Discovering your Strengths

What are your strengths?  It’s no secret that playing to your strengths can help you be successful.  Everyone is good at something and struggles in other aspects of their life.  The trick is figuring out what you are good at and doing more of that and either delegating the other parts you’re not so good at to other people or working to improve them.  

What about if you don’t know what your strengths are?  How can you find out?  There are two relatively easy ways to figure them out.  The first way is for you to sit down and reflect.  Think about your job, activities, hobbies, family life, and everything you participate in.  Write down everything that you think you do well.  It could be everything from consoling a family member, to swinging a sledge hammer, and everything in between.  When you have a number of items listed, then break them down even more.  What makes you good at them? Are you strong, do you listen well, can you type fast, etc.  These are your strengths.  Then think of the parts of your life that are difficult.  What things do you struggle with.  This list is usually easier for people to come up with.  Don’t hover over it, just write them down and move on.  You can break these down into items you can delegate to other people and ones you can improve.  Then figure out who you would delegate them to and/or how you will improve those parts of your life.

The second way to learn what your strengths and weaknesses are is to ask a trusted family member and coworker.  Doing it this way may be a little harder to hear, especially for your struggles, but that’s ok.  You are asking a trusted family member, friend, or coworker with the goal of delegating some of them and learning to improve the others.  Make the same list as you would if you sat down and thought about them and break them down.  

Now doing this is great and will make you aware of your strengths and weaknesses, but it won’t do you a lick of good if you don’t do something about it.  As already mentioned, you delegate or work to improve your weaknesses.  For your strengths, play to them.  Do them more often, focus on utilizing them to their full potential, and share them with the people around you.  Not only will you feel great sharing your talent, you will get more accomplished and move farther along in your career.

I’d love to hear your strengths!  Please post them in the comments below!

Find your Dedication

Do you have what it takes to be a dedicated person?  If you are, then you will have every chance at succeeding.  Why?  Because being dedicated means that you will stay focused, you will get up when knocked down, and you will learn from the tough times and improve for the future.  

If you don’t think you are a dedicated person, let me ask you why not?  What do you need to change to become one?  

One of the big things you can to help you be dedicated is have a very specific reason to stick to whatever you want to be dedicated at. This is your why.  For example, let’s say you want to improve health habits. You want to eat and feel better but as soon as you start it’s only a matter of days or even hours before you fall off the wagon.  This happens because your why isn’t big enough or isn’t sunk in enough yet.  To help you with this, pick a bigger and more meaningful reason why.  An example of a fitness why could be: I want to get fit to feel better.  However that brownie, those chips, oh look fast food may get you to deviate from your plan and your why to “feel better”  It may be strong for some but not all.  A stronger example could be: I want to be able to keep up with my kids and show them what it takes to be healthy.  Now you’re including your family and wanting to be there for them and show them what dedication, and healthy looks like.  Finding your why is a great way stay dedicated and focused on your goals.  Here’s an article to help you find your why. http://jonesintomotivate.blogspot.com/2016/09/what-is-your-why.html

Let's Focus on more Results

Do you want to see a difference?  Want to see some change in your results?  Then focus.  That’s right, focus.  Look at what you are doing throughout the day.  How much of it is just busy work, chatting by the water cooler, social media distraction?  My guess is, that distractions like those take up a bit of your “work time”  No matter if you are working at your job, or trying to get a task done at home.  Focus on that task, on that job.

For example, I am currently writing this article sitting in a chair in my living room with music playing.  I know that I can focus on writing and get my best info out when I have music playing.  If I had a movie or the TV on that would distract me too much.  My phone is turned over and on the coffee table so I don’t see every time I receive a notification.  

Find what works for you, put up a mental do not disturb sign (maybe even a physical one LOL) and focus on the task at hand.  Stick with it until it’s done or until you get as far as you can with it for the time period.  You will be amazed at how much you will accomplish just by focusing on a single task.  

Go ahead, give it a shot and let me know if it helped you  in the comments below or tag me in a post.