Today’s guest post, for Evaluate Your Life Day, is from Amanda Flisher. Evaluate Your Life Day was created by the people at Wellcat.com to encourage people to check out what’s going on in their lives, and to set things on the proper course. The concept of how important checking your course is cannot be understated, we all get a little lost on our trek, and without a regular check-in, how are we to know and plan for the future?
Ever feel the pressure to be well rounded? What about trying to be great at a bunch of things but only finding out you are average at most? And how about the intense focus on your weaknesses? Have you spent a lot of time worrying, working on and fixing things that just don’t come naturally to you?
Great news, you aren’t alone.
Most of us grew up believing we had to be well rounded, to work on our areas of weakness, and to be “great” at a whole bunch of things. We were taught that by doing all these things, we would amount to something amazing.
Well, that just isn’t the case anymore.
Being well rounded, focusing on your weaknesses and being, let’s face it, average at a bunch of things isn’t fulfilling what-so-ever.
However, there are many people that love trying new things all the time, figuring things out and jumping from one thing to the next. This is their purpose in life.
But for the rest of us, developing a sharpness in a few areas is what will give us an amazing, purposeful life.
“You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.” – Tom Rath, StrengthsFinder2.0
In order to build on who you already are means to really dive into your greatest abilities and to let go of all the things you are not. Learning to give yourself permission to let go of who you aren’t is sometimes the hardest part but also the most courageous.
The main things to knowing who you ARE come down to these three points:
- Talent: a natural way of thinking, feeling and behaving. Talents are your raw abilities to accomplish things. Many people misidentify talent as job titles but that is not the case. Talents are HOW you accomplish things, not WHAT you do in life.
- Skills & Knowledge: You gain skills and knowledge from a very young age about how to play, how to act and how to treat others. You learn on the job skills and you learn conceptually about things. You gain skills and knowledge every time you have a new experience or the more times you do something.
- Passion: comes from within. It is YOUR driving force. Not everyone will have as much passion as you do about what you are passionate about. Passion is your creative expression in the world and only you can live it out.
Looking at your life through the lens of these three means really diving into all the pieces that make up who you are. It means asking the tough questions to find out what you actually have talent for, what you have skills for, what knowledge you have gained and want to gain more of, and lastly what are you most passionate about.
Creating a mini manual of WHO you are will give you the ultimate guide book on living out your best life. It will allow you to give yourself permission to stop wasting time on learning things that don’t excite you. It will give you guidance on where you should be spending time and money. It will sharpen your life so that you can really focus on the very things you have been put on this earth to do.
Stop trying to build your life on what you aren’t and start building your life on who you already are.
Amanda is a Personal and Professional Development Coach that works with individuals to discover more about themselves so they can apply it to everything they do. She is a trained Gallup Strengths Educator and a certified Coach through the International Coach Federation. You can find her at www.amandaflisher.com where you can get a Free copy of her More YOU Guidebook. Connect with Amanda on Twitter @AmandaFlisher.
