Compiled and edited by Frederick Mann, 2002
You could waste a great deal of your life struggling to succeed with things that aren't congruent or in harmony with your natural talents and strengths.
You could also waste a great deal of your life struggling to overcome weaknesses related to areas where you simply don't have the natural talents to do so.
If you know what your natural talents are, you can focus on developing them into strengths. And you can devote your life to work that is congruent or in harmony with your natural talents and strengths. Most likely, this will be a much better use of your time and generally make you happier, more effective, and more successful.
First, I recommend the book Career Tests: 25 Revealing Self-Tests to Help You Find and Succeed at the Perfect Career by Louis Janda, Ph.D. Completing the tests will tell you about your talents and strengths (and much more besides). Also a great way to do some important self-discovery.
Second, you could discover your talents and strengths through personality and psychological tests. There are many you can do online:
"Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer." -- Peter Drucker
Third, I highly recommend the book Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. The authors work for The Gallup Organization, which has interviewed more than 2,000,000 people. Based on their conclusions from this extensive research, they propose two basic assumptions:
They also wrote:
"The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn't have enough strengths, it's that we fail to use the ones we have. Benjamin Franklin called wasted strengths "sundials in the shade." ... Look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest threads [natural talents], reinforce them with practice and learning, and then either find or, as he [Warren Buffett] did, carve out a role that draws on these strengths every day. When you do, you will be more productive, more fulfilled, and more successful."
Most people believe that their greatest improvement will come from overcoming their weaknesses. Buckingham and Clifton say, NO! Your greatest improvement will come from identifying your natural talents and strengthening them. They provide three "revolutionary tools" for doing this:
To develop your natural talents (once you've identified them) into strengths requires knowledge and skills. Buckingham and Clifton provide these definitions:
Buckingham and Clifton have identified 34 natural talents. Buying their book Now, Discover Your Strengths entitles you to do the Buckingham-Clifton StrengthsFinder Profile online and receive the results, indicating your five most dominant natural talents. For the details of my personal StrengthsFinder Profile, see The Buckingham-Clifton StrengthsFinder Profile. I suggest that you make your own personal self-assessment as I have done, to supplement the results of your StrengthsFinder Profile.
It's important to realize that the Buckigham-Clifton model is their personal "map" of the "territory" of human talents and strengths. "The map is not the territory," as Alfred Korszybski said. Other maps can be drawn of the territory. The authors may not have identified all the important natural talents. They also don't say very much about how you develop each of your dominant natural talents into strengths. I suspect they also underestimate the importance of overcoming weaknesses. I suggest that there are certain "general weaknesses" (disadvantages) that may prevent you from developing your dominant natural talents. People typically deny or underestimate these disadvantages -- see #TL03E: The Many Forms of Denial.
A very important aspect of the Buckingham-Clifton model is that for practical purposes your natural talents are fixed. You can't develop new natural talents. In my own case, my natural talents related to "people skills" (Communication, Connectedness, Empathy, Fairness, Harmony, Inclusiveness, Individualization, Relator, and Woo) are mostly very poor. To attempt to develop them into strengths would be a futile waste of time. I'm much better off focusing on further improving my strengths. Buckingham and Clifton provide some useful guidance for "damage control" relating to your worst weaknesses and "managing around" them.
Also very important about the Buckingham-Clifton model is that it may suggest an answer to: "There is so much I need to improve about myself to become really successful, that the task seems overwhelming, and I don't know where to start."
Well, once you've identified your dominant natural talents, and assessed to what extent you've developed them into strengths, you can ask yourself:
I think it's a weakness of the Buckingham-Clifton model that they emphasize adding knowledge and skills to talents in order to develop them into strengths, while they don't say enough about weaknesses that may get in the way. In my opinion, most people need to confront, handle, and overcome the weaknesses (possibly many) that have prevented them from developing their natural talents into strengths. The "Disadvantage Factors" (in #TL03E: The Many Forms of Denial) illuminate this further. Buckingham and Clifton define weakness as "anything that gets in the way of excellent performance."
