By Heike Jung
As a teenager or young adult, do you find yourself thinking and dreaming "If only I had a great figure like Jennifer Lopez, my life would be so much better?" "If only I had the charm and wit of Jennifer Aniston, I could be a successful actress." "If only I was more like Mark Zuckerberg, I could be rich and successful and create the next Facebook." "If only I got into Yale, I could be the most successful lawyer"?
Stop! Use what you have and turn it into something great!
But what do you have? What are your special talents and skills? Yes, you too have talents and strengths that separate you from your friends, that make you unique, that give you a certain aura, quality and superiority. You have a natural ability within you to create something powerful and successful. Everybody is born with an innate talent. It's just that most people don't realize it. Those that do, harness and strengthen that talent to create success, recognition, power and wealth with it. Finding your talent is the path to finding your life purpose.
So what is your talent? I just read a book called "Now, Discover Your Strengths", by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. They define talent as any recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. Some of the talents they defined in the book are: being inquisitive, charming, persistent, responsible, obstinate, dyslexic. All of these qualities can be productively applied. Yes, even obstinacy and dyslexia. Someone who is obstinate can become a very successful salesperson or lawyer because their talent is to stick to their guns when faced with overwhelming resistance. Dyslexia can cause a person to use language that is direct and straightforward and not overbearing and flooded with long and complicated words. As pointed out in the book, David Boies -- a celebrated trial attorney and one of the best litigators in the United States -- uses dyslexia to his advantage. He was recruited as counsel for the US Government's antitrust suit against Microsoft. His dyslexia causes him to avoid using long and complicated words. He knows what these words mean, but doesn't use them in his arguments because he's afraid that he might mispronounce them. This need to rely on simple words makes his arguments easy to follow. The authors point out that "for David Boies, dyslexia is a talent because he has figured out a way to apply this recurring pattern productively, and by combining it with knowledge and skills, to turn it into a strength".
Here are some key characteristics that can help define your talents:
What is your spontaneous reaction to a situation, event, crisis, or conversation? How do you react? Are you nurturing, critical, emotional, or apathetic?
Talents create yearnings and desires. What do you want to do on a daily basis and why?
When talent is present, it causes rapid learning. Because you are talented at something, you learn something much easier and at a more rapid speed. You cannot wait to get the next assignment. You read; you research; you seek people who have knowledge in the same field, and you apply yourself far beyond normal expectation.
You feel a strong satisfaction when using your talent. It feels good.
Using the above list, you should be able to find your natural talents. If you feel stuck and unsure about your talents, don't worry. You have been conditioned by society to hone in on your weaknesses. As the authors of "Now, Discover Your Strengths" point out, "unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths. Instead, guided by our parents, our teachers, our managers and psychology's fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected." The problem is that focus expands. If we focus on our weaknesses, we get more weakness. Here are a couple of findings from the studies Buckingham and Clifton have conducted:
Parents were asked which grade they would spend the most time discussing with their child if they came home with the following report card: A in English, A in Social Studies, C in Biology, F in Algebra. The results: 77% of the parents said they would spend the most time discussing the failed Algebra grades.
The authors also did a search to determine how many studies had been done on depression. They found more than 40,000 studies on depression, vs. only about 40 studies that had been conducted on joy and fulfillment.
While you sharpen and perfect your talents, you also have to deal with and overcome your weaknesses. A weakness is "anything that gets in the way of excellent performance." But don't despair, here are four strategies to help you manage your weaknesses as you strive to build your life around your strengths:
Defeat whatever your weakness is by making a concerted effort to overcome it. You know you have to pass your French class to graduate High School, so just hunker down and do the work. Keeping your focus on what lies ahead will help get you through the tough times.
Design a support system or hire a Life Coach who will help you manage your weaknesses and keep you motivated and focused.
Use one of your strongest themes to overwhelm and beat your weakness.
Find a friend, parent or coach to help you handle the areas that are not strengths of yours.
Stop focusing on the "if only", instead find your own talents. Use your talents and abilities to create the life that you want. Once you have discovered and determined your unique talents and abilities, start dreaming your own personal dream so that someday someone else will say "if only I could be like you".
Dr. Heike Jung is the President and Founder of DBLCoaching, a Teen and Young Adult Life Coaching program that inspires, motivates, encourages and supports teens and young adults to turn their dreams into reality. Dr. Jung is best known for her powerfully written Personal Vision Reports which she individually develops and constructs for her clients. She is dedicated and committed to her young audience and strongly believes that personal fulfillment and success can be achieved through an intense Desire for, a firm Belief in, and a determined Love for your dream. To learn more visit her website at http://www.dblcoaching.com
As a teenager or young adult, do you find yourself thinking and dreaming "If only I had a great figure like Jennifer Lopez, my life would be so much better?" "If only I had the charm and wit of Jennifer Aniston, I could be a successful actress." "If only I was more like Mark Zuckerberg, I could be rich and successful and create the next Facebook." "If only I got into Yale, I could be the most successful lawyer"?
