Do you know who you are? Really?

  • I get antsy and frustrated if I’m not accomplishing something.
  • Friday is my favorite because I have an especially big to-do list for that day: cleaning, bills, budget.
  • I’m a nut for lists; they give me guidance, satisfaction, and purpose.

Does this sound wonderful or horrible to you?  Are you someone who loves structure and routine or do you go with the flow?  Are you impatient and want to make things happen or do you take forever to make a decision? Answering these questions are clues to who you REALLY are.

Ah-ha

Do you love collecting things, like stuff or knowledge?  Do you notice when people are left out and want to include them?

Finding out what makes us tick and why gives us an “ah-ha” moment.

Recently, I participated in a class at my church in which we took the Clifton StrengthsFinder online assessment. We learned a lot about ourselves, especially why we do what we do.

Personally, I think everyone should take the assessment.  It’s an awesome tool!  Knowing our talents can be a huge help in all aspects of our lives: work, home, relationships, etc.

Your top 5

“Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.  Unlike skills and knowledge, talents naturally exist within you and cannot be acquired.  They are your inborn predispositions.  They are the things that you do instinctively and give you satisfaction. Your spontaneous, top-of-mind reactions to the situations that you encounter are the best indicators of your talents.” ~ Taken from the book “Living Your Strengths.”

Taking the assessment highlights your top 5 (out of 34) talents or themes.  For example, my top 5 are:

    1. Empathy
    2. Achiever
    3. Intellection
    4. Responsibility
    5. Discipline

Once we know our themes, we can begin to develop our strengths by acquiring knowledge and skills.

A strength is made up of talents, knowledge, and skills. It’s the ability to consistently produce a positive outcome with near-perfect performance in a specific task. ~ Per “Living Your Strengths.”  

Ask yourself “What do I do best?” and you will come up with a strength of yours.  😎

To do list

Examples of talents (natural tendencies): being competitive, enjoying puzzles, thriving under pressure, picking up on the emotions of others.

Examples of what your knowledge can tell you: how to deal with an upset customer, the fastest route to the grocery store, how to cope with job-related stress.

Examples of skills (basic abilities to move through the fundamental steps of a task): adding and subtracting, giving an injection, preparing a lesson plan.

Talent + Knowledge + Skills = A Strength

Here is an example of a strength and how it’s developed:

  • The talent of Discipline is discovered through assessment.  Discipline includes natural tendencies toward order, precision, and detail orientation.
  • Knowledge is acquired by going to college to major in the accounting field, and skills are acquired through training and practice.
  • A resulting strength could be the ability to prepare and balance financial statements.

In summary, you hone your raw talent by adding knowledge and skills thereby developing a strength.  🙂

Red-leafed plant

“When we discover our talents, when we give them a name, something resonates deep within us.  It is as if our spirits react to this discovery with a resounding ‘Yes! This is the way it is supposed to be–this is who I was created to be.’

We find it somehow freeing; naming our greatest talents sets us free to develop them and live through them.  It gives us permission to stop trying to be who we are not and concentrate on who we are–who we were originally created to be.”

I love this and found it to be true in my own life.  I’ve always been organized and structured; Rick used to tease that the kids should salute me!

For sure, I’m this way because of my natural tendency toward Discipline.  I shouldn’t feel bad, shouldn’t try to ignore or change it.  Reveling in it and my other talents “feels” right to me.

Which are your 5?

There are, as I mentioned above, 34 different themes.  Let me share a little more info on just one, Discipline, for you to get the idea.

Does this resonate with you?  Your world needs to be predictable.  It needs to be ordered and planned.  You set up routines; you need precision.  You want to feel in control.  You dislike surprises and are impatient with errors, etc.  If so, you probably have Discipline as one of your talents.

There’s more to Discipline, but I think you get it. For each of your 5 talents, you get a detailed description.

Giving an injection

We went through an exercise in class.  The leader gave us a task or job and asked what talents a person would possess to be good at that specific thing.  For example, a nurse giving an injection.  She (he) might have Consistency, Self-assurance, and Focus.  A parent on a budget shopping for groceries?  Discipline, Focus, Analytical, or Responsibility.  That was fun and clarified talents, leading to strengths, in action.

Additionally, your talents may work with one or more synergistically.

Going through the 34 talents, I thought maybe different ones should be in my top 5…  should Focus be included in my list?  After digging deeper, I realized that my Discipline and Achiever talents were working together to produce a “Focus-like” talent.  So cool.

How to take the assessment, you ask?  Buy a new book and there’ll be a code included for you to go online and take the test.  I paid $24.95 plus tax for the new book.  Or, buy a used book to get the info and pay $10 online for the assessment.  (My sister bought a book on Amazon and the code was intact, so be sure to check for the code before you pay the $10!)

After you take the assessment and get your 5, you have the option ($90, I think) to get all the other themes ranked in order.  One bonus of getting all of them is also knowing your lowest ranked talents, the things that do not come naturally to you, that just “are not you.”

Don’t hit your head

I didn’t get the full report, but by reading and “processing” all the descriptions in the book, I’m pretty sure about some of my lowest.  Knowing these also frees us up to not have to try and be better at “such and such.”

Wouldn’t you rather focus on what you do well, easily, and naturally instead of hitting your head against a wall and feeling defeated all the time?

Think of what this could do in the workplace, office, home, and church.  If we all knew our talents and strengths and used them effectively there would be much less frustration and more accomplishing!

Wow!

If you don’t think you’re unique and “fearfully and wonderfully made,” consider this:

The chances of someone having the same 5 themes as you, regardless of order, are less than 1 in 275,000, AND there is only a 1 in 33 million 😮 chance of someone having the same 5 in the same order!

Really Wow!

Surely, this debunks the “myth” that we should all be well-rounded.  We’re all really good at some things and not so much at others. Why fight against our natural tendencies and try to excel at something we’re not made to flourish in?  Perhaps the things that we do best and give us satisfaction should be our priorities.  😉

Rose on fence post

To sum up, if you want to know who you really are, who you were designed to be, I suggest you get a book, take the assessment, and have your “ah-ha” moment!  I’ll bet you (and others) will be glad you did.

Contact me with any questions and let me know your top 5.  😀

 Talk soon.  Blessings and blooms,

Pam

Author: Pam

Glad you’re here!