"It is far more important to know how to deal with the negative than to be "positive"." -- Martin Seligman (Learned Optimism)
Buying the book Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton entitles you to do the Buckingham-Clifton StrengthsFinder Profile online and receive the results, indicating your five most dominant natural talents. Mine are:
Buckingham and Clifton have identified 34 natural talents. I list them below, with my own assessment of the basic dominance of my natural talents, and the extent to which I have or haven't developed each talent into a strength. Note that natural talent + knowledge + skills = strength. Natural talents need to be developed by the addition of knowledge and skills to become strengths. Besides the StrengthsFinder Profile, there are three additional ways to identify your natural talents: yearnings, rapid learning, and satisfactions. From doing the StrengthsFinder Profile and self-observation (particularly regarding yearnings, rapid learning, and satisfactions), I have generated my personal assessment for each natural talent.
Abbreviations
NT = Natural Talent
DS = Developed Strength
VD = Very Dominant
MD = Moderately Dominant
AD = Average Dominance
MP = Moderately Poor
VP = Very Poor
VS = Very Strong
MS = Moderately Strong
AS = Average Strength
MW = Moderately Weak
VW = Very Weak
Personal Talent/Strength Assessment
In addition to the five dominant natural talents identified by the StrengthsFinder Profile, I feel that I also have seven more dominant natural talents:
Analytical - NT (VD) - DS (VS)
Focus - NT (VD) - DS (VS)
Ideation - NT (VD) - DS (VS)
Input - NT (VD) - DS (VS)
Intellection - NT (VD) - DS (VS)
Learner - NT (VD) - DS (VS)
Restorative - NT (VD) - DS (MS)
I also feel that I have developed all my dominant talents into strengths, except for "Restorative" -- my problem-solving strength isn't as strong as my natural talent for problem solving is dominant. Of course, I will further develop my strengths through more knowledge, improved skills, and overcoming disadvantages.
It's very difficult (if at all possible) for anyone else to tell you where you can best start with your work on handling your personal disadvantages. You are by far the best one to determine that. The best I can do is to offer a list of possible steps. It's up to you to select your steps and the sequence in which you want to tackle them.
An important aspect of overcoming your disadvantages is recognizing a disadvantage or becoming aware of a particular disadvantage. If you're not aware of a disadvantage, how do you even begin to replace it with an advantage? Someone could sit down and make a list of what he/she thinks are his/her personal disadvantages, but what if his/her most debilitating or crippling disadvantages are those that he/she is unaware of? Carefully studying the list of "Disadvantage Factors" and following up on the links, may help you recognize hidden personal disadvantages.
Another possibility is to employ the help of a partner or buddy. Someone you could hold a dialogue with, who can ask you questions that may help shed light on your disadvantages. Maybe you could ask people who know you well to tactfully indicate to you what they think may be your disadvantages. But don't become defensive and attack them if they say something you don't like or something that "hurts your self-esteem!" (Typically, your Self 1 would make you self-defensive and/or make you feel hurt.)
An option is to utilize our "Upgrade Your Life" email discussion list.
Another method is to do personality and psychological tests -- see How to Discover Your Talents and Strengths.
I joined program x just under you, i have now tryid everything to put members under me, i upgraded the first day, i would like your help, i know that your already making a lot of money, so your problably thinking why should you help me.
I can't tell you why, but I am ofcource impressed when you can get several thousands under you, and I can get 5 in the same time, all these 5 are my friends, and they arent doing anything
In the last to weeks I have used 5-6 hours on the net every day to promote, I have joined traffic silla, I have tried everything, exept spamming or bulk email
The only thing I have got out of all my hard work, is about 2000 emails a day from other people who is trying the same.
Would you please help me, I cant afford to advertise in newspapers, and cant afford to use more money on the net, I have already in the last year used over 500$, and I don't make a fortune with my normal job.
I can't do a lot for you, but I will make you a promise, if you will help me build the top of my downline, I will promise you, when I start making money on the net, and can cut down my normal working hours I will do all that I can to learn the marketing skills, and that would maybe in a year or two be beneficial to you.
I know this isent any good deal for you. but I wont get any help without asking.