Stop! Use what you have and turn it into something great!
But what do you have? What are your special talents and skills? Yes, you too have talents and strengths that separate you from your friends, that make you unique, that give you a certain aura, quality and superiority. You have a natural ability within you to create something powerful and successful. Everybody is born with an innate talent. It's just that most people don't realize it. Those that do, harness and strengthen that talent to create success, recognition, power and wealth with it. Finding your talent is the path to finding your life purpose.
So what is your talent? I just read a book called "Now, Discover Your Strengths", by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. They define talent as any recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. Some of the talents they defined in the book are: being inquisitive, charming, persistent, responsible, obstinate, dyslexic. All of these qualities can be productively applied. Yes, even obstinacy and dyslexia. Someone who is obstinate can become a very successful salesperson or lawyer because their talent is to stick to their guns when faced with overwhelming resistance. Dyslexia can cause a person to use language that is direct and straightforward and not overbearing and flooded with long and complicated words. As pointed out in the book, David Boies -- a celebrated trial attorney and one of the best litigators in the United States -- uses dyslexia to his advantage. He was recruited as counsel for the US Government's antitrust suit against Microsoft. His dyslexia causes him to avoid using long and complicated words. He knows what these words mean, but doesn't use them in his arguments because he's afraid that he might mispronounce them. This need to rely on simple words makes his arguments easy to follow. The authors point out that "for David Boies, dyslexia is a talent because he has figured out a way to apply this recurring pattern productively, and by combining it with knowledge and skills, to turn it into a strength".
Here are some key characteristics that can help define your talents:
What is your spontaneous reaction to a situation, event, crisis, or conversation? How do you react? Are you nurturing, critical, emotional, or apathetic?
Talents create yearnings and desires. What do you want to do on a daily basis and why?
When talent is present, it causes rapid learning. Because you are talented at something, you learn something much easier and at a more rapid speed. You cannot wait to get the next assignment. You read; you research; you seek people who have knowledge in the same field, and you apply yourself far beyond normal expectation.
You feel a strong satisfaction when using your talent. It feels good.
Using the above list, you should be able to find your natural talents. If you feel stuck and unsure about your talents, don't worry. You have been conditioned by society to hone in on your weaknesses. As the authors of "Now, Discover Your Strengths" point out, "unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths. Instead, guided by our parents, our teachers, our managers and psychology's fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected." The problem is that focus expands. If we focus on our weaknesses, we get more weakness. Here are a couple of findings from the studies Buckingham and Clifton have conducted:
Parents were asked which grade they would spend the most time discussing with their child if they came home with the following report card: A in English, A in Social Studies, C in Biology, F in Algebra. The results: 77% of the parents said they would spend the most time discussing the failed Algebra grades.
The authors also did a search to determine how many studies had been done on depression. They found more than 40,000 studies on depression, vs. only about 40 studies that had been conducted on joy and fulfillment.
While you sharpen and perfect your talents, you also have to deal with and overcome your weaknesses. A weakness is "anything that gets in the way of excellent performance." But don't despair, here are four strategies to help you manage your weaknesses as you strive to build your life around your strengths:
Defeat whatever your weakness is by making a concerted effort to overcome it. You know you have to pass your French class to graduate High School, so just hunker down and do the work. Keeping your focus on what lies ahead will help get you through the tough times.
Design a support system or hire a Life Coach who will help you manage your weaknesses and keep you motivated and focused.
Use one of your strongest themes to overwhelm and beat your weakness.
Find a friend, parent or coach to help you handle the areas that are not strengths of yours.
Stop focusing on the "if only", instead find your own talents. Use your talents and abilities to create the life that you want. Once you have discovered and determined your unique talents and abilities, start dreaming your own personal dream so that someday someone else will say "if only I could be like you".
Dr. Heike Jung is the President and Founder of DBLCoaching, a Teen and Young Adult Life Coaching program that inspires, motivates, encourages and supports teens and young adults to turn their dreams into reality. Dr. Jung is best known for her powerfully written Personal Vision Reports which she individually develops and constructs for her clients. She is dedicated and committed to her young audience and strongly believes that personal fulfillment and success can be achieved through an intense Desire for, a firm Belief in, and a determined Love for your dream. To learn more visit her website at http://www.dblcoaching.com
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