“What makes you different or weird– that’s your strength” – Meryl Streep
Discovering your personal strengths seems like one of the easiest things to do; however, it isn’t. Most times, you are caught between your mood, desires, interests, and talents to identify your personal strength. Other times, you are confused about the concept of strength because it is so ambiguous and depends on different circumstances or skills required for different tasks.
At the end of the day, most people are still confused and unsure about what their personal strengths are and how to harness them. Interestingly, discovering your personal strength does not only help you become a better person but also a better team player as you get to understand yourself better and ultimately improve.
This way, you will be able to enhance your personal and professional life. Amidst all the uncertainty, doubt, and ambiguity, how can you discover your personal strengths? This is why I am writing about my personal strengths and how I discovered them to help you find yours.
What Are Personal Strengths?
Personal strength can be defined as the actions and the skills you are good at and perform well as a person. They are also defined as the positive traits, abilities, and characteristics exhibited by an individual. This implies that personal strengths are often compared to the abilities of others and how well they can do them. Read more on self-empowerment.
A few of the items on the list of personal strengths will include:
- Authenticity
- problem-solving
- self-esteem
- self-confidence
- family, social connectedness
- optimism
- resourcefulness
- resilience
- and many more
How To Acknowledge or Admit Your Strengths and Weaknesses?
Jennifer Lopez said, “Don’t push your weaknesses. Play with your strengths”. While it is never easy to do this, it becomes a lot easier when you admit your strengths and your weaknesses. It’s one thing to know your strengths and weaknesses; it’s another thing to admit and learn from them. The latter will not only help you reinforce your strengths but also appropriately manage your weaknesses. This approach has been mastered and has been in use for several years by extremely confident people, and you can harness it too. Here is how!
Acknowledging your strengths
- Practice:
A common saying goes thus, “practice makes perfect”; however, it does more– it helps you acknowledge your strengths. Practice reminds you of how good you are at what you do or are. It makes you remember how weird or unique you are Once you have identified your strengths, one of the best ways to acknowledge them is to build on them. It also helps you gain the confidence needed to hone your skills and better master them.
- Affirmation:
It is extremely easy to forget what we have and concentrate on what we don’t. It is quite normal because that’s the way the human mind is engineered. One of the best ways to grow in the consciousness of your talents and abilities is to continue to speak about them. This way, your mind is consistently reminded of what it can achieve and your potential.
Acknowledging Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Acknowledging your weaknesses is not only vital to understanding yourself but also necessary for your improvement. However, you can acknowledge your weaknesses in the same way you acknowledge your strengths. Here are some ways to acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses:
- Assessment: What better way to acknowledge your strength and weaknesses than assessment? Assessment is the process of evaluating and knowing the measure or extent of the qualities of an individual or a person. Although assessment is effective when the attribute or characteristics has been determined, however, assessment reminds you and brings to your mind the consciousness of your strengths and weaknesses, particularly with respect to what you have to do. To assess your ability, you can ask someone you talk to and trust to observe you and assess your abilities to give you an honest assessment. You can also use tests to evaluate yourself and arrive at the necessary conclusions.
- Write them down: It is said that the faintest pen is stronger than the mightiest sword. This statement underlines the importance of writing down facts and what it does to the mind. Therefore, writing down your strengths and weaknesses helps you acknowledge them and seek to address them.
Seven Ways to Identify Your Personal Strengths
Figuring out your personal strength isn’t straightforward; however, there are steps to be taken to identify them. Some of them are:
– Taking a strength test: Taking a personality test is one of the easiest ways of identifying your personal strengths. However, in this process, it is important that you interpret the results correctly and act on them appropriately.
– Interact with people you trust and record what they say:
It is not easier to judge and evaluate situations appropriately when you are not in their shoes. Therefore it is important that you ask the people you trust to give you an honest opinion of yourself while you write them down. However, it is important to analyze their deductions appropriately as they are likely to conclude based on the external strengths they can see
– Acknowledge your strength: Although this seems repetitive, however, it is the ideal way to go if you intend to discover your strengths. You can achieve this by thinking about your strengths that are used in overcoming your weaknesses.
– Discover where you are most productive:
It’s important to observe when and where you are most productive, but how can you achieve this? When your strength is being utilized, you would think time is passing faster than you think. Capture this moment and record this time. You must go through the period your productivity increases and relate them to the activities carried out at the time to get your strength.
– Get out of your comfort zone: Leaving your comfort zone sounds about the most cliche thing to say when advising someone to increase their productivity. However, it is inevitable provided you desire to discover your abilities. When you go out of your comfort zone, take on more responsibilities or roles, and seek out new hobbies, you will be surprised at the things you will discover.
– Make a support network:
Building or getting yourself into a strong and purpose-driven support network is a great step to identifying your abilities. While selecting your favourite support network, consider the success achieved by the individuals that make up the network. You must also check out the testimonies of their past mentees, examine the previous experiences of the mentors, and the methods through which they assist people to identify their capabilities to become successful in their endeavours. Furthermore, you can leverage referrals from the mentees that have previously accessed the services of the support network. Through a strong network, you will not only identify your strengths but also learn to bring the best out of them and amplify them.
– Understand and Acknowledge your Passion: Most times, if you enjoy a task, it is likely that your abilities revolve around it. To identify your abilities, you must recognize your cognitive and physical activities around those tasks to identify your abilities.
Conclusion
A saying goes thus, “you don’t value what you have until you lose it”. Personal strengths are positive traits and characteristics that stand out in an individual and are useful to them throughout life. Although personal capabilities vary with different categories of people, they are needed in every phase of our lives. They define who we are and how we are perceived at home, in the workspace, and ultimately throughout our entire lives. Therefore, if you are looking to reinforce and consolidate anything, your personal abilities should always be prioritized for your development.
References
https://high5test.com/identifying-personal-strengths/
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-acknowledge-admit-your-strengths-and-weaknesses
https://traderlife.co.uk/culture/books/psychology-identifying-acknowledging-strengths/
https://articles.bplans.com/how-to-identify-your-strengths-and-weaknesses/