From his name and email address it seems that the writer is Danish. That accounts for the spelling. Note that he says he has tried everything to sponsor people. It seems that he may have devoted about 70 hours to futile marketing attempts and then gave up. It's unlikely that he has tried more than a small fraction of "everything" to sponsor people! He deceives himself about what he has and hasn't done. Also note that he seems to have something backward -- "...[W]hen I start making money on the net, and can cut down my normal working hours I will do all that I can to learn the marketing skills..." Compared to someone who has learned some Internet marketing skills, this person is at a HUGE disadvantage. He is severely deficient in marketing skills. Most likely, 95% or more of people trying to make money on the Internet are at a similar level of deficiency -- severely disadvantaged!
To succeed, he has to identify his marketing disadvantages and overcome them. Or he has to find ways of making money on the Internet without having to do any marketing. See Apply "Factor IG" to Become a Winner!
In addition to what has been covered above, the rest of this report and other articles linked to from here contain more information on what you might be able to do to increase your advantages. The "while benefiting others" needs to be emphasized. I absolutely don't advocate that advantages be used at the expense of others or by harming others.
A friend indicated to me that when he was in his early teens, he had an image of how he wanted to be in social situations. He was also aware that this was not how he was in reality. When he thought about how socially deficient he was in certain ways, he experienced psychological discomfort. He preferred the pleasure he experienced when he thought about himself as he was in his image/fantasy. But even at that age he realized that he needed to think about and confront his deficiencies and disadvantages in order to overcome them and transform himself in reality.
The term "I've-got-my-shit-together" is from Looking Out for #1, by Robert Ringer. See #FFP01: Robert Ringer's Million Dollar Habits. Someone who tells himself that "he's got his shit together" and that he's all OK, may be reluctant to recognize, acknowledge, or address his personal disadvantages.
I've made a special arrangement for my contacts to receive a FREE Idenics telephone session. To schedule, call Mike Goldstein toll-free at 1-800-IDENICS (1-800-433-6427) and tell him Frederick Mann sent you. For those outside Mike's calling area who can't reach him on the toll-free number, you're welcome to call him at 1-303-695-4940. Through the application of Idenics you may quickly improve your general ability to recognize and overcome disadvantages. Here are some recent testimonials:
"Last year I was fortunate enough to learn about IDENICS from Frederick Mann. I decided to invest some effort in myself instead of just my problems. I called the number and heard this kind and gentle voice answer. It was Mike Goldstein. He gave a simple description of what IDENICS is, and offered to let me give it a try. I made a telephone appointment for my first session.
After three sessions I discovered what it is like to live without constant guilt. Only the contrast this freedom offered can display its circumscribing effects. I did not know how it feels to be this free. I spent six months living this way, and the progress I made in those three sessions has been permanent. I also began to experience other emotions that it was not possible to feel while under the influence of guilt. Then I had a series of real challenges that left me paralyzed again. I called Mike and we did one session, which removed intense frustration from my daily life. Within 48 hours my entire life did a 180 degree turn and I KNOW it is permanent." -- D.G.
"I took the free Idenics trial with Mike Goldstein in June of 2002. I had been stuck in a kind of bad place for 4 years, probably longer then I have been looking to get unstuck. I found Idenics to be a remarkable experience. Mike absolutely refused to manipulate me in any way. I had gone to a traditional therapist for a while before this session with no or negative affect. If anything, my Idenics session reversed the minor damage done! I was able to verbalize what I wanted to talk about without fear and feel some of the very negative feelings involved... and Mike helped me to identify the thoughts underneath the feelings.
At no time did he try to put his own thoughts in place of mine. He simply allowed me to focus on what I wanted to focus on. I felt more "solid" after the session ended. But the proof is in what happens in real life. After my session I went camping and made decisions. When I got home I applied to school and also prequalified myself for a mortgage." -- M.K.
For more information on how Idenics works, see "IDENTITIES & UNWANTED CONDITIONS" in #TL03D: Scarcity to Abundance; Poverty to Prosperity; Limited to Unlimited Thinking and WBM#98: Additives: Less is Better.
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