Purposeful Skills

As part of my January series about Purpose, I am chatting about the different elements that help us get closer to finding out our Purpose. Last week we chatted about Passion and its influence on our direction or distraction and this week I want to chat about Skills and Strengths - the things that you have learned to do, the things you put on your resume, the things that you have worked hard to master, and the things that you are naturally talented at.

Skills

Your Skills are things that usually stem from investing time in your Passions, but also they can come from dealing with difficult things that life hands you (but we will get to Experience next week!) These are the things that you have become very competent in and feel quite confident in doing. For some folks this might look like throwing together a spreadsheet or coding a program, for others it might look like knowing how to ride a horse or kick ass in the boxing ring. Regardless of what your Skills are, they are necessary to help you find fulfillment as you move towards living a life of Purpose.

One of my Skills is the ability to take photographs, of course, but aside from that I am also skilled in communication via written or spoken language, the ability to make people laugh (or groan), intuitively figuring out websites/new software, driving (but not parallel parking - my best friend Stephanie gets points for that!), making something out of nothing, martial arts, dancing, playing Boggle, making things more efficient, playing piano, etc. The longer I sit here, the longer this list will get.

The important thing to understand about Skills is that these are NOT necessarily things that you are naturally good at - these are things that you LEARN to become proficient in through dedicated time & practice and you can continually learn! So don’t second guess your painting skills, your ability to organize, or your lack of excitement at accounting - you CAN improve these skills (but only if you think it is a valuable use of your time!) For example, I never took a dance class until I was 27 (because my Aunt told me I was too fat to be a ballerina when I was 4) and even then I was sub par - but I have been practicing for my self portraits and now I get asked often if I am a trained dancer!! Nothing is impossible and don’t let the stories that other people have programmed into you, stop you from exploring your skills!

Skills are important to our Purpose, because these are the things that allow us to carve out our niche and provide a new perspective and create new connections that other people haven’t thought of. For example, I combined my skill of photography with my skill of dancing to contribute to my skill of communicating about my Passion for body image and self acceptance (imagine if my Aunt could see me now???) Other examples include folks who are skilled at horseback riding and have a Passion about psychology and now run therapeutic ranches or folks who have taken their skill for music composition and their Passion for dramatic movies and create movie scores.

ACTION: Grab a sheet of paper and list every single Skill that you can think of - no matter how small or silly it may seem.

Strengths

In contrast to Skills, Strengths are the things you are naturally talented at and usually showed up when you were younger. If you aren’t new to my work, you know I talk avidly about Clifton Strengths as a great assessment to figuring out your strengths - many people think they are the way they are because of the things they went through, but the reality is, how you handled those things was your strengths at work! The importance of understanding our Strengths when it comes to fulfilling our Purpose is because not only are we more CONFIDENT when we are living in our Strengths zone, but we are also: happier, more productive, and less likely to be consumed with imposter syndrome.

I remember the first two year in business when I had to do my accounting - it was my nightmare. As someone who pays their taxes quarterly, I would leave it until the last day of the quarter to input all my receipts and then I would be a bundle of nerves, frustrations, and tears as I tried to make things make sense - but it just brought up my feelings of stupidity as a student in math class - the numbers swam in front of my eyes, the spreadsheet was grey and dull and I had no idea what I was doing/should be doing. After I did my Strengths assessment and realized Analytical was in my BOTTOM strengths, I outsourced that shit - there are people out there who feel confident doing math and working with numbers and folks who geek out on spreadsheets and the sweet visual of reconciling. That is THEIR Strengths zone - definitely not mine.

Understanding our Strengths also allows us to have compassion for other folks’ who have different Strengths - we are all uniquely wonderful and we all see the world in our own unique way. While this can cause frustration (WHY WOULD THEY DOOOO THAT LIKE THAT?), once we realize that everyone is perfectly unique, we can collaborate and work better together. We complement each other instead of competing against each other.

Homework: Think about who you were as a child. What activities did you like to do and WHY did you like to do them?

For example: I loved to play teacher and my sister and I hosted CPK Radio (Cabbage Patch Kid Radio) - Communication, I loved to create and dream about what would be - Ideation and Futuristic. I was inquisitive and wrote stories and read books - Learner. I always tried to make things more efficient - Strategic.

These will give you clues to your Strengths and if you want a little cheat sheet courtesy of Wendy Hofford (my bad ass mama) to see the strengths that the Clifton organization suggests, you can download that here and see if you can figure out what strengths you have!

[and if you want to take this to the next level and get a Clifton Strengths assessment + coaching with me, you can do that here!) ]

Understanding your Strengths will give you insight into how you can best serve the World.

Honing in on your Skills and Strengths will allow you to explore a variety of different ways that you can help the world become a better place. Next week we are going to talk about how your Life Experience & Wisdom contributes to your greater Purpose and gives you a story to ground yourself in.

Don’t forget to check out the supplementary Podcast episode which will go live on January 10, 2022 here!