- strengths and weaknesses -
What does success mean?
Is it wealth? Is it fame? Is it happiness? What exactly is success?
What is success for you?
In fact, success cannot be explained by a simple definition.
“Success means being the best version of yourself. Success means having quality relationships and always being loyal to yourself, that is, being authentic and aligned with what you feel, what you want and what you say. Success means fulfilling everything you want, while remaining consistent with your values and principles.”
Success depends on each person and in this article, I aim to approach success in general and provide tools applicable in any situation to help you succeed in life no matter what you set out to do.
In my view, the first step to success means to know your strengths and weaknesses and most importantly, no matter what approach you take, to always act in the area of your strengths!
What do I mean? As John Maxwell said, no matter how hard we try to improve our weaknesses, we will still not be able to achieve performance or we will consume a lot of energy and time and resources to strengthen something that may not be our own way. Meanwhile when you act from the perspective of your strengths then it is very easy, opportunities arise, and the more you improve and develop your strengths the more successful and unstoppable you become in your path. Therefore, in life it is vital to be where you can use your strengths to shine.
My personal example
...is that when I was in high school and it was about choosing the faculty I was going to attend, my mother wanted to guide me to a college with an economic-mathematical orientation… but knowing that this is NOT my strong point I managed to convince her to support me to go to Law University (because I always liked history and I really managed to get into that faculty easily and I really enjoyed that time). Also when I got hired I went into an international relations department where I felt very inspired and creative but then a period of internal reorganization followed and I was transferred to a department where I did not excel because I did not use my skills and my strengths. After a while when I managed to transfer again to a department of international relations and communication I entered again in a state of creativity, inspiration with a lot of energy and with many opportunities.
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Stun Your Readers
“Be original, show off your style, and tell your story.”
I have given these examples to make it more relevant what I meant when I talked about acting on your strengths. Because each of us has some strengths and some weaknesses and it makes no sense to consume our energy and time and resources to improve something for which we have neither inclination nor any calling.
When you act in your weaknesses, you might become demotivated, have the feeling that you are not good enough, have a lower self-confidence, you might overthinking or redoing things in a strive to make it perfect, you might even become paralysed and not act anymore etc.
This is why in this article I want to focus better on strengths!
How can you identify your strengths?
Obviously, it is easier for us to identify weaknesses because we are used to criticizing ourselves or hearing others criticizing us: parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings, etc.
but...
What exactly are these strengths?
The strong points are those qualities that help you to have an easy, effortless life, and to be satisfied and at peace with yourself. Sometimes there are aspects that you are good at without putting a lot of energy or you receive praise for something that seems insignificant to you because you did not put a lot of effort.
To detect these qualities you can think of different activities and how they make you feel, that is, what makes you feel good to feel energetic that absorbs you completely and you forget about time when you do that activity? 1. One way is to ask others who know you, to tell you what they think are your strengths. Once they answer you, the idea is to sort these answers and filter them with what you know about yourself and not take them as absolute truth and analyse which ones you feel are according to what you have experienced so far.
2. Another way is to take a Gallup test or HiGHS test or you can try different personality tests that can show you what your strengths are and that can give you a new insight about yourself such as DISC or Myers Briggs type road indicator
3. In the same direction, I suggest you make a list of achievements you have accomplished throughout your life so far in order to identify your interests, skills and values. I am convinced that you can find some achievements from the way you managed to communicate with a person who had a difficult behavior, or maybe you had great grades to some exams, or maybe you found a job that you liked, or maybe you found the ideal partner etc. No matter what these achievements are, you have certainly had a few and it is important to lay them out on a piece of paper so that you can see them more clearly.
4. Of course, in case you feel stuck or you do not know how to start to identify your strengths, you can also work with a coach to help you discover them more easily.
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