“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Let’s have a trip around your life so far and much like foraging in the forest, pick up little nuggets of treasures gained from the different events in your life we can use to guide you in your quest to find out what your strengths, skills and weaknesses are. Everyone has something they are good at, know how to do and to improve on. Strengths and skills are different because you may acquire a skill today but you are not good at it just yet so you should not consider this skill as a strength. With practice on your behalf however, you can turn an amateur skill into a formidable strength. Strengths can also be based on characteristics and not skills, these can include patience, flexibility and tenacity for example. Think hard about what you have achieved and how you have achieved it.

For example, let us look at a guy called Jack who is a sales man and he has just been promoted to sales manager.

His strengths are leadership qualities such as proactiveness, respected by his colleagues and he is reliable. He is also even-tempered and has the ability to think things through before reacting abruptly. Those are all his strengths, now let’s look at his skills: his skills include managing the cash process for all transactions, he is also trained and experienced in inventory control and lastly he is experienced in customer service and managing their feedback both good and bad and the protocols for following up.

Jack, our lad, is no Mr Perfect of course, he can improve on certain areas. He is a nice guy, maybe too nice and his team may take advantage of that so he needs to work on his assertiveness. He may also take a long time to decide on something, being an analytical kind of guy that he is but he needs to be able to make decisions on the fly as a manager so he needs to work on his problem-solving skills. Let’s break this down so you can work along as we go.

If you noticed his strengths are all his innate characteristics which he already had within him, the skills were all learned and finally his weaknesses are related to areas that is natural to him and some are related to skills.

Grab a pen and paper and write down your skills, strengths and weakness that you have.

Remember now, your strengths are your innate characteristics and not learned skills. Your strengths could be your tenacity, your resourcefulness, your determination, your optimism. Think of at least 10 if not more, and if you cannot think of any, ask your friends, your spouse, your family.

Next, your skills. What skills have you learnt from books and from people and experience. Did you learn to build websites? Write copy? Provide counsel to people? Teach people? Computer skills? Cook? Or perhaps sew? What can you do?

Finally, your weaknesses. There is nothing to be afraid or ashamed of, we all have weaknesses. We can’t be good at everything all the time. Also, what is termed weakness here is merely something that could delay you from achieving a goal or completing a task. Knowing what you don’t know is a gift, not a curse. Now, what are your weaknesses? Do you procrastinate whenever the telly is on? Do you need your accounts taken care of but do not know how? Do you need a website built? How about your temperament? Is that an issue, does it hold you back?

Putting it all together

Now let’s look at an example that has nothing to do with work. Let’s meet Sean, a nice guy who wants to be a world renowned tango dancer. He has never been trained professionally in tango so his skills needs to be developed, his strength is determination, tenacity and  good ear for rhythm. His weakness is that his is older than most people when they start training in tango. So what can he do? First, he needs to learn and practise to build his skill level and secondly researching on the additional steps he needs to take being an older guy in this game. He may need to build up his cardiovascular fitness himself or he may need to engage a coach who can help him with his fitness.

This discovery of your skills, strengths and weaknesses is not designed to humiliate, it is designed for you to be aware of what you should work on to bring you forward.Think about your ideal description of yourself and compare that with your current description. What are skills or strengths you want to gain in order to fulfil your ideal description? At the same time, look at the goodies you already have, embrace and expand on these things so that you can live life as authentically as you possibly can.

So over these 3-part articles, we have explored what really matters to you, what your ideal version of yourself looks like in correspondence to your values and beliefs and finally explored what you have and what needs to be improved on. This by no means is an end to your self-discovery journey. In fact, it is just the beginning.

Like the article? Share it with your bestest friends and at the same time share your comments with me below!

So how do we get out of our rut?

First things first, you need to be honest with yourself and ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the activities that no longer fulfils me?
   – For many it will be things like binge-eating or eating unhealthy foods too often, drinking too much and too often, shopping or spending money too much and too often or even going out socialising at any given chance even when you have other things to do. Don’t confuse this with addiction although this may lead you onto the path of addictions if you do not resolve this early enough.
2. Why do I do these things?
   – This is the key to figuring out how to change your behaviour because this is the core reason and once you find the root, you can replace this activity with something else that fulfils this need. How does doing x activity make you feel? What need does it fufil for you? Other than boredom, are there any other reasons such as loneliness or unhappiness with what’s going on with the other parts of your life?
3. What other things can I do that will give me the satisfaction I am looking for?
   – This is about replacing the activities that are meaningless to you with activities that will provide you the fulfilment and enrich you in other ways. For example, if you shop way too often to stave off boredom and loneliness you might find that meeting with friends perhaps for a chat over coffee or dinner may do a better job of fulfilling the need than spending hundreds of dollars on a dress or a gadget you will never wear or use.

In Conclusion:

Life is not always about doing the latest things or being productive all the time which is what modern living has conditioned us to strive for. We need to be fulfilled emotionally, physically and mentally in order to thrive so this is not about stopping a not so great activity and doing nothing else in its place because we just don’t work like that. The problem I think is that too many of us do not even question what fulfils and what does not and instead choose to believe that life should just go on as they are and we should be content with what we’ve got and nothing more. That is not living a life people! You need to be more than “just ok”. You deserve more fulfilment wherever you can get.

Think about the things you are doing now and determine for yourself whether they do you any good at all or do they make you even more miserable. When you get stuck just think about the 3 simple questions above and I am sure you will be able to achieve more fulfilment from your life in no time at all.