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"Hide not your talents. They for use were made.
What's a
sundial in the shade?" -- Ben Franklin
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Leveraging Your Strengths
Carol Solomon, Ph.D.
Everyone has strengths. You may be unaware of what they are, how they govern your life or their impact on others.
But you have them.
You may be aware of your strengths, but you take them for granted. You may not even think of them as strengths, because they are so much a part of who you are.
If it comes easily, we tend to undervalue it. (No pain, no gain).
The world loves an underdog, someone who succeeds due to perseverance rather than natural ability. What we fail to recognize is that the ability to persevere in the face of a challenge is a highly-regarded strength as well.
When you are naturally good at something, it’s easy to gloss over it, even discount it. We don’t give ourselves proper credit.
Others may be in awe of a natural ability that you possess and you don’t even recognize it.
After all, we are taught not to brag. “Don’t compliment him too much or he’ll get a big head.” People who do brag are thought of in a negative way. It is considered unattractive to openly acknowledge, much less flaunt our strengths.
Think of Mohammed Ali in the old boxing tapes saying that he was “the greatest
of all time . . . and the prettiest”.
If you work or live in an environment that doesn’t acknowledge and support your strengths, you are likely to be miserable.
Some people admire me (even hire me) because of my strength of perseverance. They see how much I accomplish in a day and they want to learn from me. In fact, using perseverance may NOT be the best way for them to proceed at all. They may need to leverage their creativity or playfulness to be optimally productive (strengths of which I possess little).
One of the smartest things you can do is to identify your strengths and maximize your use of them.
Understanding and leveraging your strengths is the heart of coaching.
Why? Using your strengths just makes things easier.
And leveraging your strengths can immediately upgrade your life without feeling like you have to reinvent yourself.
Optimal productivity comes when you learn to maximize what you’ve already got.
Optimal living then becomes a function of knowing and remembering who you are . . . even flaunting it.
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