Everybody has a talent. How to define yours?

I want to share with you my experience how to define your strong sides.

Why should we know our strong sides?

At the last century the football genius Pele visited the USSR. He was invited to watch the training of the USSR
football national team. After it Pele said that they would never become champions.  He explained it this way: “In Brazil we develop our virtues and Russians all the time eliminate shortcomings”. So they never had become. 

Month ago I sat near the Christmas tree and began to meditate upon this: during my whole life the biggest part of my energy and time I’ve spent for the elimination of my shortcomings. I thought that this will make my personality harmonious and comprehensive developed. Do you need my harmony and comprehensive development? Would you pay me for it? Would you at least appreciate it somehow?

You get payment or appreciation only for the benefit which you can give to the definite people. And the biggest benefit we can produce only if we use our strongest sides.

We all have strong sides and capabilities you just have to take a good look in yourself.  Just pay attention to them. During this whole week several hours each day I was spending my time trying to define my strong and weak sides (I can afford it because I’m out of job at this time). I‘ve went through psychological tests, read books on this topic, made introspective and came to the following conclusions:

1) One of the founding fathers of management theory Peter Drucker stated: when you are going to start some long-term work you should previously write down what result do you expect and when you finish you work (or fail to finish) you should compare your expectations with the result. Then you should analyze what helped you and what you were lacking to complete the task. This is the best way to understand your strong and weak sides. If we haven’t been doing something during the long period of time with perseverance and diligence we can’t adequately assess our capabilities. You can’t just sit down and with just using your brain once and for all define your capabilities. It doesn’t work this way. It is a continuous process. So before making a conclusion you should take actions, you should check your conception by practice.  

2) Taking actions should be based on already identified strengths and weaknesses.

For example, if you did not like maths and physics at school, and then you have studied at a technical college without much success and did not show any love for the technical disciplines, whether or not should you aspire to a career in nuclear physics and microelectronics? Maybe it’s easier to just buy a set for masochism, but to work in the areas where you have more chances?

In order to determine your capabilities based on previous experiences, I can recommend 3 methods:

1. Psychological tests. On the Internet there are many of them. But honestly speaking those tests that I took showed only what I’ve already knew about myself. But may be they would be helpful for you.

2. Survey of friends and colleagues. View from the outside is always very important.

3. Introspection. This method for me was most helpful.

To speed up the search for your strengths you can find on the internet some ready lists of every sort of strengths and estimate with a 10-point scale the development level of each of them in yourself. Those which received 6 or more points should be written down in a special place - this is your strengths. Among them it is necessary to identify those the development of which, in your opinion, will bring you the most success.

The list of your strengths can be very large, and the more you delve into yourself, the more decreases the effectiveness of the search (increases the time of identification of each next strength). Therefore, the detection should be stopped in time to prevent the further tortures of yourself. I, for example, stopped on the figure 40. This does not mean that I have 40 very strong qualities in comparison with other people, it just means that 40 of these qualities are stronger than all my other qualities.

3) I would pick apart among our strengths such concept as our basic values.

We need to understand our true basic values and avoid to do what contradicts them. For example, I do not work for companies that cheat their customers or employees - it is contrary to my basic values ​​such as honesty and justice which takes in my value system one of the major positions. If we do things which are contrary to our values ​​- it does not bring us happiness and true success.

Summary:

1) Only in thorough practice you can see what you are capable for and what do you really want.

2) Define your strengths and weaknesses on the basis of your previous experiences. Use psychological tests, survey your friends, perform introspection.  

3) Develop yourself in line with your basic values​​.