporate the best discoveries directly into your performance. A skill is designed to make the secrets of the best easily transferable. 9. The key to building your strength is to identify your dominant talents and then refine them with knowledge and skills It’s essential to understand how to distinguish your natural talents from things you can learn. The first thing you should do is identifying your natural talents. After that, you should acquire the required knowledge and skills to refine your talents. 10. Practice doesn’t (necessarily) make you perfect You can’t reach near perfect performance in any activity you choose just by practicing. It also requires certain natural talents. While you can always improve your performance with practice, it might not take you to consistent near perfect performance. Unless you have the necessary talent, your improvements will be modest. 11. A sure way to identify your talents is stepping back and watching yourself for a while. Watch yourself for a while when you try an activity. See how quickly you pick it up. See whether you become absorbed in the activity to such an extent that you lose track of time. 12. There are four clues to help you identify your talents More specifically, look for these four clues to identify your talents: Having read all the lessons, there are two questions you should ask yourself: If your answer to any of these questions is no, you’d better takeaction before it’s too late.
Knowledge consists of the facts and lessons learned (more in lesson #7).
Skills are the steps of an activity (more in lesson #8).
It is the combination of talents, knowledge, and skills that creates your strengths.
What are your spontaneous, top-of-mind reactions to the situations you encounter? These top-of-mind reactions provide the best trace of your talents because they show where the paths of “least resistance” in your brain are.
For example, when you hear that your employee cannot come because his child is sick, what is your first reaction? If your first reaction focuses on the ill child because you care about her, you may have a talent of empathy.
Your strongest connections are irresistible. They exert a magnetic influence, drawing you back time and again. These stronger connections will keep calling out to you, demanding to be heard. If you want to discover your talents, you should pay them heed.
The speed at which you learn a new skill provides a telltale clue to the talent’s presence and power. Whatever the skill is, if you learned it rapidly, your talents may be at work.
Your strongest synaptic connections are designed so that when you use them, it feels good. So, if it feels good when you perform an activity, chances are that you are using a talent.
Friday, August 28, 2009
12 Essential Lessons to Maximize Your Personal Strengths
How to Make More Money Fast!
Let’s start from the beginning by answering a basic question: what is money? Steve Pavlina in his book Personal Development for Smart People has a good answer: So the amount of money you earn is proportional to the amount of value you contribute to the society. What you need to do to make more money is simple: contribute more value to the society. There’s a catch though: the one who determines the value of your contribution is the society, not you. In Pavlina’s words: Your income depends on the social value of your work, not the personal value. Personal value is whatever you say it is. Social value, however, is determined by social consensus. So here is a key principle: To make more money, contribute more social value. Here are several things you can do to contribute more social value and thereby make more money: First of all, you should identify your personal strengths. What are you naturally good at? Working on your strengths will give you much more in return than working on your weaknesses. So it’s essential that you identify your strengths. Action list Further reading By identifying your personal strengths, you should find where you can be very good at. For example, you may find that you can be very good at playing piano or programming. What you need to do is improving your skills there until you reach world-class level. That way you can provide tremendous value to others. To improve your skills, you need to do deliberate practice. Here is a good explanation of deliberate practice: Deliberate practice refers to a form of training that consists of focused, grueling, repetitive practice in which the subject continuously monitors his or her performance, and subsequently corrects, experiments, and reacts to immediate and constant feedback, with the aim of steady and consistent improvement. It is generally accepted that this form of training calls for approximately 10,000 hours of concentrated effort if one is to achieve the optimum level of expertise. Action list Further reading Aside from the skills you choose for your deliberate practice, you need to have other skills in your skill set. These skills complement your main skills and help you provide something unique (see point 5 below). You don’t have to be very good at them, but you should be good enough. Action list Your network is essential in helping you make more money. There are two reasons for that: Of course, to expand your network you must be willing to help the people there. Action list Further reading What value can you contribute to the world that others can’t? Answering this question isn’t easy but it will help you differentiate yourself. So take the time to find your unique value proposition. Action list After finding your unique value proposition, you need to get the message out to your target audience. If people don’t