If you're going to get to be one of the two out of 10, the plays to their strengths most of the time that takes control of that day, that hours, that minutes of work then you got to become good. You got to get really good. You got to get very detailed and very specific at describing your own strengths. The good news is that that isn't actually as hard as it seems. You don't need a psychologist or a manager, or a teacher or an HR department even to tell you what your strengths are, you can do this. Because your strengths have certain signs to them, certain soft telltale signs, characteristics. Here's the first sign and it's an obvious one, but pay attention to it. Your strengths have a yearning quality to them. They're like a force inside you trying to get out. Watch to see which activities last week did you look forward to doing? Which activities did you find yourself volunteering for? Now that may not be that many of them because you did a lot of stuff last week, but see what either can pull the curtain aside a little bit and look for which were those activities you actually look forward to doing. Here's a second sign. Your strengths of those things you're naturally inquisitive about. When you start doing an activity that surround a strength of yours, you don't struggle to concentrate, do you? Your mind doesn't wander. You like in the moment, you're in the zone, you're focused, you're concentrated. Time just zips by and your lookup like, "A whole hour is gone by." What would those activities last week? Were there any? Any activities that you stay inquisitive around, that you keep learning around, you keep researching around. Those are all great signs of a strength. Then last, your strengths have this restorative quality to them, don't they? When you're done with them, you may be physically tired, but you're not psychologically drained, you're not empty or not depleted. You're actually uplifted, you're sustained, they fulfill you. That's actually why you want to do them again, because you want that feeling again. A strength is an activity that makes you feel strong. Another that's going to sound odd to you because you've been raised, like I've been raised to believe that your strengths are things you're good at, your weaknesses are things you're bad at and it's not that definitions wrong, it's just not enough. Strength isn't just what you're good at. It's like the definition is incomplete and it leaves out all the stuff that you really want to know about, all the really interesting stuff. You don't want to know what you're good at or what you're bad at, it's an outcome. It's happened, it's over, It's the past. You don't want to know about the past. You want to know about the future, don't you? You've got questions about the future, you want to know which strengths can you turn to when you've had a bad day so that they can build you back up. You want to know which strengths you can count on to really deliver for you regardless of the situation or the circumstances. You want to know which strengths you're going to get better and better and better at as you invest more training and time on them. You want to know which strikes you're going to be most creative and had the better ideas in. Basically, you want to know which strengths are going to sustain you and fulfill you as you match on through life. That old definition of a strength as a stuff you're good at, it's just a really bad guide to those questions about a future. That definition tells you that in order to know how to plan your future and focus your future, you should look to those activities you're good at that. But can that be true? Don't you have some activities you're good at which leave you empty or cold, or they even actually deplete you? You may be really good at organizing stuff, just brilliant and arranging everything, getting all perfectly in its place but it leaves you empty. After two days of arranging and organizing, you feel this close to bursting into tears. Well, if you have some activity like that, should I tell you that organizing is your future? Organizing stuff is what you should build your career around? Of course, I wouldn't. Now, the best definition of a strength is an activity that leaves you feeling strong. I don't care how cool your company is that you've joined or how sexy your job title is. If the activity itself doesn't strengthen you, you've got a problem. We're going to see you burn out way before we see the best of you. Now you flip that around. If you deliberately try and install in your working week activities that strengthen you, all good things happen for you. You'll find that you'll bounce back more quickly. You'll be more resilient when things set you back. You'll find you'll be able to stay focused longer. You'll find it'll be more creative. You'll find you set high goals and of course, the really relevant thing, you'll wind up achieving those goals more often. Why? Get your head around this. Because you will get good at things you practice, but you don't practice all activities uniformly, do you? You get drawn into some activities and repelled by others and those you get drawn into, you practice more and you practice more and you get better and better at them. You need to pay really close attention to your appetites because your appetites, those activities you're drawn to, that fulfill you, those appetites drive your abilities. You need to pay attention to how you feel while you're doing something because how you feel while you're doing something, we'll determine how good you get at that thing. What about those activities that you're drawn to but you just don't seem to get any better at? We've all got those, don't we? Activities that you have a lot of appetite for and seemingly no ability. Well, we have a word for those activities, don't we? We have a word for all appetite, no ability activities. We call them hobbies and they stay hobbies because no one's paying us to do them. I can have the luxury of still going around and hacking away with my golf swing or the luxury of messing with my forehand or singing gloriously in the shower, I don't have to worry that I have really no ability for them because no one's paying me to do them. When we go back into the real world, back into the world of work and wages and accountability and performance, it's amazing how quickly we dismiss that as a luxury. It's amazing how back in the real world, very few people maintain a strong appetite for an activity that they manifestly have no ability for. But you know the really brilliant news about defining a strength as an activity that makes you feel strong? Is that the person who is best qualified to identify your strengths, really the only person qualified to identify your strengths is you. With the old definition, an activity you are good at, well, really the least qualified person to identify your strengths is you. Because you'd either be too hard on yourself or too generous with yourself depending on how fragile the ego was. Right from a very early age, you were taught to look to somebody else, somebody outside of you to confirm or deny what your strengths were. At school, you look to your teachers, didn't you? At home, you look to your parents. At work, you were taught to look to your manager and your HR department and that child of there's the performance appraisal. But with this new definition of a strength is an activity that makes you feel strong. You don't have to talk to anyone else. You know better than anyone else does, which activities you're drawn to and which repel you. You know which activities fascinate you and which bore you, you know which activities fulfill you in which leave you feeling cold. You know better than anyone else does. If you feel fulfilled and excited, meeting new people and winning them over and getting them to like you, if you say you love that, no one can say, "No you don't." They can say, "Well, there's better ways of doing that." They can say, "Here's a really nifty new way of networking with people." They can even say, "Hello, Marcus, You know what? Sometimes you'll need to get people to like you and your ability to do that gets in the way of making a sale or gets in the way of serving a customer or some other such outcome. "That's okay, you should keep your mind open for feedback like that. That is totally legitimate performance feedback. But what no one can tell you better than you is which activities you love and which you loth. No one can tell you which activities make you feel strong, and which make you feel weak, which fascinate you and which bore you to tears. Hear your perspective is and will always be sure and true. Trust it. Look back at your activities last week. Look for those telltale signs of a strength. Preclaim them. No one knows them better than you.
