Play to Your Strengths

Vision: The Purpose for My Life – Part 5

In creating your own family plan, a key ingredient is knowing what you’re good at doing.  Everything in your plan, works together to make you who you are.  If you can see these pieces in a book (or in this case a binder) then you are able to see into yourself and even who you will eventually become.  This is one of the major reasons Pamela and I have a plan.  

Recently, she was planning our vacation and I (as usual) wasn’t cooperating due to the estimates.  She became frustrated and passed the task over to me to plan.  Days later, she went right back to work on the project.  So I asked what happened as I thought she was done planning and it was up to me to make it happen.  Her response was simply this, it’s a part or our family plan to have our very own retreat.  It’s an important part of what we do.  While this example, is off my topic for today, it illustrates how having a plan keeps you on point.

What are you good at doing?
There is no better question to get you prepared for a plan.  In order to plan and schedule for your gifts and talents, you need to first know what they are.  For me, years ago I went on this journey.  What am I good at doing?  So I challenged myself to put into a sentence or less, what I thought to be my gift.  From there I found two words that summarize who I am: simple and organized.  I like to make things as simple as possible and my gift is organization.  I know how to turn chaos  into order.  

Play to Your Strengths
You see my gift is ingrained in me.  I don’t believe anything has to be complicated in its smallest pieces.  Overall, a process might be complicated, but once you break it down into small organized pieces, it becomes simple.  To help me keep all the pieces working together, my world must be organized.  I have processes and systems for this.  Enough about what my gift is.  What you need to know next is how it fits into my life.  I use this when I write and in every phase of my career, home and life.    Since I know my gifts, or what some call my strengths, I play to those and fit them into my world. You must do the same.  

Where to go when you have no idea what your gifts are?
If you don’t know what you’re good at doing, start by asking those closest to you.  Ask your children or your spouse.  Ask your brother or sister.  Your friends are a good source, but be open when the answer comes.  Their answer may be nothing like your answer or what you expected.  Write their responses down and begin to study it.  Use it, even draft plans on how you can become better with your gift and how you can incorporate it into daily living.

Today is Friday!
Knowing what your gift(s) is, is transformational.  Being good at something and knowing it adds a lot of confidence to you.   What would knowing what you’re good at doing do for you?  Leave us a comment or email me. Click here.