know you then they won’t come. For that reason, you need to build your personal brand. By building your personal brand, people know what they can expect from you so they will come to you when they need it. Action list Further reading Opportunities often come in unexpected ways. You need to open your eyes and see what is around you. That’s how you improve your luck: Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they’re too busy looking for something else. Lucky people see what is there rather than just what they’re looking for. Since they are observant, lucky people often see things that other people don’t. Action list Further reading When you see a need, look at what you have (your skills and network) and find a way to provide a solution. The broader your skill set and network are, the more likely you will find something. Your solution should be customer-oriented and satisfy the customer. If the customer is satisfied, she may spread the word about you. Action list I read about it in the blogging context, but it applies to making money as well. One of the best ways to provide more value is by building on the value you already provide. This is smarter than starting from scratch because you can leverage what you have. Action list *** Applying these tips will take time, but it will help you make more money in the long term. Like Moliere said: The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
1. Identify your personal strengths
2. Do your deliberate practice
3. Diversify your skill set
4. Expand your network
It can connect you with those who need your solutions. It helps you find opportunities.
When someone needs something that you can’t provide, turn to your network to find those who can. Or find someone whose skills complement yours.5. Find your unique value proposition
6. Build your personal brand
7. Open your eyes for opportunities
8. Provide customer-oriented solutions
9. Build upon what you build
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Four Ways to Feel Good
We are all looking for happiness, and feeling good is the key to a successful and meaningful life. But how many of us make it a priority? How often do we commit to making ourselves feel good? I believe that happiness is so important, it should not be left to chance. In ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ Viktor Frankl writes ‘between stimulus and response there is a gap, and in this gap lies all our freedom.’ Frankl came to this insight after spending several years in Nazi concentration camps, during which time he discovered that those who believed they had some control over their lives were more likely to survive. Of course, we do not experience such extreme conditions, but the message that we are in control of our own thoughts and how we respond to situations is a vital one to internalize. Happiness is a choice. Operating from this knowledge, we have a surprisingly powerful locus of influence in the world. Consciously direct your thoughts This is not easy for most of us, since we have been conditioned to believe that our thoughts and feelings reflect our own inner world. In fact, our thoughts come first, and our experience follows. Consciously changing our thoughts is an amazing way to change our feelings and, inevitably, our experience of life. For example, suppose you feel unwell. Most people will dwell on this bad feeling and start to run through a mental routine of negative thinking. But if you start to play a new tape in your head, you will be surprised at the change in the way you feel. Replace your negative thoughts with something like, ‘I feel good and good things are coming into my life.’ Repeat it over and over again. Within a short time, you’ll start to feel better. It’s not easy at first, but this is a skill which, like any other, can be practiced. If you are diligent, you will improve and positive thoughts will become second nature. Be an optimist Studies have shown that people with a happy, optimistic outlook live longer and healthier lives. Did you know, for example, that … … optimistic heart-bypass patients are half as likely as pessimists to be re-hospitalized? … happy people have lower blood pressure? … the most pessimistic men are more than twice as likely to develop heart disease compared with the most optimistic? Being optimistic is not about being a Pollyanna and ignoring problems. It’s about believing that solutions can be found, living with enthusiasm, being creative and always open to new possibilities. Nobody knows the future. The only thing we can be fairly sure about is that things never turn out the way we expect. So why worry about worst case scenarios? Things can be seen in a good light or a bad light – problems can be opportunities; failures can be learning experiences; pain can lead to growth. Where you put your focus is a choice you must make. Take a walk The health benefits of walking are undisputed, but there are also psychological benefits. Studies have shown, for example, that walking can help alleviate the symptoms of depression. A long walk will put some emotional distance between yourself and whatever problem you’re experiencing, and it will help to clear your head. I especially recommend taking a walk at the end of the day. Instead of collapsing on the couch, watching TV, going to a bar or whatever else you do to unwind after work, go for a walk instead. You’ll be getting some good exercise, it will help with your digestion and you’ll be able to sleep better. Try it. Walking can contribute to your happiness. Feeling good is so important – in a sense, it’s the whole point of being alive. So don’t waste time on negativity. Take control!
Stop Focusing on “Then” and Work With the “Now”
There are some people who are completely happy with themselves, their lives, and their prospects for the future. While they can be considered to be more fortunate than most, most who do not fall into that category are not as bad off as they tend to believe. Instead, they are simply lacking something, or making mistakes, which are standing in the way of their lives being as fulfilling as they would prefer. Some even go as far as to not realize the immense potential they possess. Whether you are thinking about your personality or your life in general, success means focusing on the here-and-now. While it is important to acknowledge the choices and experiences which resulted in you being where you are today, it is equally important to not allow yourself to become so caught up in thoughts of the past that the present day passes you by. Self-motivation is the key to ensuring that you do not continue repeating the same mistakes. You may have had one or more errors in judgment which led you to take the wrong path, or to make mistakes that were not in your best interest. You can acknowledge this without rehashing them over and over again in your mind, and simply be determined to make different, better decisions today. Then is over; this is now. The less time and effort you put into looking at the past, the more you will have for living and experiencing this day. You will also find that letting go of the past will give you a deeper sense of strength. Instead of allowing past mistakes and worries to drain your energies, you will have a renewed energy to live your life to the fullest and enjoy it more. Being content with yourself and optimistic about your future is not difficult. Whatever is in the past is over; learn from it and move on. When you are self-motivated enough to do this, you will see that moving ahead is the best definition of living life. With that said, what can you do now? Sure it is easy for me to tell you to forget the past, yet it is a whole different practice to actually do it. Life is a complex set of events much of which of course is real, yet a large amount is just your view of what really happened. Let me explain with an example. I know not everyone is a football fan but I am guessing most have watched at least part of a game on TV. Most plays and almost all the important plays are played over and over on the TV screen right after the play happened. How many times have you watched a play and were certain and I mean certain of the outcome, say the player caught a pass, then watching the instant replay you realize you were totally wrong, the player dropped the pass. What you were certain you saw, never happened. The first step in trying to minimize the effects of your past in order to concentrate on your future is to find out how much of the past that you are certain happened were just mistakes on your part. A quick example might be as a teenager you tried to build a piece of furniture out of scrape wood in your father’s workshop. The piece of furniture looked good when you finished but fell apart before you could show your father and you assumed your were a lousy carpenter and the rest of your life you have avoided building anything. Yet the reality was the scrap wood you used was faulty and not your building ability. Yet the rest of your life you have believed mistakenly you are a poor builder of things.
The Importance of Being Smart
I recently watched the movie Red Cliff II. It’s about a famous battle in the Three Kingdoms era in China. The battle was between Cao Cao who had about 800,000 soldiers and Liu Bei – Sun Quan alliance who had less than 100,000 soldiers. Again and again, Zhuge Liang devised tactics that cleverly turned the situation around. One of my favorites is when he was asked to provide 100,000 arrows for the alliance. He was given ten days to complete the task but he confidently asked for just three. After two days, he didn’t make a single arrow. All he did was sitting beside the river, watching the weather, and waiting for some boats he asked. When the boats arrived, he took them to attack the enemy. The river was foggy so the enemy couldn’t see clearly how many boats were attacking them. Zhuge Liang attacked first with some archers, but the enemy – being far stronger – fought back fiercely. They overwhelmed Zhuge Liang’s boats with arrows. Guess what? All Zhuge Liang’s boats were covered with straw so he got all the arrows shot to him. When he eventually went home after “losing” the fight, he brought with him 100,000 arrows as requested – and he didn’t make even one of them. Watching this movie makes me understand what a difference being smart can make. Those who are smart can achieve much more – with much less effort – than those just work hard.
